Lot 
 aint 
 a 
 
 F 
 
 
 
1b DD} a; va 
 \ Uri HINGES 
 Z 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <i ; 
 | |, DEG 919825. 
 
 © “os 0; cA \\ ey | 
 Seven Professions2zici. se 
 
 and the 
 
 Teachings of Jesus 
 
 BY 
 
 Marruew Hate’WILson 
 
 BENJAMIN 8S. BROWN DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
 AT 
 Park COLLEGE 
 AND 
 MINISTER AT 
 PARKVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 
 1925 
 
CopynricHt, 1925 
 BY 
 
 Matrunew Hate WiLson 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
DEDICATED 
 TO 
 CORA LOUISE WILSON 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/sevenprofessionsOOwils 
 
PREFACE 
 
 N every well-established business and profes- 
 sion there is a consensus of spiritual convic- 
 tion, either latent or defined, which is the pro- 
 duct of strenuous efforts in repeated trials to 
 determine that which is Christian in conduct. 
 An appreciation of the Christianity developed 
 by experience is needed by all who seek for them- 
 selves the highest type of Christian life. In each 
 profession there is a continuity of spiritual life 
 which should be understood and sympathetically 
 appreciated that the working of God may be 
 really and not artificially known; and that those 
 who are engaged in these specific tasks may have 
 that definite guidance without which they might 
 fail of eminent success in their Christian experi- 
 ence. A study of vital Christianity as it is modi- 
 fied by the diverse activities of men gives a saner 
 appreciation of what God has already wrought. 
 It aids the believer in promoting the spiritual 
 life of others in definite, wholesome, and con- 
 _ structive ways, as well as in extending his own 
 horizon and enriching his personal life. 
 Men in the different walks of life should create 
 a higher type of professional and business life not 
 maw 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 only by the observance of those Christian ideals 
 which may be known but also by the develop- 
 ment of those ideals which lie dormant in their 
 respective callings. For the professions, a millen- 
 nium would have come if Christian men had 
 maintained a strict professional integrity accord- 
 ing to the light which they now possess and the 
 ideals which are being formulated by conscien- 
 tious Christian professional men. To live in 
 accordance with such ideals is to create a better 
 world. It is to be practical in the religious life; 
 it is to work within the boundary of the possible 
 in achievement and at the same time to realize 
 that one may contribute to the enlargement of 
 ideals. | 
 
 The next step in religion is to determine what 
 the teaching of Jesus may mean in connection 
 with the concrete situations which arise in the 
 professions. The investigation is undertaken in 
 this book because many men are asking in what 
 definite ways Jesus may aid them in their chosen . 
 work. 
 
 The material for this manuscript has been 
 gathered not only from printed sources but also 
 from a correspondence which has become national 
 in scope, extending over the last fifteen years. 
 In addition, many conferences with leaders in 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 the professions have made possible an apprecia- 
 tion of the tasks which confront them and the 
 manner in which they have blended the teaching 
 of Jesus with their training in solving these prob- 
 lems. Those eminent in achievement have tried 
 to keep me true to fact by letters or by penciling 
 in the margin of the preliminary pages those 
 corrections which their experience has caused 
 them to feel should be embodied in a balanced 
 statement. So many have made suggestions that 
 it would not be possible to acknowledge their 
 service by naming them. I have such regard for 
 the confidence given to me that I would rather 
 err on the side of silence than commit any con- 
 tributors even indirectly by connecting them 
 with the chapters as written. Still, | should be 
 recreant if [ did not mention the helpfulness of 
 Shailer Mathews and Ernest De Witt Burton. 
 The most satisfying part of this work has been 
 to discover the intelligent and sympathetic 
 understanding of Jesus held by the builders of 
 the society of our day. 
 
 The material is arranged in the following 
 chapters in the order in which the problems arise 
 in the professions. The chapters can scarcely be 
 taken separately as complete. The same topic 
 which may be common to all may be stressed in 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 one chapter and neglected in others. However, 
 the book as a whole attempts to present a bal- 
 anced conception of the actual and possible 
 relations between the problems in the profes- 
 sions and the teaching of Jesus. 
 
Preface ..... 
 
 Chapter I 
 Chapter II 
 Chapter III 
 Chapter IV 
 Chapter V 
 Chapter VI 
 Chapter VII 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 VAR Sethe sees Attach AT etre Nas Ve 5 
 The Christian Physician............. ll 
 fhe. @hrastianguawVyeler- nn een mic a. aoe A4 
 HOR ECreVINATIN a point ee uct thal. 85 
 The:Ghristian: banker™: 231. ecAl 121 
 PhenGhristtansditors ates sec ek tn : 156 
 The Christian Deacher 25 0. 4s.. - 182 
 The New: Profession®. 40sec ehh. 223 
 

 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 
 I 
 
 HE achievement and exercise of manhood 
 
 is the primary obligation of any man. The 
 medical profession offers full scope for the un- 
 ostentatious development of character. The full 
 meaning of manhood in its inner poise and 
 security, freed from ignorance, provincialism, 
 arrogance, greed, and lust is exemplified in Jesus. 
 He left a pattern of what it means to have seen 
 life sanely, attractively, and as a whole. 
 
 In the growth of the life of the world, great 
 truths have been emphasized at various times. 
 In the Greek states, it was the winning of intel- 
 lectual freedom. In the Roman state, it was the 
 worth of excellent civil laws. Later the dogmas 
 and the defenses of Christianity were perfected. 
 The modern age has gained the right of scientific 
 inquiry, secured religious toleration, and estab- 
 lished democracy. 
 
 This age feels the dependence of the parts of 
 the world on one another. The evolutionary 
 conception, which has made this clear to all, had 
 its roots in the physical and the biological 
 
 il 
 
12 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 
 
 sciences and it demonstrated, the unity of the 
 natural world. A reinterpretation of the norma- 
 tive sciences, such as ethics, sociology, esthetics, 
 and philosophy was then made possible. No 
 physical or biological fact can be what it is apart 
 from the rest of the physical world. It is equally 
 true that man is almost totally dependent on his 
 fellows for his social life, and no value of human 
 life can be attained alone and apart from other 
 men. The facts of human life are just as inti- 
 mately and delicately related as are those of the 
 physical world, and even more so. In no other 
 age has this great truth of the oneness of hu- 
 manity been taken into account in such a serious 
 way. It is modifying all our thoughts and all our 
 practice. We know now that poverty is a con- 
 cern of the rich as well as of the poor, that the 
 educated cannot neglect the ignorant, that the 
 moral must take note of the immoral. The old 
 provincial and sectional differences are giving 
 way to the conviction that fundamentally we are 
 one people, that the misery of any class affects 
 the welfare of all the people, and that the success 
 of any group aids the well-being of society as a 
 whole. The unity of the race is becoming a 
 working hypothesis for moral living. It was 
 difficult for the men of Jesus’ day to understand 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 13 
 
 him. The same antipathy existed between the 
 Jew and the Samaritan that now separates 
 the Turk from the Armenian, or the Negro from 
 the white. Yet when Jesus gave the narrow and 
 bigoted circle in which he lived an illustration in 
 true brotherliness, he called attention to the 
 kind deed and spirit of a Samaritan. The 
 greatest faith he discovered was in a Roman, and 
 one of his most disconcerting rebukes was that 
 harlots and publicans, rather than the members 
 of a supposedly religious coterie, should enjoy 
 the bliss of the Kingdom. 
 
 Jesus had a universal spirit. To his disciples 
 he said in substance: “If you clothe the naked, 
 visit the imprisoned, care for the sick, and feed 
 the hungry, it is a service to me. In serving my 
 brothers you have cared for me. We are one 
 family, and any service of love done to one is 
 done to all; every worthy act strengthens the 
 whole realm of virtues.” Just as Jesus thought 
 in terms of one humanity, a world service and a 
 world redemption, the true physician knows no 
 boundary of rich or poor, educated or unedu- 
 cated, black or white. His work tends to create 
 in him a spirit of helpfulness toward all. Through 
 his work he comes to possess a regard for hu- 
 manity, as such, whenever it is in need, and he 
 
14 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 
 
 is in no sense the property of a clique or sect. 
 In every medical laboratory where they are 
 searching for the remedies for disease, once the 
 methods of cure are ascertained, the artificial 
 barriers of color, class, and culture are disre- 
 garded. The serious work of the physician leads 
 him naturally to a conception that we are of the 
 same flesh and blood. 
 
 How natural to the physician, then, that one 
 of the favorite figures of Paul should be that we 
 are all related as members of a body of which 
 Christ is the head! The eye cannot say to the 
 ear that it has no need of it. If one organ suffers, 
 then the whole body suffers, and the health of 
 each organ helps the whole body as general 
 bodily health aids each part. The physician can 
 realize the full force of the unity of life as de- 
 picted by Paul when he compared men in their 
 various gifts, sin, health, suffering, and helpful- 
 ness, to the various parts of the body of which 
 Christ is the head. The parts of the body are so 
 intimately related by means of the nervous and 
 circulatory systems that it is impossible to suffer 
 in one part without its affecting the rest of the 
 body. Paul’s conviction of the unity of believers 
 was strikingly illustrated by the interdependence 
 of the parts of the body. For the physician, this 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 15 
 
 generalization that the parts of the body 
 mutually depend upon one another has been 
 supported by innumerable instances until for 
 him it has become a matter of fact. 
 
 Il 
 
 The average physician has entered the prac- 
 tice of medicine with a sincere desire to aid his 
 fellow men in their very apparent needs. It is 
 so obvious that his is a necessary and humani- 
 tarian service that no defense is needed, and, in 
 all probability, he will be reticent in mentioning 
 any good that he may do. He may have no very 
 elaborate philosophy of life, but his work so 
 lends itself to the service of others that he feels 
 his is a calling permeated by fine ideals. For the 
 physician, this is probably the most satisfying 
 thing about his work: that by its very nature it 
 holds him steadily in the path of helpfulness to 
 those who are in great need of his service. 
 
 Inside the circle of medicine are those who 
 have ever remembered that their calling has a 
 noble ancestry of gentlemen, that it has won 
 emancipation from priestcraft, that it is based 
 upon sciences, that it is progressive in character, 
 and that its outlook has never been brighter than 
 at the present hour. The members of this inner 
 
16 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 circle, known to physicians themselves, ex- 
 emplify in their lives the finest Christian ideals. 
 To them their colleagues look for guidance, from 
 them they draw their inspiration, and through 
 their faithfulness others win a like manhood for 
 themselves. These are the men who know that 
 even a little humbug is not a necessity, no matter 
 how effective it may be with the general public. 
 They are clean of body, mind, and speech. They 
 are courteous without servility, reserved without 
 cowardice, dignified but tender-hearted. 
 
 {il 
 
 There is a widely prevalent conception that 
 all disease is caused by sin. The physician knows 
 that this is not true. Only by the wildest stretch 
 of the imagination can all disease be thought to 
 be the result of sin. The germs which cause 
 disease are a part of that total external environ- 
 ment necessary for the development of the indi- 
 vidual. They are there as are also air and food 
 and water. Moreover, people have all kinds of 
 constitutions with varying degrees of suscepti- 
 bility to disease. Some are strong and remain 
 healthy, while others are weak and open to the 
 attacks of many forms of disease. For any one 
 of many perfectly natural causes a person may 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 17 
 
 become ill. In the main, the scientist has come 
 to think of disease as a part of the process of 
 nature apart from any moral issue whatever. 
 
 They brought a man born blind to Christ and 
 asked him a direct question as to whether the 
 man himself or his parents had sinned that he 
 should be in such a condition. His reply was 
 that none of them had necessarily or especially 
 sinned. ‘To him the situation was important 
 because it offered an opportunity to help one 
 who was in great need. 
 
 It is not a matter purely of chemical or physi- 
 cal law when the scientist discovers a cure for 
 disease. On that border line where science 
 erows, religion also may take a step forward. 
 It is just here that he may meet the living 
 God. Where the inquiring, struggling, creative 
 interest of man is eager to enter into a new realm 
 of law, there on the threshold of that discovery 
 which opens a new world, he needs to personalize 
 his experience in terms of God. Convictions con- 
 cerning God do not grow in vacuums or in broad 
 generalizations. The latter always lack the force 
 of reality. God may become real for scientists 
 just where their discoveries take the form of cer- 
 tainties in the concrete experiences of life. ‘Thus 
 the immanent God becomes better and better 
 
18 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 
 
 known as the discoveries of man widen the 
 horizon of his experience and knowledge. 
 Nevertheless, it is also true that men con- 
 sciously do those things which they know to be 
 wrong and thus make themselves more liable to 
 contract disease. When such is the case the 
 issue becomes sharply ethical. When sin be- 
 comes the occasion of disease, the general teach- 
 ing of Jesus concerning sin is applicable. The 
 physician has as much knowledge of the strength 
 of sin as any other professional man in society, 
 because the soul and the body are so intimately 
 related that the evils of the soul are registered in 
 the body. He daily observes the results of the 
 sins of the parents which have been transmitted 
 to their children. He sees the innocent suffer 
 with the guilty. He treats diseases which have 
 been willfully contracted. He watches a multi- 
 tude serve lust with greediness and reap a harvest 
 of weakness, pain, and death. The glutton is 
 ever at hand; the sexually perverted are ever 
 with him; the money-mad grow old before their 
 time; and the careless and thoughtless suffer for 
 their negligence. Such sin has marred man, it 
 has caused his steps to falter, it has bowed his 
 head, distorted his features, and marred his face 
 with lines of vice; it has palsied his hands, bleared 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 19 
 
 his eyes, and caused him to leer in lust; and it 
 has brought him from life to death through pain 
 and anguish. The physician carries on his heart 
 continually the burden of many of the deliberate 
 sins of his fellows, and as it is his business to 
 treat human ills, he is convinced of the willful 
 sinfulness of some as few others in the com- 
 munity can be. 
 
 Christ felt keenly the deliberate sin of the 
 world. No other ever appreciated in just the 
 same way the terrible consequences of such sin. 
 He saw it as destroying all worthy relations of 
 home and Church and State, and finally, after 
 having separated the soul from God and all 
 right-minded men, as forever plunging it into 
 eternal misery and woe. He saw it as working 
 ruin in the whole man until his end was a total 
 loss of manhood. He saw it as polluting every 
 human relation and filling the world with suffer- 
 ing, disaster, and defeat. He realized how 
 strongly it was intrenched in the habits and 
 customs of men. How great must be the struggle 
 of the soul to escape this undertow of conven- 
 tionality that would ultimately ruin it forever! 
 He had full knowledge of the fact of sin and of the 
 results which accompanied it. For him, it was to 
 be hated, fought, and rooted out of the world. 
 
20 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 
 
 Once the issue is clarified by an appreciation 
 of these two facts, that as far as we can discern 
 sin need not be the cause of disease, and also that 
 sin may create conditions where disease develops 
 rapidly, then the conclusion can be reached 
 easily that, in cases of those diseases for which 
 the individual is not responsible, the cure waits 
 on the progress of science. For the diseases 
 caused by willful wrongdoing, even science can 
 offer no permanent cure until there is a strong 
 desire to do right. Just here the need of a 
 worthy character makes itself felt, and the use- 
 fulness of a religion which promotes moral 
 integrity becomes apparent. 
 
 The physician stands in need of the mind of 
 Christ that he may not become gloomy, pessi- 
 mistic, or fatalistic, believing that moral condi- 
 tions cannot be readjusted. He must ask him- 
 self if there is a way by which the tidal waves 
 of deliberate sin may be stayed. He realizes that 
 it is out of the heart that sin springs; that lust 
 and malice and false pride are in the spirit of 
 men; that uncleanliness of mind cannot be cured 
 by repairing the body; that the great and funda- 
 mental causes of sin lie in ignorance, passion, 
 lust, and perversion of the soul. He is forced by 
 his profession to ponder the deeper things of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 21 
 
 
 
 man’s spirit, and to ask, “Is there hope for the 
 soul that is sick unto death?” If the answer 
 which he makes to himself is that there is no 
 practical escape from domination by evil forces, 
 motives, and purposes, he will become falsely 
 optimistic, suffer in dumb silence, or adopt a 
 cynical though perhaps a kindly attitude toward 
 life. If he is to be sane and balanced in his life, 
 he needs the viewpoint of Christ with regard to 
 willful sin: not only that it is terrible, working 
 death in the moral life, but also that sin may be 
 overcome and left behind; that all may be saved 
 from it, although here the consequences may 
 still remain in the body. If he is to look on the 
 world with hope, he needs the compassion of 
 Christ towards sinful man and that true op- 
 timism which Jesus possessed because of his 
 conviction that in the sincere and habitual con- 
 fession of sin and repentance for it there is cleans- 
 ing from the desire to do those things which are 
 evil, deliverance from habits which ensnare and 
 fetter, and the possibility of a positive, free life 
 of love, service, and sacrifice as a member of his 
 spiritual fraternity. The name of Jesus should 
 be very precious to the physician, meaning, as 
 it does, that he should “save his people from 
 their sins.” The work of the physician forces 
 
22 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 him to recognize the power of sin, and brings him 
 to the place where he can realize, as few others 
 can, our need of a Saviour, and the wonder of 
 the salvation wrought in our behalf by Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The Christian physician may have an op- 
 timism in harmony with a victorious life. It need 
 not be a false confidence. It can recognize the 
 hard and bitter facts of life and is not obliged 
 to underestimate their extent or their power; but 
 it has witnessed lives made pure and strong and 
 kept wholesome through trust in the Master and 
 service for him. He knows that in spite of the 
 disasters of life there is deliverance for those who 
 put themselves in Christ’s way. As a result, the 
 Christian physician may have a genuine, sane, 
 and fruitful optimism in place of despair and 
 kindly cynicism. 
 
 Christ bore with the frailties of others. He had 
 such hope on their behalf and such love for men 
 that he was not turned from them because of 
 their weakness. He had love, compassion, and 
 forgiveness for those who were classed by society 
 as sinful. The only time Christ burned with 
 righteous indignation and spoke cutting words 
 of rebuke and correction was when men were 
 hypocritical, when they were smugly complacent 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN as) 
 
 in their religious leadership and so self-satisfied 
 that they would not be taught. The more sinful 
 the penitent, the more tender was the treatment 
 of Jesus. His life is replete with compassion 
 toward the multitude, who are like sheep with- 
 out a shepherd, helpless in their ignorance, 
 pressed down with burdens, crushed by poverty, 
 and without comfort in sorrow. Christ revealed 
 to the people their sinfulness, but always with 
 a winning grace which showed his love toward 
 them, his sadness for their sorrows, and his 
 sympathy with them in their cares. The physi- 
 cian is compassed about with frailty in his own 
 life and in the lives of those who are his patients. 
 He does well to remember the weaknesses of his 
 own life. He does best when he acquires for him- 
 self that mind which was in Christ, when he 
 achieves that compassionate, tender spirit which 
 his Lord possessed. It is often hard to determine 
 the cause of disease, and frequently the cause 
 lies outside of any known power of the individual 
 to control. A genuine scientific attitude makes 
 most physicians exceedingly charitable in judg- 
 ing their fellow men. 
 
 Four classes of men listen to the confessions of 
 their fellows. The banker is told of their finan- 
 cial straits, the minister of their hopes and 
 
24 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 aspirations, the attorney of their transgressions 
 of law, and the physician of their physical dis- 
 tresses and frequently of their sins. To the 
 physician is imparted the most intimate of family 
 secrets, and he knows of the personal life of 
 individuals as no other man. Years of training 
 have made him an acute observer of the signs of 
 disease. Those who have sinned willfully or con- 
 tracted disease through contact or inheritance, 
 though they be innocent personally, all come to 
 the physician. He is the confessor to whom are 
 revealed the most serious secrets of life. His 
 attitude toward the things that mar and destroy 
 life is of great importance. If he views evils as 
 necessary and tolerates the willful destruction of 
 life on the part of the patient, he will have one 
 kind of influence. If he is sensitive to the best 
 in the morals of his day, his influence will be of 
 another sort. If he is truly Christian with a real 
 knowledge of what the human will can do when 
 strengthened by the grace of God, his stand 
 against wrong will be definite, positive, and 
 helpful. No man can respond readily and help- 
 fully to the moral needs of his fellows and not be 
 strengthened thereby in his moral life. The 
 secrets of men constitute a heavy responsibility. 
 To hear them is important because of the service 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN a0 
 
 which can be rendered to the teller, and also 
 because of the reflex influence which these con- 
 fessions have on the one to whom they are told. 
 
 IV 
 
 In former times, the practice of medicine was 
 concerned with the alleviation of suffering and 
 the prolongation of life. Physicians were passive 
 in the presence of disease, doing what they could 
 to relieve suffering, but thwarted as to how to 
 combat disease. With the development of the 
 germ theory a weapon was placed in the hand of 
 medicine which enabled it to alter its attitude 
 and to add a new chapter to human progress, 
 perhaps the greatest single chapter in the modern 
 world. When a clear appreciation of the wide 
 significance of the germ theory had been grasped, 
 the submission of the past gave place to an 
 ageressive, scientific warfare against disease. 
 Foe after foe was vanquished. Medicine went 
 forward with gigantic strides, for its outlook and 
 temper were altered. There had come a faith 
 that every disease could be overcome. To 
 achieve this end medical laboratories were estab- 
 lished and enlisted in the campaign against the 
 destroyers of health. A new school of medicine 
 arose with emphasis upon nursing, exercise, 
 
26 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 massage, and mental therapy. Medicine be- 
 came a conqueror. The fighting spirit of science 
 had been incorporated in it. Never again will 
 it remain passive before any physical disaster. 
 It has fashioned an instrument by which it could 
 be a master. It has come into its own. While 
 physicians know that they are uncertain at many 
 points about the. correct treatment of disease, 
 nevertheless they are sure that there will come 
 a day when for them confusion will give place to 
 understanding, when victory will be won. In 
 medicine a realm of truth and blessing has been 
 brought to light far beyond any human expecta- 
 tion. 
 
 Those who practice medicine are in a current 
 of scientific progress. They are technically 
 trained men who are able to appreciate the 
 rapidity with which knowledge grows and the 
 helpfulness of such advances for their practice. 
 For the physician to acquire the scientific spirit 
 in the first place, then to keep abreast of the 
 times and to meet all the demands made upon 
 him for service, will absorb the waking hours of 
 each day. This means that his vital contribution 
 to his fellows, both of his own life and of his 
 service, will fall within the practice of medicine 
 as a profession. Once the goals of life are de- 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN ma 
 
 termined, each day may claim his entire energy 
 and each day may satisfy his finest ambitions. 
 The words of Jesus concerning thought of the 
 morrow are particularly applicable to the scien- 
 tific worker. 
 
 When the unnumbered multitudes in whose 
 lives disease has been prevented or overcome 
 pass in review, the man who in his heart holds 
 religious views hostile to such an advance, must 
 be “set on fire of hell.” Any view of life hostile 
 to the progress of medical science will be brushed 
 aside by the devotees of that science as unworthy 
 of consideration, and justly so. Those who say 
 that we do not care how many babies die or how 
 men suffer since we wait for the coming of the 
 Lord may find their Lord a consuming fire. 
 
 V 
 
 Because the physician’s life is spent in treating 
 the body, he is exposed to temptations of a 
 physical nature. In the early years of his pro- 
 fessional career there are many sharp and subtle 
 temptations which confront him until he has 
 been purified by contact with the sufferings of 
 many and is thoroughly committed to the obvi- 
 ous lessons of science. The teaching of Jesus 
 which deals with the purity of life appeals to the 
 
28 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 physician in a very marked way. ‘Time brings to 
 the surface the ravages wrought by disease in 
 those who disregarded the laws of purity. If the 
 physician is a right-minded man he will be re- 
 pelled from that which causes so much suffering 
 and distress. The warning that it is better to 
 lose an eye, with all of the possibilities of looking 
 upon this beautiful world, rather than to be 
 controlled by bodily passion should compel the 
 attention of the physician as the sane instruc- 
 tion of a perfectly balanced mind. The parallel 
 admonition that it is better to cut off the hand 
 and lose it than to use it as an instrument of evil 
 should be accepted as the teaching of a thought- 
 ful and discerning observer of human life. It is 
 significant that Paul said of himself that he 
 pommeled his body and subjected it, fearing lest 
 he otherwise might come to be a castaway. The 
 
 physician can appreciate the fairness of the , 
 
 teaching of Jesus when he deals with physical 
 temptations, because many of the diseases which 
 he is called upon to treat have their origin directly 
 or indirectly in bodily abuse. The approach of 
 our Lord to physical defilement was somewhat 
 different from that of the physician. He saw it 
 as marring the soul as well as the body, and as 
 causing both to be lost in hell. The Master had 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN _ 29 
 
 all the more reason to be forceful in his warnings 
 against being controlled by appetite, for to him 
 the penalties for surrender to it were eternal. 
 Yet the physician has such knowledge of the 
 strength of physical temptations and the misery 
 caused by surrender to them that the teachings 
 of Jesus come home to him with special reason- 
 ableness and power. 
 
 The miracles of Jesus will ever be a source of 
 confusion to the physician until he is able to 
 think in terms of the essential meaning of the 
 life of Jesus. There is one clear reason, at least, 
 given in the New Testament for the miracles of 
 physical healing. Jesus used the miracles to 
 convince those of his generation that he was a 
 Revealer of God. It is almost impossible for us 
 to transplant ourselves in thought into his time. 
 Monotheism itself was not even a generally 
 established fact. Jesus, in the short span of a 
 few months, had to convince men that he is the 
 Revealer of God. When as yet the ages had 
 scarcely appreciated monotheism, they were 
 challenged to accept the incarnation. While 
 miracles of healing were performed to alleviate 
 suffering, they had in them an impact which was 
 more than that of one man wishing to aid 
 another in pain and distress. He burned into 
 
30 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 the souls of those who saw him the fact that he 
 was godlike in power. These experiences were 
 means by which they could reach to him as 
 divine. He said that physical miracles were 
 within the circumference of faith. His life and 
 his words and, as a last resort, his works were 
 urged as the ground of belief. Put into modern 
 terminology it meant that Jesus controlled a 
 realm of law and life which healed bodily ills and 
 even raised the dead. Like power was com- 
 mitted to his apostles to accomplish the same 
 thing for which he used it, primarily to establish 
 him as God. Early Christians accepted Jesus as 
 God, trusted and served and loved him in life, 
 and were martyrs for him in death. This con- 
 viction that he is the Revelation of God is the 
 core of Christianity and ever has been. 
 
 His early followers believed in Jesus because 
 of his character and teaching, fortified by. 
 miracles. Later they attempted to explain the 
 incarnation, a fact which has never been ration- 
 alized in spite of the Church’s continued loyalty 
 to it. The virgin birth is not merely a question 
 whether certain verses should remain in the 
 Bible. The defenders of religion have been led 
 to cling to the virgin birth of Christ because they 
 desired to keep the reality of his divinity as well 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN a 
 
 as of his humanity. One more deified human 
 being among the many Greek gods of that type 
 avails little as a Saviour of men. Historically, the 
 attempt to explain Jesus followed acceptance of 
 him as the Saviour and did not precede it. 
 Christ as a doctrine was an effort to rationalize 
 an already existing faith. The experience of 
 being saved was the fundamental thing. At 
 heart it has ever been very simple. 
 
 Jesus as the Saviour can create a type of 
 character in his followers like his own. He had 
 one test for his followers—that they should be 
 obedient to him as he himself was obedient to 
 God. The character of Jesus is the fruit of that 
 obedience. The character of the Christian is the 
 test of his discipleship. This Paul saw clearly. 
 The climax of First Corinthians is reached in the 
 thirteenth chapter where Paul reveals love as the 
 more excellent way. In Galatians, Paul is care- 
 ful to make likeness to the character of Christ 
 the ground for every Christian hope. Once the 
 attitude of Jesus and Paul is accepted as the 
 spiritual test of Christianity and miracles are 
 relegated to the position assigned them by Jesus 
 himself, then we are in a proper position to 
 estimate the work of the Christian physician. 
 How natural it is for the physician to see his 
 
32 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 work as a labor of love! How callous at times it 
 would be to conceive of it in any other manner! 
 He need not cry through the street that he loves 
 his fellow men. If he will only follow the fine 
 promptings of his soul when about his daily 
 tasks, he may be of the spiritual company of 
 those who love their fellow men. What finer love 
 for men can flood the soul of a worker than to 
 know that after months or even years of patient 
 labor he has conquered for all time and for all 
 mankind a dread disease? Alone with his dis- 
 covery, before it is made known to the world, it 
 is only a step for the physician to move into the 
 great love of Jesus for all mankind. The Scrip- 
 ture tells of the joy of God over a sinner who 
 returns to him. Only in this modern age can we 
 write of the joy of God over the discovery of a 
 patient, taciturn, unselfish scientist who has con- 
 quered some form of death for all future genera- 
 tions of his fellow men. The wonders of physical 
 healing wrought by one such man may be more 
 important than all the so-called miracles of 
 physical healing from the days following the 
 New Testament period until now. To know 
 Jesus after the spirit, to be inspired by the — 
 motive of love which ever prompted him, may 
 be to be nearer to our Lord in this twentieth 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 33 
 
 century with our great opportunities for helpful- 
 ness than to have lived in his day, to have 
 wondered at his teaching, the while not under- 
 standing that he is God. If over the centuries 
 men have accepted him as Lord, is it any wonder 
 that physical miracles ceased? For they were 
 used in his day, primarily, to help unbelief, 
 while even as he used them, he valued them as 
 of secondary importance, hoping that in his 
 character and teaching his contemporaries might 
 find the genuine basis for faith in him. 
 
 In fact, the highly trained physician of to-day 
 does not expect the hand of physical death to be 
 stayed by divine intervention. He has seen too 
 many die to have any false notion that death is 
 not something inevitable. For him, this is a 
 fixed fact of experience. Many have never 
 clearly apprehended it. They are as yet unin- 
 formed. 
 
 What then is the proper view of a serious ill- 
 ness? It is to be fought with every agency of 
 scientific skill. This means that until the end, 
 and aggressively, every available means is to be 
 used to conquer disease. God is not expected to 
 violate the physical laws governing the body. 
 The scientist feels that the God who made this 
 universe and its laws is honored more by the 
 
34 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 uniform operation of these laws than by any 
 intervention which sets them aside. Within the 
 laws of God man lays down his physical life. It 
 is to belittle God to expect him to disregard his 
 laws. 
 
 The body gains significance because it is the 
 house of the human spirit. The soul of man has 
 its highest fruition when the character of Christ 
 is being formed in it in codperation with him in 
 his great program. The problems of the future 
 life and the resurrection of the body are not of 
 the laboratory. The integrity of God is the hope 
 of man. His moral integrity is the basis of 
 human confidence in him. The God who planned 
 and wrought our complete salvation through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ is our Stay. We believe in the 
 resurrection of the body and the life which is 
 everlasting because in character we may be like 
 him. We know whom we have believed. Jesus 
 pledged himself repeatedly to care for his own 
 in their total humanity—both body and spirit— 
 because in character and life they were forever 
 united to him. This also is the great conviction 
 of Paul who, having defined Christian character 
 in the graces of love and having enumerated the 
 appearances of Jesus after death, could thank 
 God for Christ through whom we have victory 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 30 
 
 over death. What if a few crying out to God 
 have been spared a few brief days? The stream 
 of death is wide and deep and a few eddies in no 
 way alter the current. What men persistently 
 ignore is that they must die. When, as physi- 
 cians, they do take note of death they are slow 
 to postulate any particular condition of life 
 beyond the death of the body. Hence, many 
 physicians feel that they are not good Church- 
 men. A true Churchman is one who believes 
 that Christ will not let that life perish which has 
 won the marks of his character as its own posses- 
 sion in this present life. When the few simple 
 and clear promises of Jesus concerning the future 
 welfare of the believer are seen in the light of a 
 faithful Christian life, then only do they give 
 him adequate ground for a satisfying hope. This 
 does not mean that any man knows the details 
 of that future. It is not fitting to dogmatize here. 
 It does mean that because the present direction 
 of the believer’s life is Christian in character 
 he can trust the Christ to complete that which 
 he has begun and nurtured in this present life. 
 
 The best defense against a materialistic con- 
 ception of life is a broad culture. Chemistry and 
 physics are very important phases of life. But 
 just as real to the savants of learning are the rich 
 
30 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 fields of history, philosophy, religion, literature, 
 and art. To know any of these subjects well is to 
 feel that man does not live by bread alone. They 
 are realms of reality as genuine as any found in 
 a laboratory. In fact, parallel with the develop- 
 ment of the physical sciences there has been a 
 scientific approach to every theme of human 
 interest. The same fact-loving, discriminating 
 spirit is now active throughout the whole realm 
 of human life. If the final laws of the world are 
 those operative in a chemical laboratory, then 
 men are controlled by mechanical forces, free- 
 dom is a hoax, virtue a delusion, God a figment 
 of the imagination, and immortality a vain hope. 
 The end of man, if materialism is ultimate, is 
 death and utter oblivion. No matter how attrac- 
 tive may be the garb of its speculations, it stalks, 
 a hideous monster, through the world to dissolve 
 into nothingness all that men cherish as finally 
 worth while. Historically, the race has a happy 
 faculty of holding to virtue, freedom, and God 
 as realities, and of determining its conduct by 
 them. It will always take mind to develop a 
 system of organic chemistry or indeed to explain 
 systematically any facts of the material world. 
 There are innumerable facts of spirit which lie 
 entirely without the realm of mechanical laws. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 3 i 
 
 Mind can explain mechanism and in part the 
 laws of the spirit, but chemistry is blind and deaf 
 and dumb in the presence of the great realities 
 of the soul. Life is being given its proper place 
 in our thinking to-day when it is held as primary, 
 and matter is viewed as subordinate to it. This 
 view meets the demands made by all the facts 
 of the world and also satisfies the mind and the 
 heart. 
 VI 
 
 Sympathy should be balanced by a fine sense 
 of duty. The physician strives to restore the 
 health of the patient. Leniency which would 
 impair recovery would be neglect of the welfare 
 of the patient. The surgeon must be controlled 
 by a sense of duty. When he is aware that an 
 operation is imperative, not to advise it because 
 of a false sympathy would be almost criminal. 
 Physicians vary as widely as do the members of 
 any other profession. Some are sympathetic 
 because they believe that thereby they can 
 accomplish the greatest good, while others, even 
 though they may be sympathetic, fear that the 
 marked expression of sympathy may only agera- 
 vate undesirable conditions. It is a matter of 
 individual judgment and its use is to be deter- 
 mined by a consideration of all the facts in each 
 
38 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 separate instance. ‘To enter into the experience 
 of another so that there may be a community of 
 interest, which in turn will make it possible to 
 encourage the patient, is an obligation of the 
 physician. Since the patient employs the physi- 
 cian to aid him, the expression of sympathy 
 which results in the encouragement of the 
 patient is desirable. Sympathy is only an aid 
 to recovery and not the final guide to conduct. 
 The essential thing is to do one’s duty, inspired 
 by love, and to live for the truth and promote it 
 in kindness. 
 
 The physician’s life is one of sacrificial service. 
 The inventor or author can reap the reward of 
 his genius in a monetary way as well as receive 
 special honor of men, but the worthy practitioner 
 of medicine will not patent or keep secret a 
 medical discovery. The genius in curing human 
 ills is in honor bound by the standards of his 
 profession to make known any discovery without 
 hope ofa cashreward. He belongs to an altruistic 
 profession which sets as its goal the eradication 
 of disease even though thereby it exterminates 
 itself. Many physicians are hastening to pre- 
 mature graves in the service of their fellows. 
 The country doctor still has to make night trips 
 through rain and snow and sleet. The average 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 39 
 
 life of the physician is but little more than fifty 
 years. Sacrifice is so common on the part of this 
 profession as scarcely to excite comment. Doctor 
 Walter Reed is as worthy of fame as the engi- 
 neers who constructed the Panama Canal for he 
 gave his life freely to ascertain the cause of 
 yellow fever and the means of preventing it. 
 This masterpiece of engineering was as much a 
 problem in sanitation as in excavation. In 
 plague-infested China, in typhus-stricken Servia, 
 and in war-ridden Europe, the physicians and 
 surgeons have gone about doing only good. 
 Pasteur, Koch, Morton, Jenner, and Lister are 
 mere names to the mass of people, yet these men 
 have been benefactors of the race beyond the 
 power of the human heart and mind to appre- 
 ciate. Only God knows and understands their 
 immortal service to mankind. 
 
 The average physician does more charity work 
 with less publicity than any other professional 
 man in the community. There may be a limited 
 number of physicians who secure large fees from 
 the rich and whose charges are high to people in 
 moderate circumstances, but the ordinary physi- 
 clan carries a charity practice in addition to 
 rendering full service for the money obtained. 
 In his charity, he generally follows the Scriptural 
 
40 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 injunction of secret and unostentatious giving. 
 There is no great charity to-day which seeks so 
 little publicity and which in any way compares 
 in extent with that of the men engaged in the 
 practice of medicine. 
 
 Vil 
 
 The physician.is very close to the family. It 
 is a common practice for a household to retain 
 the same physician for many years. He is with 
 them in all their serious trials of sickness. He is 
 admitted to the inner circle of family life, 
 trusted with their secrets, and relied upon to 
 guard this confidence as a sacred trust. His 
 occupation places him in close contact with the 
 family spirit, which is the very spirit of the 
 Gospels. Hence, as he promotes a_ healthy 
 family life, he is laying foundation stones in the 
 Kingdom of God. There is ofttimes the tendency 
 within the family to seek release from its obliga- 
 tions and there are temptations, also from with- 
 out, to disregard its duties and privileges. The 
 physician deals with sinful and weak people 
 bound together by ties of family. He should see 
 to it that by no suggestion is there given any hint 
 of other than absolute trustworthiness. He 
 enjoys the confidence of the family circle, and to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN Al 
 
 violate it in any way would be to show himself 
 unworthy of their regard. If they should not 
 care enough about themselves to demand the 
 highest type of honor in their physician, the 
 physician has his own self-respect to maintain, 
 irrespective of outside conditions. He may be 
 solicited to perform a criminal operation. One - 
 physician said, “If I should go to hell, I don’t 
 want to go because of murder.” 
 
 . In former generations the family doctor was 
 the foremost figure in the medical profession; in 
 fact there was no other. All the idealism of 
 medicine centered in him. With the very late de- 
 velopment of specialists, he has ceased to occupy 
 the old place of undivided privilege and responsi- 
 bility which he had always held. In group 
 medicine he still retains his definite position as 
 the one who makes the general diagnosis. Still 
 at least seventy-five per cent of the sickness is 
 cared for at home and the first to visit the 
 patient is the general practitioner. In the swing 
 toward specialization it is only fair to redefine 
 the position of the family doctor in such a way 
 as to give to him the full honor and compensa- 
 tion due to him for his wide knowledge and 
 necessary service. The general practitioner who 
 brings a patient to specialists should be made to 
 
A2 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 feel that the patient is still in his care and that 
 the patient will be returned to him when the 
 service of a particular specialist is no longer 
 needed. This would carry with it the obligation 
 that he should seek for the patient the best 
 technical skill obtainable among specialists. 
 Unless the family doctor can give evidence of 
 better judgment in securing the service of 
 specialists than an intelligent patient, his service 
 will be discarded. It would be very unfortunate 
 if the idealism of family physicians should fail 
 to be the personal inspiration of specialists. 
 Although in group medicine there is a division 
 of responsibility which lightens somewhat the 
 load of responsibility for each member of the 
 group, it would be nothing less than a tragedy 
 for medicine if specialists should assume an 
 impersonal attitude toward their patients.. With 
 a divided responsibility there will be required a 
 heightening of moral sensitiveness in order that 
 the noble inheritance from past generations of 
 general practitioners may be retained untar- 
 nished. 
 
 The physician is more and more taken into 
 account as a servant of the state. His practice 
 used to be almost wholly within the family, but 
 now his work is enlarging rapidly so that it 
 
THE CHRISTIAN PHYSICIAN 43 
 
 includes preventive medicine and public sanita- 
 tion. The ideal of a state in which there are 
 normal conditions for healthy growth and safety 
 from contagion is becoming a working postulate 
 of this profession. This should never mean that 
 the work of physicians is to be juggled by 
 politicians in such a way that they are not 
 adequately compensated for their service. The 
 Kingdom of God means more to physicians than 
 ever before, for surely it must include the con- 
 ception of a sanitary state as well as other things 
 that make for human welfare. The modern 
 physician can realize as physicians of other 
 generations could not that he is assisting in 
 forwarding a state fit to be known as a Kingdom 
 
 of God. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 
 I 
 
 ESUS was both a radical and a conservative, 
 yet neither in the commonly accepted mean- 
 
 ing of either term. He was even more than a 
 radical. He was a revolutionary. The difference 
 between the convictions of civilization and those 
 of Jesus have been so great that even at the 
 present time the reconstructive nature of his 
 teaching has not become the common possession 
 of men. If it had, the futility of making him 
 only a modification of our better convictions and 
 conventions would at once become apparent. 
 Law deals with the realm of justice in social rela- 
 tions. Jesus redefined justice tor mankind by 
 teaching that it is the voluntary and loving 
 bestowal upon others of the rights which belong 
 to them in a society in which men are to be 
 viewed as brothers under the common father- 
 hood of God. The last part of this conception is 
 not taken altogether seriously in the practical 
 affairs of life. Then why should the first part be 
 considered any more thoroughly? Yet it is this 
 declaration of Jesus, that freely and without 
 
 AA 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER AS 
 
 being compelled one should give to others those 
 rights which he wishes for himself, which sepa- 
 rates him from the ordinary life of men. That 
 one should give justice in this sense, even 
 though the party who receives it has no intention 
 of responding in a like spirit, to many seems 
 Utopian and impossible in the world as it is now 
 constituted. Many follow Jesus under the mis- 
 apprehension that he will not alter their lives 
 fundamentally. They have drifted toward Christ 
 because of his loveliness without defining to 
 themselves just what he might mean for them as 
 a transformer of life. If they were asked to 
 choose between Jesus as he is and their present 
 good-natured and complacent lives, many would 
 reject him and his teaching because it would 
 seem to them as outside that which is practically 
 possible in conduct. 
 
 Lawyers, as a class, are inclined to think 
 highly of themselves. Since their professional 
 duty is to establish social justice, they have the 
 right to feel that they are engaged in a noble 
 work. In its essential nature, the profession of 
 furthering justice in all human relations cannot 
 but be a very worthy calling. However, some 
 attention should be given to the prevalent dis- 
 trust toward lawyers as a class. About eighty 
 
46 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 years ago, De Tocqueville, a foreigner who was 
 competent to judge impartially of Amercan life, 
 said of lawyers: “In America there are no nobles 
 or literary men, and the people are apt to mis- 
 trust the wealthy; lawyers, consequently form 
 the highest political class. .. . As the lawyers 
 form the only enlightened class whom the people 
 do not mistrust, they are naturally called upon 
 to occupy most of the public stations. They fill 
 the legislative assemblies: and are the heads of 
 the administration; they consequently exercise 
 a powerful influence upon the formation of the 
 law and its execution.” In contrast to this 
 laudatory estimate of the position formerly 
 occupied by lawyers is the discriminating judg- 
 ment of James Bryce, who said in “The Ameri- 
 can Commonwealth”: “But [ am bound to add 
 that some judicious American observers hold 
 that the last thirty years have witnessed a cer- 
 tain decadence in the bar of the great cities. 
 They say that the growth of the enormously rich 
 and powerful corporations willing to pay vast 
 sums for questionable services has reduced the 
 virtue of some counsel whose eminence makes 
 their example important.” If these estimates 
 are fairly accurate, it may be concluded that 
 when the members of the bar sought to promote 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER AT 
 
 
 
 public welfare they retained the respect of the 
 people; but when individuals became in a large 
 measure the paid agents of those seeking special 
 privileges, they lost that regard in a large degree. 
 When the privileges of big business were danger- 
 ously threatened, some members of the bar with 
 a keen scent for the advantages connected with 
 such business have been arrayed against those 
 who are engaged in a struggle for genuine human 
 rights. Yet many lawyers can say that their 
 counsel and conduct has been such as to influence 
 men to give, without compulsion, the rights 
 which are due other men. Those who have so 
 lived represent the highest type of manhood in 
 the legal profession. 
 
 There is a second feature of the teaching of 
 Jesus which prevents its radical nature from 
 compelling attention. His injunction that rights 
 are not to be secured by the use of force makes 
 him more conservative than the conservative 
 himself. 
 
 In Jesus there is a blending of two convictions 
 that go to the root of human relations. On the 
 one hand, there is the assumption that each man 
 is to take the initiative in giving justice to others; 
 and on the other hand, there is the assertion that 
 a spiritual Kingdom cannot be forwarded by the 
 
AB SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 use of force. There is in him a passion for 
 righteousness, and at the same time a willingness 
 to suffer and die that others may be won to his 
 way of promoting the truth. In his earthly life 
 Jesus hurt no man. He deliberately chose to be 
 hurt as the most useful way of living. To suffer 
 and die for righteousness’ sake is not to demand 
 your rights and-compel others to give them to 
 you by the use of force. 
 
 Jesus’ own life is the best illustration of what 
 is meant by these two conceptions. He was 
 earnest and aggressive in promoting justice, put- 
 ting his whole heart into the effort. On the other 
 side, his tragic death is hard for men to under- 
 stand. The cross was not something tacked on 
 to the life of Jesus. He elected it. It was the 
 logical outcome of his life. Early in his ministry 
 he saw that a certain way of living would bring 
 about apparent defeat. To have escaped the 
 cross would have meant the rejection of his 
 chosen manner of life. It would have involved 
 self-betrayal and disloyalty to God. There is no 
 virtue in sacrifice simply that pain may be en- 
 dured. But when sacrifice is seen to be the 
 logical outcome of a scheme of life to which one 
 is committed, then there may be great merit in 
 it. Jesus is the Revelation of the way in which 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 49 
 
 men should live. This universe is favorable to 
 his way of life. Sounding life in its depths, he 
 revealed what was the meaning of healthy living. 
 He showed what it meant to be in harmony with 
 the universe of God and that social order which 
 should exist and finally triumph. He is the 
 Leader of humanity, not of any professional 
 class. His teaching for mankind and hence for 
 every class, reveals Jesus the Radical, and Jesus 
 the Conservative, although neither term de- 
 scribes him adequately. 
 
 This chapter is not an attempt to dilute the 
 teaching of Jesus until it is only a slight step in 
 advance of our present law. That has been done. 
 It is an endeavor to guide the attorney into a 
 deeper appreciation of what it means to be a 
 disciple of Jesus, by suggesting the differences as 
 well as the agreements between the law and the 
 life of our Lord. 
 
 II 
 
 There is no group of men in society more 
 thoughtful morally in a wide range of human 
 interests than lawyers. It is their difficult task 
 to define that which is right and that which is 
 wrong in the various relationships of human life 
 and to formulate their conclusions into prec- 
 edents for the settlement of further controver- 
 
50 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 sies. Therefore, they are compelled to make a 
 careful analysis of the organization of human 
 society in all its various forms. In the problems 
 which confront them, they seek balanced judg- 
 ments; they strive to view matters from every 
 conceivable angle, and after exacting thought 
 and mature reflection, aided by ages of accu- 
 mulated wisdom, they attempt the formulation 
 of just and beneficent rules of action. Hf a sensi- 
 tive conscience is a matter of training, then this 
 class of men should have the widest appreciation 
 of what constitutes right conduct. 
 
 No other profession requires such varied and 
 serious reflection on all the problems of life. 
 The moral earnestness of Jesus should appeal 
 to -them. He was an Expert in the field 
 with which they are familiar. His was a sus- 
 tained moral enthusiasm. He created new 
 moral distinctions. He made clear those moral 
 differences which had never before been fully 
 appreciated or which had become obscure. 
 Jesus’ love of virtue and his devotion to fur- 
 thering it in the lives of others should endear 
 him to all who spend their working hours 
 in promoting justice and equity among men. 
 But this companionship in moral endeavor 
 should do more. It should reveal standards of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER ol 
 
 morality and attitudes of life not embodied in 
 any legal code. It should give a means for valu- 
 ing much that is found in the law so that its 
 inconsistencies and weaknesses may be felt, and 
 its genuine strength appreciated. In other 
 words, it should give the lawyer that real guid- 
 ance in many of the practical affairs of life 
 which will enable him to follow a Christ rather 
 than to follow a system of law that may embody 
 only in part his teaching and spirit. 
 
 The practice of the law is based upon a knowl- 
 edge of the principles of law and the precedents 
 which reveal how they should be applied. So 
 important is a knowledge of past decisions that 
 if the lawyer is well informed as to typical pre- 
 cedents he may be able to follow the practice of 
 law even though he is not thoroughly grounded 
 in the legal principles. Almost every lawyer 
 will have high regard for what has been accom- 
 plished in the past. The Old Testament fur- 
 nished those precedents which were valuable 
 sources of information and guidance to the 
 Saviour. He was a conservative, not formally, 
 but in the sense that the spirit of the law con- 
 trolled his conduct. He did protest vigorously 
 and repeatedly against formalism in religion, yet 
 this should not blind us to the very important 
 
52 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 consideration that Jesus himself loved worthy 
 precedent and followed it. However, he did 
 more—where precedent was faulty he rejected 
 it; where it was obscure he clarified it; where it 
 had not spoken he extended it. At no time was 
 he a slave to the law. Always in the background 
 of his thought was the desire to promote human 
 welfare, and no unworthy precedent, even though 
 found in the Old Testament, was allowed to 
 thwart his effort to promote that welfare. 
 
 Ui 
 
 Lawyers have been inclined to speak of the 
 law before the uninitiated as though there had 
 always existed a single system of law, united in 
 its parts, only more developed in this day. This 
 illusion of the law will have to be surrendered. 
 
 The Archbishop Agobard, of Lyons, said that 
 in his day five men meeting together might be 
 loyal to five different systems of law. When the 
 law is spoken of, then, what law is meant? Is it 
 the Roman law? But the Roman law was for a 
 patriarchal society in which free men had few 
 duties in their own households. It sought to 
 harmonize the conflicting interests of these men 
 as they dealt with one another outside their 
 households. Perhaps the German law is referred 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 53 
 
 to, with its emphasis upon human relations as 
 involving duties inherent in these relations. The 
 Roman had rights only within his household. 
 Certainly this is not the Germanic conception 
 involving the duty of subjection on the one hand 
 and protection on the other. Then if the German 
 code and the Roman law are not identical, where 
 is the English law to be placed? Plainly there 
 have been various systems of law, and. these, 
 originating independently, have no necessary 
 agreement. Among our southern states, a few 
 hold to the French law, while English law is the 
 basis of most of our state legal systems. A frank 
 statement of the case will compel almost any 
 attorney to admit that many times he cannot 
 tell, even after careful study, what constitutes 
 the law in a particular case. Cases are taken 
 into court and won only to be overruled in a 
 higher court. Repeatedly neither side knows 
 which will win; hence both parties prolong the 
 contest until one is surprised at a verdict in his 
 favor. There is no “the law.” 
 
 With this misconception out of the way, and 
 with a frank admission of what its rejection 
 ‘implies, a discussion concerning the relation 
 of the attorney to the teaching of Jesus is 
 possible. 
 
54 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 IV 
 
 Economic relations enter very deeply into 
 Angle-Saxon civilization. The institution of 
 private property les at the foundation of our 
 system of life. It might seem that an economic 
 approach to social relations would be the only 
 one needed to explain the development of our 
 laws. Nevertheless, the fact that economic 
 factors are always present does not mean that 
 the issue is solely economic. The struggle of 
 workingmen to increase wages is an economic 
 effort, but the ideals which have led to the de- 
 mand for an increase of pay are even more 
 important than any concessions which may be 
 sranted. Without these ideals, the effort would 
 not have been made, and the ideals finally set 
 the boundaries to their demands. Had unre- 
 strained anarchy ever been the ideal of labor, 
 the whole wage scheme would have collapsed 
 long ago. The ideals behind the demand for any 
 economic change are the most significant factors 
 in any social situation. What constitutes legiti- 
 mate ideals for mankind, although partly em- 
 bodied in legal systems, falls outside any one of 
 them. 
 
 The contrast between the rights formulated 
 into laws and those formulated into ideals is 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER ay) 
 
 revealed in the compromise nature of law. Law 
 protects interests which are never completely in 
 harmony. In a number of instances, as in con- 
 tracts, there is such a consensus of opinion that 
 the element of disagreement is negligible. But 
 in those relations in which there is strife between 
 interests, law is certain to be a compromise. A 
 harmony of interests and a uniformity of ideals 
 would result in a common law, acceptable to all 
 and binding upon all. In a democracy, this is out 
 of the question. There seems to be no deep- 
 seated idealism by which labor and capital may 
 be led to see their factional interests in the light 
 of anything more significant than their own 
 welfare. In a democracy where the majority 
 rules, that which to-day may be law for capital, 
 to-morrow may be crime. Then, if capital has 
 the power, it may make legal, the day after, that 
 which has just been made criminal. Whenever 
 strong forces clash in a democracy, the govern- 
 ment straddles the fence, hoping thereby to 
 maintain peace within the state. Judges are 
 sometimes indecisive when a real moral issue is 
 at stake in which equal power is arrayed on both 
 sides. Here the legalist and the idealist clash 
 sharply. To the moralist, compromise is repug- 
 nant. To the legalist, it seems the best way out 
 
56 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of a difficult situation. Compromise never 
 settles anything permanently. It patches up a 
 peace in which there is certainty of a renewed 
 struggle as soon as either party feels that there 
 is a chance for a successful effort. Law by its 
 nature is often unsatisfactory as far as justice is 
 concerned because it leaves both parties ag- 
 grieved; they only await a favorable opportunity 
 to take up the cudgels again. Legal decisions are 
 often out of proportion, for the stronger group is 
 frequently able to use the law to protect itself 
 against the weaker. Then the law becomes not 
 a rule of justice but a defense of successive 
 groups who are able to shape it in their favor. 
 Of course, where there is a united public opinion 
 the law will express itself in terms of rights and 
 duties that are common conviction. Only so far 
 can it be said to be impartially just. The lawyer 
 who hugs to himself the delusion that there is a 
 uniform system of law to which there is common 
 consent that is just in its regulations, may be 
 able to maintain complacently his allegiance to 
 Jesus and also his preconceived system of law, 
 without recognizing the weaknesses of his posi- 
 tion, or being greatly disturbed by his Chris- 
 tianity. But the lawyer who knows that law is 
 a growth, that it is only partially satisfactory 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 57 
 
 and full of inconsistencies because of its com- 
 promise character, and, what is much more 
 important, that it is yet to be shaped into a 
 system which will give impartial justice, will see 
 his Christian obligation in an entirely different 
 light. There has been altogether too much of the 
 attitude that the lawyer has a finished system 
 of justice given to him. In the profession itself, 
 he has a Christian influence to exert and a task 
 to perform. Where there is so great an uncer- 
 tainty on the part of lawyers as to what con- 
 stitutes law, and where the forces of evil have 
 no hesitation in trying to shape it so that it will 
 act as their servant, no attorney who is a true 
 follower of Jesus will fail to do all in his power 
 to fashion the law into an instrument by which 
 the broad program of Christ may be more 
 adequately promoted. 
 
 If a lawyer says this will require sacrifice on 
 his part, he has discovered only the common lot 
 of all who would create a better world. No 
 Christian has to practice law if in that work he 
 cannot make an honest living. The assumption 
 that one must be a lawyer first and then, so far 
 as one is able, a Christian, is to reject Chris- 
 tianity. That which should be first in a Chris- 
 tian life is loyalty to Christ and the willingness 
 
58 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 to carry his spirit and teaching into every part 
 of life. Many a lawyer would be surprised to 
 learn that he worships at the shrine of a statute 
 book, yet if a man’s business remains severed 
 from his religion, it becomes his god. If a lawyer 
 cannot earn a living at law, he can supplement 
 his income in other ways, and if necessary, cease 
 to practice law. .'True, the public might call him 
 a failure; but when did public opinion take the 
 place of a clean conscience, or of God? The 
 plain teaching is that the disciple must follow 
 Jesus. More and more the faithfulness of a man 
 is being tested by his willingness to apply 
 Christ’s teachings in his business life. The dis- 
 ciple’s conduct is the outward evidence of his 
 sincerity, and men are increasingly interested in 
 the conduct of other men. If they know that a 
 man calls himself a Christian, they expect to see 
 Christianity manifest in his work. No attitude 
 toward law, no philosophy of life can excuse any 
 lawyer from assuming the obligations common 
 to all men who call themselves Christians. 
 
 Vy 
 
 The law is ever attempting to classify par- 
 ticular cases under generalizations, in order that 
 legal procedure may be simplified and justice 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 59 
 
 may be made more uniform in its applications. 
 In contrast to systems which have sought to 
 determine principles abstractly, the law has 
 always possessed both sanity and balance, be- 
 cause it has developed from the consideration of 
 definite situations, rather than from artificial or 
 hypothetical cases. This practical character of 
 its interest has kept it close to life. For a year 
 and a half, one of our most prominent law 
 reviews has been devoting over one third of its 
 contents to a statement of legal advances only. 
 The articles are not generalized observations 
 concerning the changes which have occurred. 
 They are citations of cases in the various fields 
 of law, with brief comments under each case, to 
 show just what constitutes the advance. By re- 
 vealing genuine respect for facts and an honest 
 effort to interpret them in the fairest possible 
 way, these articles emphasize the sane, whole- 
 some, and practical nature of the law. Here lies 
 the opportunity for a true service to society with- 
 inthe law. No matter how humble the incident, 
 there is often a possibility of its assuming great 
 importance. It is reasonably certain that the 
 physical forces of the world can be utilized as 
 rapidly as they are brought under scientific con- 
 trol. The social sciences feel that it 1s not un- 
 
60) SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 reasonable to believe that they may contribute 
 to the control of human nature in the same 
 scientific manner that the physical sciences have 
 promoted human welfare. It is just here, where 
 genuine social science comes into contact with 
 essential Christianity, that law will develop to 
 benefit humanity. The lawyer who is not in 
 hearty sympathy with the modern social sciences 
 cannot do his work most effectively, for he is not 
 in accord with the way the world is actually 
 erowing to-day. He may gather sufficient in- 
 formation from the newspapers and _ periodicals 
 in a diluted and perverted form to keep him 
 from being altogether reactionary. However, if 
 the attorney is to be a constructive worker in 
 this modern age, he cannot afford to remain a 
 stranger to the broad forward movement within 
 the social sciences. Those lawyers who do their 
 best, patiently and earnestly, in the light of a 
 sensitive conscience attempting to determine 
 that which is just in the almost numberless ways 
 in which the law is being modified to-day, are 
 making the essential’ contribution of law to this 
 generation. 
 
 Our national Government has made decisions 
 in international relations of far-reaching import- 
 ance in promoting human welfare. At least two 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 61 
 
 acts of the United States, both international in 
 character, may be construed as a manifestation 
 of the Christian life. The return of the Boxer 
 indemnity was a gratuitous act, totally unex- 
 pected and most favorably received by China. 
 She set aside the income from that great sum of 
 money to send deserving Chinese students to 
 American colleges and universities. Throughout 
 all of China there is now a friendliness toward 
 the United States because of the return of the 
 indemnity which many times that sum of money 
 would not be able to purchase. That we should 
 not seek retaliation has been amply vindicated 
 in the far East. The other international act, one 
 of much greater moment, was the promise of the 
 late President Wilson that an indemnity would 
 not be claimed at the conclusion of the World 
 War. This pledge was kept, and the peace with- 
 out victory became a fact of history. When 
 partisan strife shall have lessened with the pass- 
 ing of time, the magnanimity of this act will be 
 appreciated as a national manifestation of good 
 will under the leadership of a Christian Presi- 
 dent. Here the President who played for the 
 verdict of mankind created an international 
 precedent. 
 
 This Government has yet a great pledge to 
 
62 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 fulfill, the granting of independence to the 
 Philippine Islands. There may be an honest 
 difference of opinion as to when that should be 
 granted, but no one can deny that we are com- 
 mitted to that policy. The impossible has been 
 accomplished for these people in education, 
 politics, and business, and we have a right to be 
 proud of our relation to them. Although they 
 may view us with distrust and refuse to admit 
 the great service rendered to them, when they 
 have been given their independence the Chris- 
 tian spirit will have been manifest again in a 
 national way. 
 
 Within the nation there are many movements, 
 Christian in temper, which illustrate the great 
 law of Jesus—that those having rights should 
 voluntarily surrender them to others whenever 
 they are due. Although women in the United 
 States agitated in order to secure certain rights 
 there never has been any deep-seated tendency 
 in late years to withhold from women those 
 rights which they felt justly belonged to them. 
 Rights have been bestowed upon women in this 
 country almost as rapidly as they have desired 
 to assume obligations. In this movement there 
 has been almost no strife and very little bitter- 
 ness. The great rights which they have received 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 63 
 
 in the last fifty years represent one of the most 
 noteworthy phases of the changes wrought in our 
 law. So important are these privileges that many 
 women hardly realize the benefits so freely con- 
 ferred upon them. 
 
 A second surrender of rights, often marked by 
 deep feeling and strife, yet never in our country 
 by civil war, occurs in the growth of labor 
 unions, the privileges of servants, and the mass 
 of legislation which is favorable to them. A 
 hundred years ago it was a criminal offense to 
 strike. Now it is an accepted right of labor. 
 Each step in the advance of labor has meant the 
 democratizing of the privileges of the more 
 fortunate classes. Now labor possesses a mass 
 of established rights which have been formulated 
 into laws. One of the most important is the 
 responsibility of the employer for the personal 
 injury of the employee. In so far as these rights 
 have been given because they were viewed as 
 rights belonging to labor, they may be considered 
 - as the expression of the Christian spirit. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to call attention to the 
 vast machinery of education, philanthropy, and 
 social service, as directly controlled by the fra- 
 ternal spirit. | 
 
 However, there is a page in American history 
 
64 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 covered with blood where force ruled to secure 
 for others the rights of human beings. The real 
 issue was slavery under the guise of states’ 
 rights. The outcome was to democratize privi- 
 lege by means of war. With the perspective of 
 history behind us, it can now be understood that 
 it would have been better had their liberation 
 been accomplished without the use of force 
 through the willing surrender of privileges to 
 those entitled to them. 
 
 Men will finally secure their rights. These can 
 be granted to them freely, and strife will be pre- 
 vented; they can be given in a niggardly manner; 
 or they can be withheld until acquired by force. 
 
 VI 
 
 There are certain temptations which must be 
 encountered by every conscientious attorney. 
 There is the temptation to ask witnesses unfair 
 questions for the purpose of misleading the jury. 
 
 ‘Many indulge in this practice for the purpose of 
 presenting the case of the client in a more favor- 
 able light than the facts would warrant. 
 
 When a person consults a lawyer, he does so 
 because he is in need of assistance or knowledge. 
 He can read the law as it is given in the statute, 
 but he probably cannot construe it. He requires 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 65 
 
 the services of a technically trained man. His 
 lawyer should be industrious, discriminating, 
 and wise. He should know the law and be able 
 to find the law bearing on the matter in hand. 
 The latter can be done only by a careful analysis 
 of the proposition to be investigated and the 
 determination not to be diverted from the main 
 issue by other interesting questions that may 
 arise in the course of the inquiry. A distinct 
 misconception of the law may arise in connection 
 with a half-hearted examination of what it may 
 be in a given case. The lawyer should be careful, 
 exacting, and diligent, for the courts may have 
 already passed on this very case but under 
 different circumstances and conditions. He 
 should ferret out and master every scintilla of 
 law bearing on the case in hand, for a wrong 
 construction of the law may mean the destruc- 
 tion of the cause of his client. 
 
 Lawyers are often required to interpose de- 
 fenses which are technical in character. To 
 neglect to safeguard the interests of the client by 
 the use of technical advantages might even 
 result in a decision in which injustice would gain 
 a legal victory. It is difficult to determine when 
 technical objections should be interposed. If the 
 lawyer is a right-minded man, he will take 
 
66 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 advantage of such technicalities as will promote 
 justice. The intent of the lawyer finally will be 
 the deciding factor in each instance. As the case 
 advances, it will probably become apparent 
 whether technicalities have been claimed to pro- 
 mote injustice or whether they have been 
 advanced to further justice. Ofttimes in criminal 
 cases a galaxy of attorneys may use every 
 weapon at hand to clear a guilty man. By de- 
 basing their office and becoming perverters of the 
 law they fall almost as low as the criminal they 
 have saved from punishment. Even so, it is not 
 fair to assume that it is always wrong to claim 
 a technical advantage in the law. 
 
 The ambition to be classed as a leading light 
 in the profession presents another temptation. 
 The desire to win fame may be laudable, but 
 there are not many who are willing to pay the 
 price of close application to the drudgery of the 
 law which is so essential to its mastery and with- 
 out which there can be no real success. They 
 seek to gain the approval of their fellows by 
 sharp practices and in time they sink to their 
 proper level. Not conscientious enough to do 
 the careful work demanded by the law, they 
 resort to methods which from a Christian stand- 
 point would be wrong and which from a purely 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 67 
 
 moral viewpoint would be questionable. During 
 the long wait that frequently occurs before a 
 practice is established, the beginner is particu- 
 larly open to the temptation of accepting ques- 
 tionable cases. Politicians and unscrupulous 
 business men may place a rising young lawyer 
 under obligations to them in such a way that 
 later he may find it very difficult to escape the 
 charge of being ungrateful. They may ask a 
 support which he otherwise would never give, 
 for it seems to them they have earned the right 
 to claim his support in even dishonorable under- 
 takings. On the other hand, the control of 
 wealth is beset with many pitfalls. Great cor- 
 porations may demand that their legal repre- 
 sentatives use every device of law to avoid the 
 payment of just obligations. They may even 
 demand that the ethics of the jungle be revived 
 that the people may be mercilessly exploited as 
 legitimate prey. To oppose such a corporation 
 may mean, for the lawyer, loss of prestige in his 
 profession and reduction to the rank of a moder- 
 ately successful practitioner. 
 
 Those lawyers who, for any reason, have 
 forfeited their manhood and have become instru- 
 ments in the hands of cunning and rapacious 
 men cannot understand Jesus’ hatred of false- 
 
68 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 hood, trickery, and sham. They cannot appre- 
 ciate his love of truth for its own sake, and his 
 modesty in seeking public favor. Blind to the 
 fact that life holds more important values than 
 money-getting, they cannot know the deep 
 satisfaction of manly, straightforward, honor- 
 able dealing and the serenity that comes from 
 having sought and lived for justice and truth. 
 Should an attorney defend a man known to 
 him to be guilty? The Christian attorney is 
 entitled to see that the facts in any case are dis- 
 closed in open court so that justice may be done. 
 He may be justified in taking a case where he is 
 morally certain that the party is guilty, in order 
 that all the testimony that is true and that may 
 tend to mitigate the offense may be brought to 
 light. Penalty should be imposed according to 
 the facts, and these can only be revealed in their 
 entirety in an open court. It would be easy to 
 fix an unjust penalty, punishing with undue 
 severity or laxity, when all the circumstances 
 had not been carefully scrutinized. It is another 
 matter to defend a guilty man with the hope of 
 clearmg him by concealing or perverting a part 
 of the evidence, or by the use of trickery or fraud. 
 A truthful man, and much more a Christian 
 man, would not stoop to any dishonorable act 
 
~ THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 69 
 
 once a case had been taken. Requests of clients 
 to “fight the devil with fire’ and to meet the 
 tricks of opposing counsel are not to be con- 
 sidered favorably. There is the definite demand 
 laid on all men to live truthful and honorable 
 lives, and the lawyer is in no way exempt from 
 this general obligation. The Christian lawyer 
 can test his action by considering whether or not 
 it is in harmony with Jesus’ teaching and spirit. 
 He cannot conceive of Christ as concealing or 
 perverting the truth. His real problem is 
 whether or not he will be found faithful in 
 Christian service, whether his religion is to be a 
 cloak of convenience, or whether it is really to 
 control his conduct. 
 
 Undue eagerness to win a case may pervert 
 the judgment of a lawyer and cause him to do 
 positive wrong when he may think he is right. 
 When only the bright side of a case has been 
 presented, and the attorney is a man of skill and 
 ability, he may obtain a favorable verdict, only 
 to find himself a party to promoting injustice. 
 The moral life of many an attorney is marred 
 through an inordinate desire to win and to be 
 known as capable. The old saying, * Nothing 
 succeeds like success,” may describe some of the 
 most conspicuous of moral failures. 
 
70 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Vil 
 
 Jesus taught that he came into the world to 
 establish a government, the religious nomencla- 
 ture for which was the phrase, the Kingdom of 
 God. He outlined the general plan of its growth: 
 in the parable of the Leaven and the Mustard 
 Seed, that rt was to come gradually; in the par- 
 able of the Pearl of Great Price, that it was in- 
 finitely valuable; in the parable of the Wheat 
 and the Tares that it would meet opposition; and 
 in the parable of the Leaven, that finally it 
 would triumph completely. He lived in an age 
 of monarchy, and the people among whom he 
 was born expected that a Messiah would lead 
 them in the establishment of an earthly Jewish 
 kingdom. Jesus retained and purified this king- 
 dom conception and made it one of the great 
 central truths of his gospel. His was the hope of 
 a new social order which should include the 
 whole of life. Here politics, business, and family 
 were regarded as under the sway of God in a 
 world in which his will would be completely done 
 in all the activities of men. It was left to his 
 disciples to create the society which he in- 
 augurated. 
 
 In his earthly life, he devoted himself to renew- 
 ing the hearts of men that as a natural result of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER yal 
 
 their transformed lives the outward kingdom 
 would be formed by them under the guidance of 
 those having a spirit like his own. This is the 
 age in which the structure of society is to be 
 reshaped, because a new life has entered the 
 world and is even now refashioning institutions 
 through the influence of those having the Chris- 
 tian spirit. Their purpose is to give the life of 
 Christ adequate expression, not only in the inner 
 life of man but also in those social institutions 
 in which his aspirations are mirrored. Attorneys 
 have to do with the relations of men in all the 
 forms which society assumes. If they will, 
 Christian attorneys may be one of the greatest 
 human agencies in establishing the Kingdom. 
 No other men are so familiar with the organiza- 
 tion of society ; no other men can devise so many 
 practical ways of bringing about desired changes; 
 no others possess the technical skill which is 
 necessary to make the needed adjustments with 
 so little friction. 
 
 The Government of our country is under the 
 control of lawyers. Lawyers are familiar with 
 existing laws and for all practical purposes de- 
 termine the changes that are to be made. They 
 comprise the larger part of those holding offices 
 of public trust and those officials who are not 
 
72 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 attorneys have to counsel with lawyers with 
 regard to every important step which they 
 contemplate. That public office is a trust and 
 public moneys are trust funds to be spent in 
 ways most helpful to the people should be the 
 settled convictions of all public servants. Ideas 
 of civic responsibility are to be stimulated by 
 Christian men as they seek to introduce the 
 social order which our Lord indicated would 
 some day dominate on the earth. Few forms of 
 public-service control are more prolific of good 
 or evil than that of politics. The Christian 
 lawyer can aid greatly in fulfilling the prophecy, 
 written of our Lord, “The government shall be 
 upon his shoulders.” 
 
 In contrast to this very ideal way of viewing 
 politics stand the facts of political life. The 
 statement is so common that it may be monoton- 
 ous that those seeking public life are generally 
 felt out by the interests and have already sur- 
 rendered, even before their election. Politicians 
 in very many instances are hand in glove with 
 those who live by promoting sexual immorality; 
 the liquor interests once were their boon com- 
 panions; they may stoop to use even thugs and 
 gunmen to accomplish their desires. It is hardly 
 permissible in many cities to ask what becomes 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 73 
 
 of the public funds, for diverting this money 
 from its legitimate use is an occupation in which 
 the politicians have become exceedingly pro- 
 ficient. Back of practically every political 
 erafter and corruptor of public morals is a 
 lawyer, and he cannot escape the sharp censure 
 which they both deserve. The attorneys are not 
 simply onlookers. They protect vice, defend 
 crooks, gloss over thievery, and promote graft. 
 It is to the everlasting shame of this profession 
 that so many of its members are supporters of 
 political corruption. It takes a man of strict 
 business integrity to practice law and at the same 
 time keep clean. Ofttimes reforms have arisen 
 outside of this profession which logically would 
 be expected to inaugurate them, because its 
 members lacked the vision which they of all men 
 should have possessed. It would be a sad day 
 for the legal profession if the great constructive 
 plans for the welfare of the state should be 
 formulated outside the class to which leadership 
 naturally falls. 
 
 Business should offer the most extensive 
 avenue for service in the Kingdom of God. The 
 average man spends about half his life in further- 
 ing his occupation. If religion is to become real 
 for him, it must be while he is about his daily 
 
TA SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 tasks—the wealth of possibilities of service and 
 advancement in business should be so many 
 privileges in the religious life. But when busi- 
 ness becomes a battle of grasping greed, and 
 human rights are sacrificed for the sake of ac- 
 cumulation, then there is vigorous warfare 
 against true religion. That brilliant array of 
 corporation talent, by the skill of whose genius 
 ereat industries are able to maintain property 
 rights above human rights, may be, and prob- 
 ably is, a highly trained and efficient enemy of 
 the spiritual life. Those who give character to 
 the American bar are generally the representa- 
 tives of bankers, manufacturers, and capitalists 
 who are fearful of any changes the outcome of 
 which they cannot clearly foresee. These men 
 think in terms of the welfare of wealth rather 
 than in terms of the prosperity of all the people. 
 Their example makes it a great temptation for 
 the less successful lawyer to modify his judgment 
 in the same manner in which his more prominent 
 colleagues have colored their own. The Chris- 
 tian attorney should guard himself carefully lest, 
 in the service of a corporation whose practices 
 are contrary to the spirit of his Lord, he forfeit 
 his place in the Kingdom of God. It may be 
 that he will suffer loss if faithful to his convic- 
 
\ 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 75 
 
 tions, but that is much better than to be aware 
 that one is an enemy of God and a mighty force 
 for unrighteousness in the world. In Jesus’ con- 
 ception of life, work and religion were so inti- 
 mately bound together that they were insepa- 
 rable. The attorney who promotes legitimate 
 business, placing human rights above property 
 rights when they are in conflict, will find himself 
 in league with the builders of a better society. 
 
 The essential spirit of the gospel is that of a 
 family in which men are related to a common 
 Father and are members of the same household. 
 That institution of society which was the fittest 
 instrument to use as the symbol of spiritual 
 realities was the family. Jesus took the family 
 spirit out of the restricted field of the home and 
 made it the force which was to control all the 
 affairs of life. It was to be the real spirit in the 
 heart of all men throughout all the social order. 
 Not only was it to pervade earth, but it was also 
 set forth as the spirit of God and as the very 
 
 atmosphere of heaven. Anything which reen- 
 
 forces family life strengthens society at its center. 
 Anything which undermines family life not only 
 harms the home but also is destructive of all 
 human society and at warfare with the program 
 of God in all its scope. 
 
76 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 The spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation 
 which were demanded by Christ in other walks 
 of life would be expected by him to be operative 
 with even greater force within the home. When 
 there is an estrangement between husband and 
 wife, then the Christian obligation of reconcilia- 
 tion and forgiveness becomes increasingly force- 
 ful, for a break in the family is a rupture in the 
 most important relation of life. It disorganizes 
 not only the home but also the wider circle of 
 society in which the fraternal spirit was meant 
 to prevail. In Jesus’ day there were two schools 
 —the liberal and the conservative—one favoring 
 divorce for a large number of reasons and the 
 other granting divorce for a few causes. The 
 problem of divorce was a burning question then 
 as now. In many ways the social situation 
 among the Jews with regard to divorce resembles 
 that in which we find ourselves. Into the society 
 of his day, Jesus projected an ideal which seemed 
 very severe even as it does to many in our day. 
 Marriage was ordained by God in the beginning. 
 It was for life, and divorce should probably be 
 granted for but one cause. To be a party to the 
 average divorce case in which the law of the land 
 has been deliberately violated, in that the parties 
 seeking. the divorce have connived together to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 77 
 
 that end, is to be found in questionable company 
 and will probably result in a stigma being at- 
 tached by the more honorable members of the 
 profession. 
 
 A personal-damage suit may reflect as strongly 
 against the integrity of a lawyer as a question- 
 able divorce case, and the fewer such cases he 
 handles, the better his professional standing. 
 
 Vill 
 
 Scripture reveals that the inclinations of men 
 have not changed greatly since the days when 
 Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egyptian 
 bondage. They were constantly making com- 
 plaints for which there was often no real basis. 
 Those who now have grievances, real or imagi- 
 nary, feel that they must tell some one of their 
 troubles. Those having a strong desire to doright 
 may go to the minister, or to some neighbor 
 whose judgment they have come to regard 
 highly, or to the person with whom they have 
 - disagreed, and talk the matter over, or they may 
 seek the advice of alawyer. This class of people 
 generally need to be taught. When told what is 
 right, they are usually willing to do it. These 
 right-minded people often need wholesome in- 
 struction as to what is the fair thing to do. It is 
 
78 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 the duty of the lawyer to tell these parties what 
 are the chances to win in case of a trial, what is 
 the honorable course to follow, and frequently 
 to advise them to go home and forget their 
 grievances. 
 
 There is another class of clients who through 
 selfishness generally demand their rights up to 
 the letter of the law, not considering what may 
 be right in any other sense. They desire only to 
 win and to humiliate the one with whom they 
 have a difference. What they need more than 
 a knowledge of law is perspective in life. Views 
 of honesty, consideration, and forgiveness are 
 lacking. Where will these people acquire ideals 
 of fair dealing if not from the Christian attorney 
 who is their confidential adviser? Jesus left 
 principles which are more than a set of rules. 
 The selfish and literal client who seeks the advice 
 of a Christian lawyer may secure from him more 
 than an interpretation of law. He may sense the 
 spirit of his lawyer and be attracted to that 
 toleration and fairness which are the marks of 
 truly Christian men. To minister life to willful 
 and selfish men is the high privilege of the dis- 
 ciple of Jesus. Then the attorney has truly 
 become the keeper of the conscience of his 
 chent when he has used his trust to establish 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 79 
 
 relations of justice and truth between them. 
 
 The demand of Jesus that his followers possess 
 an attitude of forgiveness lies close to his essen- 
 tial message to men. If the true life surrenders 
 freely to others their rights, an unforgiving spirit 
 hampers and even destroys that manner of life. 
 For this reason, a man should have good will 
 even toward his enemies and he should strive to 
 adjust any misunderstanding that may arise by 
 direct conversation with the person concerned. 
 Attorneys often try to make a settlement out of 
 court before filing suit. The necessity of forgive- 
 ness is strongly emphasized in the teaching of 
 Jesus to the extent that if a man will not forgive 
 another when he is penitent, he has barred him- 
 self from membership in the Kingdom of God. 
 The gospel demand of love has excluded all possi- 
 bility of hate and revenge. Jesus’ treatment of 
 the men who hated him bitterly and sought to 
 harm him continually is the final example of the 
 manner in which a man should conduct himself 
 toward those who are his enemies. He would 
 have won them to the truth had it been possible. 
 Toward them he felt only sadness because of 
 their failures, and good will in earnestly desiring 
 that they might change their views. He was even 
 willing to receive them, when penitent, as friends. 
 
80 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 He made repeated and constant attempts 
 throughout his life to win to his cause men hostile 
 to him from the beginning of his public work. 
 He was one of the most hated of men, yet he bore 
 no malice, was anxious to promote the welfare 
 of his enemies, and sought to do them good. He 
 urged his followers to possess the same spirit of 
 love which controlled him in his earthly life. The 
 Christian lawyer’s advice to his client should 
 ever be tempered by the spirit of Christ himself. 
 Those who are right-minded will yield readily 
 to such counsel. ‘Those who are selfish and re- 
 vengeful may be modified in the unjust and 
 bitter positions which they have assumed. The 
 lawyer will find that Lincoln was true to the 
 real spirit of the gospel when he stated that 
 the supreme opportunity of an attorney for 
 domg good lies in his being a peacemaker and in 
 never stirring up litigation. 
 
 There are times when minor personal rights 
 should be relinquished for the sake of peace, 
 when a controversy is not worth while, even 
 though a person may be in the right. Men 
 are too prone to demand their personal rights 
 and they often show comparatively little zeal on 
 behalf of the rights of others. The teaching of 
 Jesus, to go two miles in place of one, to turn the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 81 
 
 other cheek, and to give the cloak, recognizes 
 this strong tendency to exaggerate our personal 
 rights and corrects it. 
 
 IX 
 
 Our laws come mainly from England. Courts 
 were first established by the king and the 
 common law developed out of the decisions of 
 these courts. The records of these decisions be- 
 came precedents for guidance in cases arising 
 later. Blackstone was one of the early authors 
 who wrote a treatise on precedent, thereby aid- 
 ing the courts to keep informed on what had 
 already been done. The proceedings were highly 
 technical and if the litigant brought the wrong 
 form of action, he was usually set out of court. 
 The decisions of these courts are generally known 
 as the common law and it is now in existence in 
 this country. Such decisions usually responded 
 to public necessity and reason, but there were so 
 many cases that could not be settled fairly in a 
 law court that constant appeal was made to the 
 king. Hence, he established courts of equity in 
 which rights were granted when there was no 
 remedy at common law. These were called 
 chancery courts and the king appointed the 
 chancellor who gave redress when apparently 
 
82 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 there was no relief in the ordinary courts. In an 
 equity case an appeal was made to the conscience 
 of the court and there was an attempt to do full 
 and exact justice. One has said that an action 
 in equity was what God would do were he on the 
 earth. When the law was administered by a 
 right-minded judge, equity was broad enough 
 to include a number of controversies where right 
 seemed difficult of determination. Equity was 
 to the law what the spirit of true religion is to the 
 letter of the Book. It was true legally, as well as 
 religiously, that the letter killed and the spirit 
 gave life. Equity was to a part of the law what 
 the soul is to the body. In a court of equity the 
 common law, the social conscience of the day, the 
 spirit of the religion prevalent in the State, and 
 an untrammeled conscience free from legal 
 technicalities aided the judge in the formulation 
 of his decision. Then equity in turn became 
 crystallized and incapable of a radical departure 
 from the common law. In fact equity was closely 
 related to the common law if not based directly 
 upon it. 
 
 The attitude of the Roman law and, in a large 
 measure, of English law, was that you should do 
 nothing until some one transgressed your rights. 
 The attitude of Jesus was that we should give to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER 83 
 
 others the rights due to them. The former is 
 negative in character; the latter is positive. 
 That law shall not simply guard the rights of 
 men but also be an aggressive agent for their 
 welfare is a Christian conception. This view of 
 lite has only partly modified our conception of 
 law in the past but will change the law itself 
 increasingly in the future. 
 
 With every Christian added to the ranks of 
 believers, the force which is to revise public 
 sentiment grows larger and stronger; hence in 
 our day the changes of law will be much more 
 rapid than in the day of Jesus. The Kingdom 
 now may come with leaps and bounds when 
 once it could only creep, because Christianity is 
 now a world force and the controlling spirit in 
 the lives of millions of men. The government of 
 God is partly established and it remains for 
 Christianity to go in and take the land it does 
 not now possess. 
 
 Every age has had given to it a code of law 
 ~ which was the product of great strivings in the 
 past. The social conscience of other days has 
 found expression in the laws of ancient times. 
 In so far as that same conscience is active to-day, 
 the present law guarantees our liberty and safe- 
 guards our rights. When new conceptions of 
 
84 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 right shall be achieved, then there will be a need 
 of added laws to give them full expression. The 
 attorney who in his personal life and public 
 service is faithful in the discharge of his duties 
 as revealed in the law, in a sensitive public 
 conscience, and in the Scripture, is most worthy 
 of the trust committed to him by the common- 
 wealth and is of greatest service to society. 
 
CHAPTER Til 
 
 THE CLERGYMAN 
 I 
 
 HERE are certain problems of a very prac- 
 tical nature which present themselves to 
 men when they attempt to maintain a fine 
 idealism in their conduct. Since the clergyman 
 should be an example of upright living in the 
 face of the rather secondary experiences in life, 
 these more ordinary trials are here noted at 
 some length in connection with the work of the 
 clergy and disregarded in other places with the 
 understanding that almost all men are con- 
 fronted by them. Among others, there are at 
 least three tests which will reveal to the clergy- 
 man whether, as a man among other professional 
 men, he belongs within the circle of those in his 
 own profession who possess genuine manhood. 
 The first test has to do with his attitude 
 
 _ toward those in his congregation who control his 
 salary. James clearly defined this temptation 
 when the prosperous were given undue promi- 
 nence in the Early Church and the law of love 
 was thereby violated. He said: “‘Hold not the 
 faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, 
 
 85 
 
86 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 with respect of persons. For if there come into 
 your synagogue a man with a gold ring, in fine 
 clothing, and there come in also a poor man in 
 vile clothing; and ye have regard to him that 
 weareth the fine clothing, and say, Sit thou here in 
 a good place; and ye say to the poor man, Stand 
 thou there, or sit under my footstool; do ye not 
 make distinction among yourselves, and become 
 judges with evil thoughts? . .. If ye fulfil the 
 royal law, according to the scripture, ‘Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well: but if 
 ye have respect of persons, ye commit sin, being 
 convicted by the law as transgressors.” There is 
 a sharp criticism by an apostle who discerned 
 that the servility which is characteristic of many 
 people when in th. presence of wealth was mak- 
 ing its way into the Church. It is difficult fer 
 rich people to understand manly, straightfor- 
 ward treatment. They frequently mistake it for 
 hostility. The worship of wealth as such is much 
 more marked in Europe than in the United 
 States of America. In the latter country there 
 is a genuine appreciation of the ability required 
 to accumulate wealth rather than a slavish ser- 
 vility in rts presence. Nevertheless, not a few 
 wealthy people have been so habitually flattered 
 by those about them that they have lost the 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 87 
 
 power to appreciate normal, healthy, and help- 
 ful relations in which the self-respect of both 
 parties is maintained. 
 
 Asarule, the salary of a minister is small and 
 at the same time he has the education of a 
 gentleman. Such a culture trains him to spend 
 money, while his profession yields a meager 
 livelihood. As a very large number of pros- 
 perous people practically demand special at- 
 tention, the temptation to fawn before them 
 for the sake of a competence becomes acute. 
 The poor may be as exacting as the rich, 
 simply because in their pride they are oversen- 
 sitive, but their influence is not so noticeable. 
 The average man is quick to discern whether 
 the minister is loving toward all, respecting 
 most those who are most genuinely religious 
 and honoring such persons because a Christlike 
 character should be honored. Nothing rejoices 
 the heart of a real man so much as to find an- 
 other man of the same caliber. It is indeed a 
 happy occasion when that man happens to be a 
 minister. In the esteem of the spiritually 
 minded, the minister who is evidently a syco- 
 phant before wealth and culture is placed ex- 
 actly where he belongs. He may be an excellent 
 speaker but in the test of actual life he has not 
 
88 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 made good. A clergyman who recommends as 
 church officers those prominent in business with 
 only secondary regard to their spiritual worth 
 violates a sacred trust of spiritual leadership, 
 and he cannot plead effectively with others to 
 maintain their integrity in the strain of business 
 life. Since few men can use power impartially, 
 the centralization of religious power which ex- 
 ists in the organization of some churches has 
 almost always resulted in its abuse. The minister 
 in an administrative position who demands ser- 
 vility of his brethren in the ministry may very 
 neatly exemplify the psychology of power but 
 he is none the less a religious monstrosity. 
 
 The second temptation of the minister is to 
 judge of his usefulness by some other standard 
 than that of his personal moral integrity wrought: 
 by his religious faith. The revelation of God in 
 the soul of a man is complete just so far as his 
 own soul has been brought into conformity with 
 the virtues exemplified in Christ. Since Christian 
 morality is the fruit of Christian religion, the 
 lack of such a growing morality in any life is 
 sufficient evidence that vital religion is absent. 
 
 Jesus is very practical in his statements con- 
 cerning that which constitutes sin. He has no 
 theory about sin as a racial inheritance, nor 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 89 
 
 does he discuss its origin. The seventh chapter 
 of Mark and the Sermon on the Mount reveal 
 his general thought. The chapter in Mark deals 
 with those things which defile a man. The re- 
 ligious leaders about Jesus were concerned with 
 clean and unclean things, but it was clear to 
 him that food did not corrupt the moral nature. 
 Man defiles himself; he creates sins as he fashions 
 his character by definite choices. Evil thoughts 
 result in evil deeds which defile the character. 
 The defilement is a process in which man is cre- 
 ating evil as he pollutes himself by definite de- 
 cisions. 
 
 The only service of any consequence which a 
 clergyman renders to his fellows is to exemplify 
 before them the moral integrity which he has 
 won for himse:f through Christ as his Saviour. 
 If he is not far superior to the average member 
 of his congregation in moral trustworthiness, he 
 cannot be a real helper of other men. He pro- 
 fesses, by the position which he occupies, to be 
 _a leader in the development of character which 
 is like that of God and of Christ. When due al- 
 lowance has been made for his failures, it will 
 still remain true that he should be more reliable 
 and more balanced in moral matters than his 
 fellow men. The antithesis of the sin which is to 
 
90) SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 be overcome is the righteousness which is to be 
 acquired. The minister need look for no illusive 
 or artificial standard by which he may judge of 
 his worth to men. Is he more reliable morally 
 than his fellow men? If so, it is only because he 
 is better acquainted with God. Jesus, because 
 of the character which he revealed, purified and 
 ennobled those about him. No matter how ob- 
 scure the clergyman may he, if he has the charac- 
 ter of Christ, his God is ever transforming men 
 through him. No matter how high his ecclesi- 
 astical standing, if he lacks the moral integrity 
 which loyalty to his God should create in him, 
 he is religiously bankrupt. 
 
 The third practical test of the manhood of a 
 clergyman is the extent to which he keeps him- 
 self free from the entanglements of church poli- 
 tics. The business of the church must be trans- 
 acted, but if there is any place where matters 
 which are related to the personal welfare of 
 clergymen should be settled on the basis of 
 merit, rather than by manipulation, surely that 
 place is the church. Yet it is common knowledge 
 that some of the most contemptible and under- 
 handed things are done by some churchmen to 
 make secure their personal interests at the ex- 
 pense of others. It is distasteful enough when 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 91 
 
 there is corruption in civil government but when 
 the methods of ward politicians are used by 
 clergymen, then it becomes not simply a sub- 
 ject of indignation but also one of pity and 
 disgust. 
 
 In addition, the clergymen of the Protestant 
 churches find themselves in an embarrassing 
 position, particularly in the smaller towns. They 
 are in Open competition against their brethren 
 to get members into their churches. In thou- 
 sands of towns there are so many churches that 
 none is prosperous, and each minister is living 
 on a starvation wage. A few members moving 
 from one church to another may close the weaker 
 church. Ministers find themselves promoters of 
 denominational rivalry of the most intense type 
 under the stimulus of the law of survival. It is 
 a shame upon the Protestant ministry of Amer- 
 ica that so little has been done by them codpera- 
 tively to relieve this almost unbearable condi- 
 tion. It should be a question for serious con- 
 sideration whether a minister has a right to 
 accept a charge in an already overcrowded field. 
 If this should mean that he could not secure a 
 pastorate, he might be justified in earning his 
 living in some other way. Paul was not above 
 making tents. 
 
92 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 If 
 
 The minister of this generation lives at a time 
 when the historical method is used in every field 
 of learning to determine and to correlate facts. 
 Educated men have this same mental attitude 
 toward any problem which is to be considered. 
 They ask, ‘What does any fact mean in the life 
 and thought of the day in which it occurs?” 
 This historical method is the rational procedure 
 of this day by which to ascertain the truth, and, 
 when rightly understood, it will give the real 
 meaning of any fact, whether it be an incident 
 in science, literature, art, politics, history, or 
 religion. It happens that the average theological 
 seminary has not become sympathetically re- 
 lated to this method of study. There are only a 
 few schools where ministerial students are taught 
 the value and the necessity of a genuine his- 
 torical study of religious problems. As a result, 
 through no fault of their own, these men become 
 clergymen who are out of touch with the best 
 methods of scholarship in use in their day, and 
 they are ofttimes hostile to the really construc- 
 _ tive workers of their age. It is not uncommon 
 for a minister to be intensely loyal to some sys- 
 tem of theology formulated since the Reforma- 
 tion, while the Scriptures, as a whole, are a 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 93 
 
 closed book to him. There may be large portions 
 of the Bible which he never reads, and often he 
 cannot give an intelligible answer to the simplest 
 questions concerning what some of its most im- 
 portant books actually teach. Isaiah is one of 
 the great books of the Bible, yet relatively few 
 clergymen can give a clear statement of what 
 Isaiah actually taught. The only reliable way to 
 determine the contents of each book of the Bible 
 is to ascertain the general culture of the day in 
 which it was written, the historical facts in the 
 narrative itself, and what the writer intended 
 to teach in the light of the actual situation in 
 which he lived. This is but the method of com- 
 mon sense. The clergymen who would preach 
 the Word must know the deep and valid re- 
 ligious experience of the Biblical writers. But 
 here the minister has to fight a battle which is 
 not easily won. The Bible came to us through a 
 Semitic people who had a mental framework un- 
 like our own, about which they organized the 
 separate facts of life. In addition, there were 
 also varying cultures over the ages in which the 
 Bible was written. Because the twentieth- 
 century mind is different in its structure and 
 in many of its most essential ways of thinking 
 and feeling, the clergyman finds it difficult to 
 
94 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 assimilate the Bible in such a way that he can 
 effectively preach it. It is a great day for a 
 minister when he finds that his Bible is the pro- 
 eressive revelation of God in the spiritual strug- 
 gles of men, with its consummation in Christ 
 Jesus, our Lord. Then, for him, the spiritual 
 tides of God sweep through the Bible and there 
 Christ is clearly revealed. The Bible, in all its 
 parts, may become the living word of God for 
 the one who will study it historically. This in- 
 vestigation will give him a complete Bible, a 
 large part of which was formerly a closed book 
 to him. It can free him from the necessity of 
 being perpetually on the defensive and apologiz- 
 ing for many parts of the book from which he 
 derives his authority. It may enable him to let 
 the whole Bible speak to him so that he, in turn, 
 may preach the Bible in all the wealth of its 
 abiding spiritual values. To know what the 
 Biblical writers thought in their day and place, 
 and to interpret the culture of this age by means 
 of the Scriptures is to teach fundamentally. The 
 theology of the past has always been the pre- 
 cipitate of the culture of the age in its fusion with 
 Christianity. Monarchy and feudalism and 
 their attending theologies are of the past. De- 
 mocracy and science are of the present, and the 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 95 
 
 residuum from the reaction of these social inter- 
 ests upon Christianity will be the theology of 
 the future. 
 Itt 
 
 The ministry is both a profession and a calling, 
 but more particularly the latter. It is a profes- 
 sion in that there are many details which are 
 solely those of administration. There are the 
 minutiz which the minister might desire to 
 escape, but without attention to these details 
 the organization of his church would remain 
 loose and disconnected. But the ministry is 
 much more than a profession which may be 
 entered because of moral earnestness, a pleasing 
 address, belief in the worth of the gospel mes- 
 sage, and willingness to serve in a public ca- 
 pacity. The minister is called of God to do this 
 special work. That call is not limited to the in- 
 vitation given in the Scriptures in which men 
 are commanded to go into all the world and win 
 all men to a confession of Christ as Saviour. 
 The call is direct to the heart of the minister 
 himself. There is often a holy unrest which may 
 amount to agony of soul in which he is generally 
 aware that it may be God’s will for him to 
 preach the gospel. When he surrenders to this 
 divine call, he is then assured that such is the 
 
96 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 plan of God for him. This anguish of spirit may 
 not be felt in every instance. There may be but 
 a quiet insistence in his life that he should be- 
 come a preacher. Men are called of God through 
 the use of means near at hand, such as the in- 
 fluence of godly parents, or pastors, or Christian 
 workers, or even without the use of any im- 
 mediate human agency. Innumerable forces 
 may be brought to bear upon the minister, and 
 of these influences he may be conscious in vary- 
 ing degrees, but all ministers should know that 
 God has called them and that they have re- 
 ceived their commission to preach directly from 
 him. Here the selection of the ministry as a 
 life service differs from entrance into all other 
 occupations. Not only natural gifts but also the 
 question of God’s invitation to the minister to 
 become an undershepherd with the great Shep- 
 herd of the flock of God must be taken into con- 
 sideration. 
 
 As one called of God to bear his message of 
 salvation to a lost world, he must maintain a 
 warm and close fellowship with his Lord. His 
 should be a relation of unbroken communion 
 with Christ every hour of the day. If he isa 
 true minister, he is to communicate to others 
 much of what is told him in secret. Unless he 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 97 
 
 listens to the voice within, how can he know the 
 will of God for himself or for his people? A 
 minister is not carrying out his own program or 
 doing his own work. He has been set apart and 
 consecrated to the service of Another. His is 
 to obey and not to command, to receive orders 
 before proclaiming a message, to be taught as 
 an adopted child before inviting others to as- 
 sume the relation of filial service. This is the 
 preparation for service which cannot be neg- 
 lected and without which zeal in any direction 
 will be only misdirected effort. 
 
 With such a preparation of the inner life, 
 every service is a reincarnation of the Master’s 
 life, for the servant is inspired, controlled, and 
 directed by the spirit of his Lord. His is the 
 indescribable privilege of having such fellowship 
 with Christ as permits him to be intimately 
 acquainted with God. God knows him in his 
 weakness, sin, and despair. He knows God in 
 his forgiveness, goodness, and love. God may 
 be so related to him and all the problems of his 
 life that this communication with him is more 
 real than anything else in his life. He knows 
 that the statement of Jesus, that except a 
 branch is united to a vine it will wither, is a 
 sober summary of the condition necessary for, 
 
98 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 his spiritual life which has grown within him 
 through years of blessed fellowship. 
 
 The ideals of Christ form slowly in his mind 
 until the convictions of Jesus become his own 
 so that his message has the weight of the 
 authority of Christ. The Christian minister is 
 marked by a rare sensitiveness to spiritual value. 
 Whatever values other men have achieved for 
 themselves, it will always be true that for him 
 the great prize is found in the warm personal 
 relation between himself and his Lord. There 
 are no words to express the wealth of meaning 
 beneath the simple figures of the Scripture in 
 which vital union with Christ is set forth. There 
 are experiences which can be but faintly de- 
 scribed. This wealth of secret life with God will 
 ever be the minister’s most priceless possession, 
 as well as his most necessary equipment for 
 service. 
 
 IV 
 
 In his life with God there come to the minister 
 specific problems in the solution of which he 
 finds that insight necessary to aid others in their 
 perplexities and trials. He may be vividly aware 
 of his own sinfulness. To him it is ever a mystery 
 that one as sinful as he could have been saved 
 from the power of sin and the ruin wrought by it. 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 99 
 
 He can view the havoc wrought by sin in his 
 own life and reason therefrom what must be the 
 strength of its sway in other lives. He knows 
 that apart from God he would have been lost 
 and that the same tendencies are operating in 
 his life as carried the prodigal son far from home. 
 It is sin which has blurred his spiritual vision 
 when in hours of temptation he has fallen. It 
 is sin which has palsied his hand when he should 
 have aided some worthy cause. It is sin which 
 has sealed his lips when some earnest word 
 should have been spoken. It is sin which has 
 often made his speech sound stilted and formal. 
 It is sin which has stripped him of power, some- 
 times caused him to question his calling, and 
 plunged him into despondency and despair. 
 The more earnestly a man tries to live for God, 
 the more apparent to him do his own weaknesses 
 become. Such being the case, the minister is 
 tested in the ordinary temptations of life and 
 also in all the subtle refinements of temptation 
 which accompany a high type of spiritual life. 
 It ought not to be difficult for him to sympa- 
 thize and suffer with those who cannot give all 
 the hours of their working day to furthering a 
 spiritual life. Paul’s whole-hearted confession 
 that he was first among sinful men will describe 
 
100 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 the soul struggle of any minister of the gospel. 
 God committed the task of reconciling men to 
 himself to those having in their lives all the 
 frailties of other men. | 
 In his dire need the minister has turned to 
 Christ as his Saviour and in him has found de- 
 liverance from the guilt and power of sin and 
 also a positive program for a successful and 
 satisfying life. In Christ he has found a com- 
 panion, Saviour, and guide. He knows by per- 
 sonal experience that he has been set free, that 
 he has obtained a control of himself far beyond 
 that of his own unaided will, and that this has 
 been possible only through allegiance to his 
 Lord. He has been saved from himself and the 
 allurements of the world about him, and every 
 talent he possesses and every gift which he has’ 
 acquired has been reshaped and fused into a 
 more perfect life. He has lost only his sins and 
 his worldliness and has gained a new life and a 
 new Kingdom in which all the lasting values of 
 the soul and society are found. In short, he was 
 lost and is now saved; he was discontented, now 
 he is satisfied; he was unhappy, and now he is 
 happy. He has discovered his place in the world 
 system and he realizes that he is secure. All 
 things are his in the sense that he can relate 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 101 
 
 himself to them successfully and that he is de- 
 nied nothing of real worth. 
 
 Other things being equal, the clearer his 
 knowledge of the historical Christ, the stronger 
 will be his spiritual life. There are so many 
 vague and often misleading conceptions of re- 
 ligion and even of Christianity that he may 
 quickly become aware that the more sensitive 
 he is to the gospel record of the earthly life of 
 Jesus, the saner will be his own views. 
 
 The test our Lord gave of loyalty to himself 
 was the keeping of his commandments. These 
 commandments have to be known and treasured 
 in the inner shrine of the soul if they are to be 
 observed, and this can occur only when loving 
 thought and eager meditation are given to 
 Jesus’ words. It needs to be etched on the 
 minister’s heart like lightning flashes against a 
 background of blackest night that the words 
 Christ spoke are both spirit and life. He said, 
 “The words that I have spoken unto you are 
 spirit, and are life.” The twentieth-century 
 minister needs the written revelation of the 
 first-century Christ that from it he may secure 
 the bread and meat which will make him a 
 strong man in spiritual things. | 
 
 Prayer and service are the means ordained of 
 
102 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 God by which may be wrought those trans- 
 formations in character which are so much de- 
 sired and by which he may promote in the 
 world those causes that are dear to his heart. 
 In his own soul there may be a perpetual miracle 
 wrought by prayér. He has learned that every 
 grace possessed by our Lord may be acquired 
 through prayer and service. The wealth of the 
 life of Jesus, the wondrous qualities of his soul, 
 the strength and kindness of his spirit, the never- 
 failing attractiveness of his charm are his pos- 
 sible possessions to be received as gifts from 
 above whenever he truly prays for them. A 
 change of heart in which Christ’s own life is 
 received and the evils of life cast out is the gift 
 which God bestows upon those who pray. When 
 the minister has advanced in the Christian walk’ 
 so that prayer is the habit of his life, then he is 
 constantly renewed in spirit. Then for such a one 
 to live is really for Christ to live again. He knows 
 that, because he prays, God does things for him 
 which otherwise would not be done; that he is 
 different because of prayer; and that others may 
 be influenced by prayer offered on their behalf. 
 This ministry of intercession is very precious 
 because his own life is transformed through it, 
 as the just, tender, and loving will of God is 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 103 
 
 realized in his experience; and, further, because 
 through prayer he is able to control forces that 
 change the world. 
 
 Roughly speaking, a man may view his rela- 
 tion to Christ in one of two ways: The Christian 
 may aspire either to be an imitator of Jesus or to 
 be one who is so controlled by the same spirit 
 and principles that his character is similar in 
 quality to that of Christ himself. In the latter 
 case, his deeds of righteousness are then not so 
 much the results of attempts at imitation as the 
 expression of Christian characteristics with 
 which his inner self has become identical. It is 
 equally true of any other Christian having the 
 same spirit, with the exception that the leader 
 in any field of endeavor is stronger, more alert 
 and forceful, than are the followers. The soul 
 must assemble the evidence of its own faith and 
 decide and act on its own initiative. A man 
 ought not to be a parrot-like reciter of the teach- 
 ing of another, for to do so is to destroy the 
 creative spirit of discovery and to surrender the 
 right of self-direction except by imitation. A 
 child may begin its education by imitation but 
 this need last only until strength has been gained 
 for self-direction. We may need to imitate Christ 
 until a foundation for earnest, aggressive, cre- 
 
104 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 ative effort has been laid; then the problem of 
 life resolves itself into the discovery of ways of 
 giving emphasis to the life of Christ in the 
 world according to the facts as they are about us. 
 
 Jesus left few rules that direct men in the 
 minutiz of their lives. He did state principles, 
 but in order that a principle may be applied, care- 
 ful thought and ofttimes creative effort are needed 
 on the part of the one using it. A single principle 
 may control a bewildering number of details, 
 but a principle does not work automatically. 
 When principles have so acted on character that 
 it has been strengthened in profitable ways, a 
 man has a practical guide in the spirit of his 
 own life. When the principles of Jesus are in- 
 grained in the character of the minister of Christ, 
 he then has an elastic, flexible, and exacting’ 
 guide in the details with which he is confronted. 
 He, like his Lord, may go about doing good, 
 suiting his messages to all classes and conditions 
 of men when he has acquired for himself that 
 mind which was in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Much of that truth which cannot be disre- 
 garded has its source in the experience of the 
 individual himself or in the experience of the 
 living with whom his lot is cast. It is not enough 
 to acquire knowledge from books. There is dan- 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 105 
 
 ger here that the avaricious reader may lose 
 originality through a slavish acceptance of the 
 thoughts of other men. There is an insidious 
 temptation to become bookish, abstract, and 
 scholastic, and to strive for reputation as a 
 scholar rather than to continue as a helper of 
 ordinary people. The subtilities of philosophy 
 are fascinating but should not interfere with 
 practical efforts to change characters for the 
 better and to improve conduct. 
 
 A knowledge on the part of the minister that 
 he is a sinner saved by the favor of God, that 
 the Christ of the Scriptures is his Redeemer, and 
 that by prayer and service he may effect changes 
 in his own life and in society, is the essential 
 without which he cannot minister worthily. 
 With this knowledge, provided he has been 
 divinely called to this task, he has that nucleus 
 of experience by the use of which he may be- 
 come a successful fisher of men. 
 
 V 
 
 A minister should be a humble man. Not that 
 he should fawn over the rich or be servile in the 
 presence of those who have power or place, or 
 pander to those who may be able to promote 
 his interests. Humility is not a matter of the 
 
106 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 bowed head or lowered eyes or a generally dis- 
 pirited attitude. Humility, in the sense of 
 Christ’s manner of life, lay in the absolute sur- 
 render of the soul to God and the realization of 
 his will as the most vital of its concerns. Hu- 
 mility before God is not the cessation of any 
 single practice or the consecration of any earthly 
 possession. It includes the practices and things 
 of life, but it is more. It is to take this warm, 
 intimate, and infinitely precious soul, and with 
 no reservations surrender it to God that his 
 will may be wrought in it. It is to give up one’s 
 life, to die to self, and to live again for God. 
 This is the test of humility—whether or not the 
 minister has found his life in losing it for Christ’s 
 sake. 
 
 Less important, but truly Christlike in hu-: 
 mility, should be the attitude of the minister 
 toward the poor. It was a sign of the faithful- 
 ness of our Lord that the poor had the gospel 
 preached to them. He had special compassion 
 toward the multitude as dependent sheep having 
 no shepherd. He sought the company of the 
 poor, because, perhaps, they were specially will- 
 ing to hear his words and stood in greater need. 
 Many poor were attached to him and he minis- 
 tered to them in disinterested service. The 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 107 
 
 minister may well examine himself to see whether 
 or not he is becoming a member of a successful, 
 cultivated, and attractive clique in his com- 
 panionships. Can he discern in his life that 
 there is a real place in it for loving, democratic, 
 disinterested service of the poor? 
 
 The poor are insistently asking the minister 
 if he is willing to make himself their champion 
 in their effort to improve their economic con- 
 dition. He finds that, in the main, his salary is 
 paid by the middle class and the wealthy people 
 who condemn the introduction of the wage 
 question into the pulpit. It takes real courage 
 and no small sacrifice to champion the cause of 
 the oppressed in the great industrial war which 
 is being waged. ‘Too few ministers have anything 
 to say for the downtrodden in business. The 
 salary of the average minister is meager enough 
 at the best, and churches that pay a good salary 
 are few in number, so that there is a constant 
 effort on the part of the minister to make him- 
 self acceptable to the rich or prosperous middle 
 class lest he be forced to take a small and un- 
 important field. An incisive discussion which 
 goes into particulars is tabooed, for their em- 
 ployers are not at all backward in making their 
 wishes known whenever a minister really deals 
 
108 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 with their relation to workingmen in a definite 
 way. Certainly the minister ought not to be 
 the puppet of a group of successful business 
 martinets. He should remember that his Master 
 was the Champion of the poor and the oppressed 
 and that the moneyed interests hated him be- 
 cause they sensed that he condemned them. 
 Our Lord was not complacently related to the 
 prosperous and the rich. He rebuked sin 
 wherever he found it and those in high places 
 were not exempt. The next great movement in 
 history is to be the solution of our economic 
 problem in the light of the teaching of Jesus. 
 The minister who has nothing to say on the 
 wage question is either ignorant of one of the 
 most vital interests of modern life, or he is 
 shirking his responsibility in order that he may 
 retain his job, since he has not the courage to 
 make the sacrifice which the proclamation of a 
 full gospel would entail. 
 
 With the development of the natural sciences, 
 a new attitude toward facts has become common 
 in the world. It is designated the scientific 
 spirit, and is found in those who seek to wrest 
 from nature her secrets which they know exist 
 but with which they are not familiar. It is the 
 reverse of the spirit of the ancient world in which 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 109 
 
 Socrates held that certainty was attainable in 
 morality but only uncertainty could be discerned 
 in nature. The scientist has extended his ob- 
 servations until now the facts of life in psy- 
 chology and sociology are being treated in the 
 same careful, discriminating way. It does not 
 follow that because a man deals in a scientific 
 manner with one group of facts he will treat the 
 problem of morality in the same thoughtful 
 manner. In fact, many men who have developed 
 the scientific attitude refuse to apply it in the 
 realms of morals and religion. Yet there is a 
 core in this method of procedure which is in- 
 valuable for religion: that is, the worker at- 
 tempts to dismiss his peculiarities of thought, 
 his preconceptions, and his prejudices in order 
 that he may be in a position where the truths of 
 nature can appeal to him as they are and not as 
 he thinks they should be. In the particular 
 sphere of his endeavor, this comes to be a quest 
 for truth. He grows to love the truth, spends his 
 working hours in seeking to discover it and 
 honors those men in his calling who extend its 
 borders. He acquires a healthy dislike of all 
 careless and slipshod thinking and is impatient 
 and even disgusted with sham. Religion is in- 
 finitely more important than any department of 
 
110 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 nature study, sociology, or psychology, no mat- 
 ter how much they may be able to contribute to 
 the life of man. Christ had the same open, fact- 
 loving, sham-disparaging spirit in religion which 
 is found in the worthy scientist in his chosen 
 field of endeavor. He was more sensitive to the 
 truth of God than any man has ever been to 
 the truth in nature. There is a finality in Jesus’ 
 words about morality and religion which is not 
 found even in the most carefully written books 
 of science. Scientific books are being constantly 
 modified and revised but the ages have wrought 
 no changes in the teaching of our Lord. From 
 the first sentence of his public ministry until 
 the last beautiful words spoken in the upper 
 room, his words have the same uninterrupted 
 force, simplicity, and charm. He is ever just. 
 and kind, and the one because of the other. 
 Jesus neither glossed over the cost of disciple- 
 ship nor withheld the knowledge of the suffering 
 it would involve. He was truthful with all in- 
 quirers and he would hold no man in his service 
 who would not voluntarily pay the full price of 
 discipleship. With no hesitation he uncovered 
 sin and revealed its awful consequences, Hell, 
 with its penalties for sin, was recognized and 
 men were warned to escape the wrath to come. 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 111 
 
 The assumption beneath the fact of punishment 
 and the eternal loss of the soul which is the ser- 
 vant of sin is that such a punishment is just, that 
 such a course of conduct merits such a reward. 
 The fundamental truthfulness of Jesus in his 
 warfare with sin appeared in the searching tests 
 he applied to all those who desired to follow him 
 and in the warnings he gave of the consequences 
 of sin. The program of Jesus had in it a con- 
 spicuous place for justice as an integral part of 
 the truth of God. This essential righteousness 
 was warmed and balanced by all the rare graces 
 of love. Within the scope of God’s truth there 
 was room for forgiveness, humility, gentleness, 
 and patience, but never at the expense of 
 righteousness. God’s truth does not contradict 
 itself. The One who realized in his life the de- 
 mands made upon him by the law of Moses had 
 also every grace and charm found in the most 
 perfect friendship. The minister of Christ must 
 ever be just as well as ever kind. To seek to 
 achieve the one without the other is to lose 
 both. He is bound to speak the truth, but al- 
 ways for him, love defines its boundary. Love 
 is just and love is kind. | 
 
 No matter what may be the sacrifice a minister 
 may have to make to promote the cause which he 
 
112 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 serves, he has a right to the conviction that his 
 is the completely successful life. He is called 
 upon to endure no blind and purposeless self- 
 denial. Our Lord moved through the fitful 
 changes in the externals of his life with the 
 serene and unbroken confidence that he was 
 wholly successful when all the facts of the world 
 and time had been taken into consideration, 
 even though his life was to end on a cross. He 
 blazed the way for that essential success which 
 alone can fully satisfy and although he suffered 
 greatly, he knew he would be gloriously crowned. | 
 So with the undershepherd of the flock of God— 
 as he goes faithfully about the daily tasks which 
 are the portion of his calling, he may ever have 
 the deep and satisfying consciousness that eter- 
 nity holds nothing more blessed for him than his ° 
 present task, and that all time will show the 
 wisdom of his choice and vindicate him for any 
 suffering he may have to endure on its behalf. 
 The clergyman ought not to allow conventional 
 ideals of success to wean him from the perspec- 
 tive which is his as a minister of the gospel. 
 
 VI 
 
 Jesus gave a balanced conception of the rela- 
 tion of the inner life to the social problems of 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 113 
 
 his day when he sketched in outline the history 
 of the growth of the Kingdom of God. But as 
 almost no lives had been prepared to establish 
 the Kingdom, the emphasis had to fall on the 
 personal relation of men to himself and the cor- 
 rection of their crude ideas of what was the real 
 nature and progress of a true, yet, at that time, 
 ideal Kingdom of God. Narrow conceptions of 
 God’s control of the nations through the Jews 
 as public officials, and definite programs by 
 which this was to be brought about had to be 
 counteracted. The primary problem for our Lord 
 was not to bring his followers to an appreciation 
 of a new social order, but so to attach them to 
 himself in a close, personal way that they would 
 be able to bear the shocks to their faith which 
 of necessity must occur. His first task was to 
 secure a following. When this had been accom- 
 plished, he set himself so to teach them and to 
 live before them that in the course of time they 
 might come to appreciate who he really was. 
 Only after long training did it come to pass 
 _ that the one most alert and sensitive to spiritual 
 truth exclaimed when questioned, that he was 
 “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It was 
 a gigantic undertaking to train associates to 
 regard. him as the Revealer of God. Even when 
 
114 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Jesus’ deity was discovered, so tremendous was 
 its import that it did not become a working 
 factor in their lives while he was on earth. Then 
 there was added to this great task another in 
 which he could not hope to succeed. When they 
 had accepted him. as divine, he began at once 
 to prepare them for the humiliating death that 
 was not far in the future. It took his resurrec- 
 tion to demonstrate to them that he could die 
 on a cross and still triumph over sin and death. 
 As soon as they were sure of the resurrection, 
 they,.in turn, began an active campaign to 
 further his work. They faced a task somewhat 
 similar to that of their Lord. How could they 
 establish belief in Christ as the divine Redeemer 
 and attach men to him in a personal way? They 
 were not concerned about the political situation , 
 in the Roman Empire. They were not interested 
 in the educational system of their day. The 
 forms business had assumed were not scruti- 
 nized. ‘The Church itself was but loosely organ- 
 ized. ‘Their whole energy was bent in rescuing 
 men from a sinful world and so attaching them 
 to Christ that they in turn would win others 
 and encourage those who also had forsaken the 
 world. They but vaguely realized what it would 
 mean to have a multitude of men live as Chris- 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 115 
 
 tians in places of power and influence in society. 
 
 The problem of Christianity to-day is not 
 identical with that of Jesus’ day or with that of 
 the days of the apostles—it is the same and 
 more. Since Christianity is now a world power, 
 its influence is hard to escape, and the nation 
 waits to have Christianity applied in the solu- 
 tion of its problems. The Church is confronted 
 with a new group of interests. Insistent ques- 
 tions are being asked of its ministry, for men 
 want to know their Christian obligations in the 
 work in which they are engaged. The apostles 
 lived in the day of the vision of the new society. 
 We live in the day when there are forces enough 
 at our command to establish it in our great land. 
 What attitude will the clergy assume toward the 
 innumerable questions raised by the introduc- 
 tion of Christianity into the social structure of 
 society? What will be their conception of the 
 relation of Christ to business, politics, labor 
 unions, education, art, charity, and the many 
 kinds of social reform? It seems that a broad 
 position which will admit of the inclusion of all 
 the normal and legitimate activities of man 
 within the boundary of the Kingdom will have 
 to be maintained. The old line of demarcation 
 between the sacred and the secular will have to 
 
116 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 be largely obliterated and any wholesome phase 
 of life will need to be reckoned as a legitimate 
 part of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Since Christianity is now to dominate the 
 organization of society as well as the personal 
 life of the believer; any Christian business man 
 may be assured that any legitimate business is 
 the business of God and that it offers an avenue 
 of religious service. Any teacher may feel that 
 all educational effort is work within the King- 
 dom, hastening the day of its establishment 
 and that the forms of education are consequently 
 to be modified to express more adequately the 
 Christian spirit. Any man holding or seeking 
 public office may honestly believe that this 
 public trust is from God, to be discharged as unto 
 him for the furtherance of his purposes and the | 
 enlargement of his control in the world. Any 
 mother may know that in ministering to the 
 comfort and happiness of her household she is 
 in the service of God. Any child may grow in 
 knowledge and appreciation of the ordinary 
 responsibilities of life, as within the Kingdom. 
 All the work of all mankind, as long as it pro- 
 motes human welfare, is service rendered to God. 
 In the inner life there is no instinct, power of 
 thought, affection, or disposition to achieve, 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 117 
 
 which in itself is wrong. All may be brought 
 under the control of the Spirit so as to bind the 
 individual more intimately to the life of his Lord. 
 In the work in which men engage in the whole 
 round of their toil and recreation there is no 
 part of it which may not be the direct service of 
 God and which may not be viewed as religious. 
 The interests of the clergyman in this century 
 are all the interests of life. His message may 
 include only the surrender of the will to Christ, 
 attendance at the stated means of grace, and 
 support of the church with gifts and prayers, but 
 if so, he is proclaiming only half a gospel. There 
 is an evangelism of family life, an evangelism 
 of substantial and legitimate business, an evan- 
 gelism of national life through pure politics, 
 an evangelism of education, and an evangelism of 
 recreations of which he may not be aware, or 
 which he disregards, or to which he is openly 
 hostile. The problems of education, legitimate 
 recreations, wholesome social relations, con- 
 structive business, and attractive family life are 
 not to be solved in the basement of some institu- 
 tional church. Such a church may throw a ray 
 of light on these problems, but little more. The 
 banks, stores, business offices, amusement halls, 
 and Government offices will continue down town 
 
118 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 where they belong. It is the problem of the 
 Christian to administer God’s banks, direct his 
 stores, control in his business offices, supervise 
 his amusement halls, sweeten his family life, and 
 transform the place where he serves into a spot 
 where the Kingdom comes and the divine will 
 isdone. In the church services and in the Chris- 
 tian life should be found the inspiration for the 
 reconstruction and constant rejuvenation of the 
 whole of society. 
 
 Such is the complete gospel for this age, one 
 which deals searchingly and faithfully with the 
 inner life of man, one which is loyal to the great 
 fundamentals of religious experience, but one 
 which is also alive to the fact of the presence of 
 the government of God in our midst and zealous 
 to establish it and promote its interests in every 
 conceivable way. 
 
 The minister should have an_ intelligent 
 interest in all kinds of human _ activities— 
 patriotic, educational, business, and recreational, 
 that he may help men to discern God more 
 clearly and to serve him better. As Jesus’ par- 
 ables mirrored the life of his time, so the minister 
 should keep abreast of the phases of modern life 
 that he may make it impossible for men to think 
 of an activity of daily life without thinking of 
 
THE CLERGYMAN 119 
 
 it in terms of God. Else how can men be in- 
 spired to adopt the program of our Lord in daily 
 affairs? He should so teach and live that the 
 spirit and purpose and character of Jesus Christ 
 shall, through him, be made to grow in the esteem 
 of individual men and become controlling factors 
 in community life everywhere. That he may not 
 be a voice only, he should breathe deeply of the 
 spirit of his Master, realize strongly the yearning 
 of the divine heart for all mankind, sense God’s 
 love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity, and 
 put self aside in the interests of the greater good. 
 
 Vil 
 
 A minister is God’s steward and so is each 
 member of his Church. If it is difficult for him 
 to bring them to practical realization of what this 
 implies, he can at least know its meaning in his 
 own life. Together they are stewards of the 
 infinite God and to Him they must render an 
 account for the use of every talent and every 
 opportunity which He has conferred on them. 
 There is a substantial blessing to be derived 
 from a conscientious effort to fulfill the obliga- 
 tions resting on one as a steward of Jesus Christ. 
 Much of the joy as well as the success of a Chris- 
 tian depends upon a realization of the meaning 
 
120 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of this privilege and an effort to be faithful. 
 
 The members of a church generally give their 
 pastor full credit for the spirituality which he 
 possesses. His is the problem of being, in inner 
 life, what his people expect him to be, or believe 
 him to be. No man should accept as true a high 
 estimate of himself unless close scrutiny of his 
 own inner life will justify him in so doing. It is 
 easy to assume unconsciously for oneself that he 
 is growing rapidly in the Christian life when in 
 fact his progress may be very slow. The minister 
 ought not to forget that he holds his place of 
 leadership because of a more virile and helpful 
 Christian life than that of the average member 
 of his church. In a world where the tug of con- 
 ventionality is so insistent, it is not easy to retain 
 the same warm enthusiasm, high resolve, and — 
 hopeful, persistent effort. The strain of main- 
 taining a fine Christian idealism will always be 
 the special problem of the clergyman. 
 
 The concern of the minister is to see that the 
 character of Christ is formed in the lives of men. 
 For this he studies, visits, prays, and preaches. 
 He is successful in so far as through his minis- 
 try men are won to Christ, united to him in a 
 close personal way, and led to reproduce again - 
 his life in the world. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 
 I 
 
 Mi. feel that banking is rather outside 
 the pale of Christian idealism. Perhaps 
 the ground for such a premature judgment may 
 be the unconscious recollection of the fear of the 
 Saviour that riches would almost certainly cor- 
 rupt life, or the recollection of his warnings 
 against oppression of the weak by the moneyed 
 class. It is more than likely that the belief of the 
 Middle Ages that any form of interest was usury 
 and forbidden by the Church still carries over 
 in its influence to the present day. In this pro- 
 fession, the problems focus in one man or some 
 single corporate group of men. When the prob- 
 lems of business are thus centralized, it is not 
 surprising that the various criticisms against 
 business in general are concentrated against the 
 banking business. 
 
 What is a bank? In the first place it is an 
 institution where money is deposited for safe- 
 keeping. There are vast sums in the banks of 
 our land for no other reason than that people 
 have ceased to guard personally their savings 
 
 121 
 
122 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 and have left them in banks where they can be 
 more carefully guarded. While it is true that 
 many seek only a place where their money may 
 be kept securely, it is also quite generally the 
 case that depositors expect interest on money 
 left at a bank, except in case of checking ac- 
 counts or where the balances are to be regarded 
 as the basis for future loans. A bank is an insti- 
 tution where stockholders and _ depositors, 
 through the medium of the bank organization 
 and machinery, rent money or credit to those 
 who can pay for its use and at the same time 
 offer reliable security. 
 
 Thus, paying a bank interest for the use of 
 money or credit differs in no way from renting 
 a farm, an apartment, a hotel, or any other 
 rental investment. The landlord collects a rent ° 
 for the use of the soil; the householder secures a 
 stipulated sum for the privilege of occupying his 
 property; the hotel proprietor charges a regular 
 rate for accommodation at his hostelry; and the 
 banker, like these and all other men who derive 
 gain from the use of any form of property which 
 they possess, rents his money and that intrusted 
 to his care. Since property has a monetary value, 
 it has come to be true that the one who has 
 money has the equivalent of property, and that 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 123 
 
 money can be rented. When this rather simple 
 conception of a bank is appreciated, it then is 
 evident that banking is one of the forms of busi- 
 ness and that its problems are those of ordinary 
 trade, plus the fact that the banker must regard 
 himself as the custodian of other people’s 
 property or money and must guard its use ac- 
 cordingly. ‘Thus it 1s as honorable as any other 
 business unless it should be that there are 
 features which are especially obnoxious and in- 
 herent in this form of trade. The problems of 
 the banker are those found in ordinary business, 
 with the exception that in his case they are 
 intensified because almost no business is inde- 
 pendent of close connection with banking. It 
 could scarcely be otherwise since many men 
 have not the capital with which to start in busi- 
 ness. The extension of business generally in- 
 volves the continuous use of credit and many 
 consider it good business policy to be in debt, 
 because it forces them to save and to work the 
 harder that they may succeed. This wide ex- 
 tension of credit brings the banker into close 
 relations with those engaged in every form of 
 business. 
 
 The growth of our banking system paralleled 
 the expansion of business in the modern world. 
 
124 ~ SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Centralization in banking was the logical out- 
 come of centralization in business. Only in that 
 manner could credit be provided for the develop- 
 ment of great corporations. The growth of 
 modern banks, including the Federal Reserve 
 System, has been*in response to definite needs. 
 In their present form, they meet quite ade- 
 quately the purpose for which they have been 
 created. Various institutions have risen, such 
 as trust and savings companies, and commercial 
 banks have developed departments which corres- 
 pond to them. As soon as these outside organiza- 
 tions began to make loans on the money 
 left in their keeping, they entered the field of 
 commercial banking and in self-defense the 
 commercial banks were compelled to operate 
 departments which correspond to them. | 
 
 A large amount of criticism has been directed 
 at great banking institutions because of the 
 immense resources which they control, as though 
 size alone were a sufficient basis for an adverse 
 judgment. However, in the United States there 
 is no bank which exactly corresponds in impor- 
 tance to the Bank of England. This great insti- 
 tution is a privately owned bank, but after all 
 largely subject to governmental control and with 
 certain governmental fiscal powers. It is the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 125 
 
 hub of the English financial system. Its record 
 is phenomenal. Here is the greatest bank in the 
 world historically, which for generations has not 
 been operated primarily for profit but for the 
 purpose of stabilizing the business of the Empire. 
 It has an uninterrupted record of public service, 
 yet it has always been a privately owned bank. 
 The board of directors of this great bank has 
 maintained a standard of idealism equal to that 
 found in any of the professions. The size of the 
 bank has aided it in rendering the greatest pos- 
 sible service. In many instances, power has been 
 misused in our own banking system. Neverthe- 
 less, our banking business has been on a plane 
 consistent with the higher standards of business 
 ethics and the Federal Reserve System is second 
 to no other. 
 
 Several agricultural papers have laid the de- 
 pression in business after the World War par- 
 ticularly at the door of the Federal Reserve 
 banks. Unfortunately some bankers for selfish 
 - reasons have encouraged such a belief. It is 
 doubtful whether their criticisms have any sub- 
 stantial basis. Banks have been forced to assume 
 control of business in a number of cases where 
 they have advanced capital. The general atti- 
 tude of the bankers in almost every instance has 
 
126 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 been that this was an undesirable task, outside 
 the ordinary channels of the banking business. 
 The city bankers would much rather have been 
 free to follow the practice of ordinary banking. 
 Formerly, banks, like other forms of business, 
 were controlled by individuals and frequently 
 by families who owned a majority of the stock. 
 To-day the movement is toward group owner- 
 ship in which individuals are not so prominent. 
 In the smaller towns there are many banks of 
 the individualistic type and a few in the cities. 
 But the movement, as in every other business, 
 is toward a consolidation of the resources of 
 many people under the control of a board of 
 directors who supervise the affairs of the bank 
 which is under the direct management of its 
 officers. Hence, the moral problem comes to: 
 be that of the integrity of the board of directors 
 and of the officers. It is easy for an individual to 
 fail to meet his moral responsibility as a member 
 of a group. This is true in every kind of business 
 where the board of directors have the controlling 
 power. There is the demand for a higher type of 
 morality as the relations in business are becom- 
 ing increasingly impersonal. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 127 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 It is the daily task of the banker to pass judg- 
 ment on the value of securities offered as a basis 
 for credit. No transactions are scrutinized with 
 such care as those involving the transfer of 
 money. The best endeavors of men are directed 
 toward the determination of those policies which 
 will secure profit and prevent loss. Therefore, 
 the money judgments of men are generally more 
 sensitive than any others that they might form. 
 This should not surprise us, for fine discrimina- 
 tions of values are made only when the mind has 
 received long training in any given field of en- 
 deavor. Systems of values grow with the strain 
 and sweat which accompany alert and prolonged 
 effort. In no other phase of life do men struggle 
 so hard to advance as in business. The fact that 
 a multitude of men are engaged in business 
 makes their efforts nothing less than a world- 
 wide contest. There can be only one result as 
 far as efficiency is concerned. It will mean that 
 every business talent will be developed to the 
 fullest possible extent. All the plans that human 
 ingenuity can devise will be tried with the aim 
 of securing profit. The classes of lawyers or 
 doctors or teachers by the nature of their work 
 will be small in number. These classes will 
 
128 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 always lack the stimulus which is found where 
 numberless people are striving for supremacy in 
 the same field of human endeavor. A process of 
 selection which is world-wide in its scope and 
 very exacting in its demands will almost invari- 
 ably produce men.of prodigious skill and power 
 who are able to dominate and control business 
 of national and international scope. 
 
 The banker is the individual whose finger is 
 on the pulse of every business endeavor. He is 
 the superlative product of almost endless genera- 
 tions of struggling and aspiring human beings 
 who have sought to promote their welfare by 
 some form of trade. His business is so related 
 to the whole world of trade that the best bal- 
 anced judgments of that which will make for 
 business advancement are held by bankers. A | 
 great business may have almost endless ramifica- 
 tions, and slight changes in most unsuspected 
 places may advance or hinder it. But the busi- 
 ness which judges of the value of all business is 
 banking. It searches out the points of strength 
 and weakness in every kind of commercial 
 endeavor. A bank is the place where the total 
 commercial possibilities of a community are- 
 carefully scrutinized and quite accurately valued. 
 And this searching analysis takes place under 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 129 
 
 one of the most compelling motives which ac- 
 centuates human endeavor, that of self-pre- 
 servation. In the struggle for survival in the 
 business world, the banker becomes aware of 
 that procedure which will make for business 
 stability and which will promote the mutual 
 welfare of all parties concerned. 
 
 Now almost all the interests of life are con- 
 nected with money. Society has valued almost 
 every form of human effort and has given it a 
 commercial rating, either directly or indirectly. 
 When the possessions of men assume the form 
 of property, then, because they are tangible, 
 they have value and may readily be subject to 
 examination and serve as a basis for some sort 
 of credit. The banker is trained to judge quickly 
 as to the merits of any business in which men 
 may be engaged so that he may accommodate 
 his customers and at the same time avoid any 
 loss. 
 
 With competition as keen as it is to-day, the 
 banker is forced to take careful account of all 
 the factors that bear on the security of a loan. 
 The considerations that weigh most heavily in 
 the determination of the amount of the loan are: 
 The borrower’s proportion of assets to liabilities, 
 the liquidity of his assets, the security offered, 
 
130 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 the character of the applicant, and his business 
 ability. There are many bankers who would not 
 advance an amount of any consequence, even 
 though the security were excellent, if the moral 
 risk were questionable. There are so many 
 loopholes in law that they do not care to become 
 involved in a transaction the outcome of which 
 may lead to litigation. Men can generally 
 secure at banks all the money which they can 
 use with safety. Many times they are able to 
 borrow more than is to their own advantage. 
 When it is granted that the major premise of 
 the teaching of Jesus is to promote human wel- 
 fare in all personal and social relations, it follows 
 that so far as banking has accomplished this it 
 has performed a religious service. When the 
 boundary of religion is viewed as wide enough to ' 
 include the main interests of all lives, then, in 
 the promotion of legitimate business, the banker 
 may work with the conviction that the thing 
 which he is to do with all his might is the work 
 which is at hand. In so far as the banker is con- 
 scious that he serves a class to the exclusion of 
 the welfare of the men who are not of his own 
 group, he is hostile to the basic principle of the 
 teaching of Jesus. If he is not willing to strive 
 to create within his group a sentiment which will 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 131 
 
 aid it to act with the welfare of all in view, then 
 he is disloyal to the program of Christ. The 
 banking business is regulated by law and fortified 
 by ideals of integrity. It is entirely possible for 
 the banker who is a sincere seeker after truth to 
 assent to the program of Jesus for men in their 
 human relations. The machinery of his business 
 need not be appreciably altered. The ideals 
 within the heart may have to be changed. The 
 effort that may be required to change the course 
 of a life should not be minimized. To succeed 
 will require nothing less than the experience of 
 Christ as a personal Saviour. 
 
 It 
 
 There might be some justification for aloofness 
 from religious matters if no connection existed 
 between religion and morality. That which lifts 
 the God of Christians far above any of the 
 deities that men have served is first of all the per- 
 fection of the moral character of God. The 
 belief that God is a Spirit, who is infinite in 
 wisdom, justice, goodness, holiness, and truth is 
 fundamental in our conception of him. When 
 Christ is contemplated, who.on his own authority 
 and by his life, words, and acts revealed God, 
 there is the same realization of his moral perfec- 
 
132 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 tion as that of God whom he represents. Those 
 who like to do wrong, letting evil draw them like 
 a car coupling, have little to say about Christ, 
 for they realize that he utterly condemns their 
 way of living. Those who treasure virtue and 
 seek moral integrity are immediately attracted 
 to Christ and in the course of time they discern 
 that love can be maintained only by an un- 
 divided allegiance to him. Jesus’ message to the 
 world had to do with the moral life of men. He 
 gave no definite teaching about art or science, 
 but he did draw the finest of moral distinctions 
 and stands ready to-day to encourage every 
 worthy effort to achieve character. 
 
 No form of business can be divorced from the 
 
 character of those who conduct it, and this is | 
 
 particularly true of banking. It may be that the 
 innate forms which the banking business has 
 assumed may have been due to the necessities of 
 business, but an institution wins confidence when 
 the public feels that the officers are men of 
 integrity. Now integrity is not something which 
 is a part of the machinery of a bank, but some- 
 thing which depends upon the personal life of its 
 officials. Confidence in a bank rests upon the 
 character of its officials and upon its resources. 
 But the former is as important, or even more so, 
 
 OQ ee ae a oe 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 133 
 
 than the latter. Let there be any evident taint 
 of dishonesty in those in charge of a bank and 
 confidence is destroyed. A bank of smali re- 
 sources whose officials are capable and honest is 
 almost sure of success; but where the officers of 
 a bank are known to be dishonorable, failure is 
 certain. It has been said that no prayer is long 
 enough to save from business disaster the man 
 who uses short weights. It can more certainly 
 be predicted that the banker who is not scrupu- 
 lously honest will find that he is shunned by the 
 mass of men who, as is well known, want to 
 transact business with a banker of thorough 
 reliability. It is true that many men without 
 religion appear to achieve trustworthiness in 
 many matters. But this does not take into con- 
 sideration the part which has been played by 
 religion in formulating our present ideals of 
 honorable dealing, and it neglects the fact that 
 the tone of modern trade at its best has been 
 decidedly influenced by Christianity. Possibly 
 the unbeliever who is trustworthy has been in a 
 large measure controlled by ideals of whose 
 source he may not be definitely aware. But 
 when the matter is stated in another way, the 
 obligation of assuming the responsibility of 
 Christian service is not easy to escape. Has the 
 
134 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 unchristian banker who is trustworthy in finan- 
 cial matters been as strong and reliable without 
 the aid of Christianity as he might have been 
 had he sought to live as a worthy disciple of our 
 Lord? Most men would assert that probably 
 they would have been better men had they been 
 Christians, and in case a few do not concur with 
 this large majority, they do not stand in a posi- 
 tion which permits of a conclusive disagreement. 
 The man who has not tried Christianity cannot 
 possibly be a competent judge of its worth. If 
 it can be discerned that men are more sensitive 
 to moral distinctions and more faithful in meet- 
 ing moral obligations when active in Christian 
 service than when lax and indifferent to the vows 
 that may have been assumed, then the value of 
 Christianity for the moral life has been demon- 
 strated through an experience of its value and 
 meaning. 
 
 The fundamental virtue of the banker is 
 honesty. Naturally the practice of honesty 
 comes to be almost a religion with many in the 
 banking business. Are they not trustees of the 
 savings of those who have committed the earn- 
 ings of a lifetime to them for safe-keeping? The 
 volume of business for which they are responsible 
 is far beyond their capital stock and surplus, and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER tap 
 
 this is only possible because of the confidence 
 which the depositors have in their honesty. 
 Many a banker has proved for himself that the 
 reading of the Bible stimulates a love of justice 
 and equity, that it has been easier for him to deal 
 honorably because of his religious faith, and 
 finally, that many have been kept from taking 
 advantage of the necessities of others because the 
 Golden Rule has been a working principle in their 
 daily life. Ofttimes when character would not 
 have been able to bear the strain of temptations 
 to which it has been subjected, the service of 
 Christ has so transformed it that theft and the 
 financial ruin of many which would accompany 
 it have been prevented. 
 
 It is known that the boundary between good 
 and evil in any character is hard to locate, and 
 ‘only the strain of the concrete testings of life 
 reveals the real man to the man himself. It is 
 much easier to understand how one will act after 
 the trial has proved the possession of inner 
 integrity than it is before one is assailed by 
 temptation. When strongly tested, the man who 
 has felt most sure of himself may be appalled 
 by his nearness to a course of conduct which 
 could result only in disaster; while those who 
 have feared that they might not be able to 
 
136 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 endure have often been surprised at their 
 strength. The ways of a man’s heart are far 
 from fully known to him, and he may be in dire 
 need of help at times when he feels himself most 
 secure. The confession of sins with true peni- 
 tence for unworthy motives and firm resolve to 
 live a better life can only result in the strengthen- 
 ing of character. 
 
 It is reasonable to believe that the person who 
 in his daily walk is acquiring habits of virtue by 
 the careful cultivation of the moral and religious 
 life will find himself not unprepared, while his 
 less conscientious associates falter under trial. 
 The banker grows into an appreciation of the 
 value of honesty in his profession. It is not some- 
 thing suddenly revealed to him. With the pass- 
 ing of years, it becomes more and more evident | 
 to him that honesty is not only the best policy 
 but has worth in itself in the pleasure which ac- 
 companies a well-regulated life. That character 
 is something acquired only by painstaking and 
 persistent effort is very evident. It becomes 
 reasonable to suppose that Christ can be the 
 best guide in character-building since the world 
 consents to the fact that of all men he had the 
 most perfect character. 
 
 Certainly it could not be charged that religion 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 137 
 
 makes for immorality. It might be said that it 
 makes no difference in aman’s business reliability. 
 Yet this can be seriously and successfully ques- 
 tioned. It is a well-known fact that communities 
 that discard all religious observance soon run 
 down at the heels morally. People of character 
 do not care to move into a community which has 
 tabooed churches, for they feel that the general 
 influence there would be detrimental in the 
 extreme. And their fears are found to be well 
 grounded when a place is visited which has been 
 without religious services over a long period of 
 time. It reduces itself to a test of the fruits of 
 irreligion, and the most pronounced is a blunting 
 of the moral sense and frequently an abandon- 
 ment to sensual pleasures. The facts warrant 
 the supposition that the relation between religion 
 and morals is not neutral or indifferent. When 
 churches are well supported by the people of a 
 community, a helpful public spirit is developed 
 and there is a fraternal feeling which would 
 otherwise be lacking; educational interests are 
 fostered, and there are sharp and decisive reac- 
 tions against those practices which offend the 
 moral sense. These statements can all be sub- 
 mitted to the test of facts. The facts are such 
 that they are open to the scrutiny of the one who 
 
138 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 
 
 will investigate, and they offer a real basis for a 
 formulation of a well-founded conclusion. 
 
 The vice president of a great trust company 
 suggests how he feels about the absolute neces- 
 sity of moral integrity in both the banker and 
 the customer, and the aid which religion can be 
 to the Christian employee, when he says: “The 
 banking business is largely a matter of faith in 
 men and trust in the integrity of the officials who 
 manage it, on the one hand, and of the individuals 
 to whom it lends its funds, on the other. From 
 a purely business standpoint alone, it would 
 seem that the successful banker must be con- 
 scientious, honest, and honorable in his dealings 
 if for no other reason than to succeed. I am 
 strongly of the opinion that business ethics 
 to-day are on a higher plane than they have ever 
 been and that the enormous development of 
 commerce has been made possible only by the 
 higher standard of business men of to-day. 
 
 “{T might add further that an applicant for a 
 position with this company has a big asset in his 
 favor if he lives a consistent Christian life.” 
 And it could well be added that the banker 
 has a big asset in his favor, so far as his cus- 
 tomers are concerned, if he lives a consistent 
 Christian life. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 139 
 
 IV 
 
 There are temptations which assail the banker 
 that are rather emphasized in his profession. 
 There is the subtle temptation to take advantage 
 of the necessities of others. It is very easy to 
 argue to oneself that, since another may have to 
 secure a loan because he is in dire need, he should 
 be charged a fraction more than the regular 
 interest rate. Although the security offered 
 might be satisfactory and the moral risk excel- 
 lent, the banker might lessen the amount of the 
 loan which was desired so that the customer 
 would not have quite the amount of money he 
 actually needed. ‘There was probably some 
 sround for the complaints made by many 
 farmers, prior to the time when the Government 
 became a competitor with regular banks for farm 
 loans, in the oft-repeated charge that mortgage 
 bankers were taking advantage of their neces- 
 sities and were hampering them in legitimate 
 business. At least, many of them received a 
 somewhat different treatment at the hands of 
 certain mortgage bankers after the Government 
 became a sharp competitor for their business. 
 Illustrations could be multiplied where an exces- 
 sive desire for profit has lessened the ability of 
 bankers to achieve real success and dwarfed 
 
140 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 them in their citizenship. The words of a 
 prominent banker are pertinent when in our 
 correspondence he wrote, “I have held and do 
 hold, that the application of the Golden Rule to 
 business is thoroughly practical and the only 
 safe plan for any business or professional man to 
 follow.” Purely from the angle of good business 
 policy, it is a poor plan to take advantage of any 
 man who, for the time being, is not able to help 
 himself. An unfair advantage will rankle in his 
 heart and the confidence which otherwise would 
 have been established will have been destroyed. 
 Honesty is in truth the best policy, and the type 
 of honesty which is good policy in business is 
 very close to the finest kind of Christian con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The income of a bank is greatly increased by ° 
 its depositors who have money as a checking 
 account or who are holding money in the bank, 
 awaiting the opportunity to invest it. It is to 
 the advantage of the bank to have, through the 
 accumulated savings of many, a large amount 
 of their ready money. The available cash of 
 many accumulates until a great sum of money 
 is ‘on hand for the purpose of making loans. It. 
 is not at all probable that the depositors will 
 withdraw more than a small portion of this fund 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 141 
 
 at any one time, and if such should be the case, 
 it can generally be anticipated except when there 
 is a panic, and even for the latter the banker is 
 now protected through the Federal Reserve 
 System. There is this very sharp temptation to 
 which some bankers succumb, namely, to take 
 advantage of the weakness or ignorance of others 
 when they have funds in the bank which they 
 desire to invest, in order that their money may 
 remain on deposit and be used by the bank for 
 its own profit. 
 
 A few concrete illustrations will make this 
 more readily understood. A widow, immedi- 
 ately after her husband’s death, deposited a sum 
 of about ten thousand dollars with a certain 
 banker. The widow consulted with him about 
 how to invest the money and he advised a farm 
 loan, at the same time volunteering to place the 
 money for her. The money remained in the bank 
 for over four months with no interest paid to the 
 woman for its use and no real effort was made 
 to invest the money. During that time, she was 
 without an income from her money; she was in 
 need and both herself and her children suffered 
 because there was no income from the property. 
 Doubtless, in the course of time, her banker 
 would have obtained for her farm loans that 
 
142 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 were secure, but what he deliberately concealed 
 from her was the fact he could have invested her 
 money for her at once where it would have been 
 secured by farm mortgages that were absolutely 
 safe as investments. To his own eyes his conduct 
 might seem highly commendable when he con- 
 sidered the treatment which widows often re- 
 ceive at the hands of others. No doubt her funds 
 were secure in his bank and would be safely 
 invested in the course of time. But that course 
 of time carried with it the equivalent of a com- 
 mission in interest deferred, and, what was more 
 reprehensible, there was studied deception and 
 a mature plan to take advantage of her igno- 
 rance. It is one thing to assume no responsibility 
 for the investment of funds which may be placed 
 in a bank for safe-keeping, but it is an entirely 
 different matter to follow a carefully formulated 
 plan which involves deception for the sake of 
 profit. Of course no reputable banker would 
 engage in such a practice. The written comment 
 concerning this incident by the banker con- 
 sidered by his colleagues the foremost banker in 
 our country modifies an impression that other- 
 wise might not be true to fact: “It is to the 
 credit of bankers that such cases as the fore- 
 going are far less frequent now than in the past. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 143 
 
 Even in years gone by the banker who deliber- 
 ately and selfishly took undue advantage of 
 those with whom he dealt was the exception. 
 The ethics of banking have improved and are 
 improving with the advancement of civilization 
 and the broader and more general acceptance 
 and practice of the principles of Christianity.” 
 
 The man who handles the money of others 
 should be conservative in his actions. Bankers 
 are more careful in their business transactions 
 than any other group of men. The fact that 
 they handle the funds of others accounts in part 
 for their conservatism. They abhor speculation, 
 for it usually ends in loss and they promote only 
 those forms of business in which the security is 
 almost sure to prove adequate. It is a great and 
 worthy service in which they are engaged. To 
 be the sponsor of all legitimate business from 
 which the element of undue speculation has been 
 eliminated is a far-reaching and tremendously 
 constructive service. To promote one form of 
 business within a single country is generally be- 
 yond the power and scope of one man. But 
 when we try to think of business in its totality, 
 then it is utterly impossible for the mind to 
 comprehend the magnitude of what is meant, 
 except in the most fragmentary way. It is like 
 
144 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 trying to appreciate God’s universe by some of 
 the measures with which we are familiar, such 
 as spans, rods, or even miles. 
 
 In every civilized country 1t may be known 
 that bankers are men who have spent their lives 
 in formulating a true appreciation of what con- 
 stitutes legitimate business endeavor and that 
 they stand ready to promote any business to the 
 limit of mutual business responsibility and per- 
 haps at times, even slightly beyond that limit. 
 In no other kind of business, in its totality, is 
 there displayed the same absolute honesty, per- 
 spicacity, and comprehensive knowledge of the 
 fundamental principles of business. A cross sec- 
 tion of other forms of business at any time will 
 show, on the one hand, many who are conserva- 
 tive far beyond the necessity of security and, on ' 
 the other hand, a large number who are specu- 
 lators, taking unreasonable risks and hoping that 
 by chance they may be able to advance their 
 financial interests. he banking business at any 
 time will show a uniformity of good judgment 
 and careful aggressiveness not found in an equal 
 number of men in any other calling. It is a great 
 satisfaction to be one of that class who stand for 
 substantial achievements and solid advance- 
 ments in the business world. The group in 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 145 
 
 society to which a man belongs has much to do 
 with fashioning his character. There is a pro- 
 fessional pride which goes with every thoroughly 
 organized calling which is of incalculable benefit 
 to its members. There is a rugged honesty and 
 social helpfulness in the banking business which 
 are mighty aids in fashioning its members into 
 thoroughly reliable and constructive builders of 
 the business of the world. The banker has the 
 satisfaction of knowing that he is one of a great 
 company of useful men. Many of his predeces- 
 sors have wrought for the advancement of 
 society; his colleagues are now supporting and 
 furthering almost every legitimate human en- 
 deavor; and his successors will continue the pro- 
 gram which experience has proved is in the main 
 best suited to advance the welfare of all. 
 
 To dip into particulars with an enumeration 
 of the concrete instances of the interests pro- 
 moted by banking would be to make a catalogue 
 of human endeavors. Besides, when particulars 
 are mentioned, there are minds that feel they 
 have been contaminated. It is only with great 
 difficulty that they are able to discern the glory 
 of concrete things, for the particulars have to 
 them the effect of being sordid. Needless to say, 
 it is not possible for such individuals to have a 
 
146 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 gripping interest in the real facts of life if, when- 
 ever they touch them, they feel in some way 
 humiliated. The banker deals with very definite 
 things: this particular piece of land, that store 
 building, this mile of pavement, that block of 
 school bonds, this grain elevator, and that bunch 
 of cattle. The banker revels in facts; and, if he 
 will, he may discern that general ideals get body, 
 and that assurance is gained of the worth of 
 ideals as he sees them work and as he witnesses 
 their particular behavior when subjected to the 
 trial of specific instances. 
 
 It is not always easy to distinguish between 
 the speculative tendencies and the progressive 
 business ideals of the constituents of the bank. 
 This is more difficult for the older men in the 
 banking business than it is for the younger men. | 
 The tone of business in our generation may 
 differ from that of the preceding generation. It 
 is only natural that the policies of youth and 
 middle age should be adhered to in old age. No 
 criticism could be brought against such a pro- 
 cedure if the world made no progress and if the 
 conditions did not change. But nothing is more 
 evident than the tremendous development in 
 industrialism in the last generation. It has pro- 
 duced men of infinitely greater executive ability 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 147 
 
 than have existed before. Fifty years ago it was 
 almost impossible to conceive of a man having 
 in his control the interests represented by 
 combinations now existing in steel or oil or rail- 
 roads. These great aggregations of capital re- 
 quire men of the rarest business ability to direct 
 them and they make demands on bankers to see 
 things in the large in ways to which they have 
 not been accustomed. It is felt that business 
 practice to-day is on a much higher plane than 
 at any other time in our national life. Perhaps 
 the greatest single cause of this advancement 
 has been the unprecedented expansion in busi- 
 ness with the subsequent demand for big men 
 to handle its affairs. The modern banker must 
 take account of the social and moral progress 
 made in our day if he is to deal in equity with 
 his customers. These words from a prominent 
 banker suggest that there is a better spirit than 
 formerly in the business world: “The funda- 
 mental moral problem of the banking business 
 is, of course, honesty. In my experience of nearly 
 twenty years, [ am glad to say that I find the 
 honesty of the individuals and institutions is on 
 a higher plane than it used to be; men do not take 
 advantage of each other as much as formerly, and 
 are more careful in their obligations.” 
 
148 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 V 
 
 There are many special opportunities for help- 
 fulness in a bank. Men are not always clear in 
 their own minds as to what sums they desire to 
 borrow and often they are not sure that they 
 should enter upon acertain undertaking. Bankers 
 frequently are asked what they think of a con- 
 templated business venture, and out of a broad 
 experience they may advise in a very profitable 
 way. Many times they can keep men from 
 assuming burdens under which in all probability 
 they would fail. They can often so counsel that 
 a young man in a growing business may go from 
 success to success. Then there is the satisfaction 
 of having aided in the development of a strong 
 and forceful business man. The weak make a 
 special appeal to the friendliness of the banker. ' 
 The Old Testament does not neglect to repeat 
 that God will show favor to those who are good 
 to widows and orphans. About the most helpless 
 person in the world is a widow who has given of 
 her strength and thought to the rearing of a 
 family and the providing of a home for all its 
 members. Her husband frequently has assumed 
 every business care, and upon his death she finds 
 herself utterly unfit to shoulder any business 
 responsibility. She may not even know that a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 149 
 
 check made out to her should be endorsed when 
 presented at the bank. It is pitiful and tragic 
 when she has had absolutely no business train- 
 ing. Society takes advantage of her weakness in 
 many ways. Frequently it seems as though 
 human vultures were hovering over widows, bent 
 on their destruction. With the pittance that may 
 be left her, she frequently turns to the banker 
 for counsel. He is equipped to keep funds in 
 safety and he has the ability to place money in 
 the form of loans where the investment is secure 
 and the interest reasonable. [f he is a man of a 
 kind heart and is really trying to serve others 
 when the opportunity offers, he can do no nobler 
 act of service to society than to minister to 
 widows and orphans in their helplessness and 
 their affliction. The Saviour of men was par- 
 ticularly tender toward the helpless and the 
 weak. It is a mark of one possessing his spirit to 
 take advantage of opportunities to aid those 
 who are in distress. 
 
 The banker builds himself into the local 
 interests of his community. His business pros- 
 pers as he promotes the interests of those who 
 are in his community. In time he comes to know 
 the failings and weakness of ordinary human 
 nature as well as the hidden worth of many 
 
150 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 lives. The only way in which we are able to help 
 our fellow men is to be related to them in these 
 intimate ways. When their interest becomes 
 ours, then they are near enough to be really, 
 influenced by our opinions and our deeds. 
 
 The banker has to guard himself against being 
 warped by the narrowness, dishonesty, and un- 
 faithfulness around him. He deals with many 
 who have no interest in religion and who are 
 watching him closely to see if his religion shows 
 in any way in his conduct. There is one class 
 of men with whom he has great influence and 
 they are the hardest of any group of men to 
 touch with religious truth. They are men of real 
 business ability, and hence of means, who have 
 made gold their god. With fanatical zeal they 
 have bent their energies to the accumulation of » 
 money. They respect only those able to make 
 money or those who have it. The banker is a 
 man who is able to accumulate money. He 
 generally possesses money. He is a successful 
 business man and is in daily contact with those 
 who prosper in business ways. Men who worship 
 money are generally keen judges of character, 
 and if the banker lives before them, keeping his 
 institution in a sound and liquid condition as a 
 means of helpfulness to others, not grasping but 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER ou 
 
 receiving a fair interest for service rendered, he 
 exerts a real influence for good on those greedy 
 and money-intoxicated customers. He may be 
 the only man in the community who is able to 
 reach them in a religious way, and that by his 
 deeds more than by his words. If his deeds are 
 not equal to or better than his words, they will 
 sneer at the futility of all religion and cite him 
 as an example of its worthlessness. The teaching 
 is that there should be hope for all and while, 
 humanly -speaking, it may often seem that cer- 
 tain men are not to be influenced by the ordinary 
 religious services of a community, yet there is 
 always the possibility that the daily walk of 
 some humble servant of the Saviour may recall 
 to them the beauty and power and comfort that 
 exists in true religion. 
 
 VI 
 
 It might be thought that forgiveness would 
 not need to play any conspicuous part in the life 
 of the banker. Yet in the memory of this genera- 
 tion there have probably been at least two times 
 when they have been obliged to ask practically 
 all of their customers to forgive them their debts. 
 They have asked the public in times of financial 
 stress not to draw any considerable amount out 
 
152 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of the banks, even though they held the legal 
 right to do so. The public has treated them with 
 consideration at such times. The banker has 
 been indebted to practically every older de- 
 positor for consideration shown in times of 
 financial strain, when to have withdrawn sums 
 of money of any consequence would have crip- 
 pled or perhaps even ruined the bank. It might 
 be well for some bankers to recall this kindness 
 shown by the public when customers who are 
 worthy desire an extension of credit at a time of 
 real need. They themselves were forgiven much 
 and it becomes them in the hour of another’s 
 adversity to remember the many debts that for 
 the time were forgiven them. 
 
 An eminent banker commenting on the pre- 
 ceding paragraph has revealed the need of 
 mutual consideration in difficult situations and 
 corrected the one-sidedness of its views when he 
 writes as he has been taught by experience: 
 “This paragraph goes too far. The position of 
 the banks during times of panic is incorrectly 
 stated. The banks did not ask ‘practically all of 
 their customers to forgive them their debts.’ 
 The banks were willing to and did forgive their 
 debtors quite as much as their debtors forgave 
 them. You overlook the fact that the heaviest 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 153 
 
 bank depositors are also as a rule the heaviest 
 bank borrowers. The commercial banks could 
 have paid off most of their deposit debtors by 
 turning back to them their own obligations for 
 money borrowed. The savings banks took ad- 
 vantage of the terms on which their savings 
 deposits were received, that is, subject to sixty 
 days’ notice of withdrawal. Panics are times 
 when mutual forbearance between the banks and 
 their customers is essential. At such times 
 customers have quite as great reason for asking 
 the banks to forgive them their debts as the 
 banks have to ask their customers to forgive 
 them theirs. 
 
 “Borrowers, worthy of credit, have no occasion 
 to remind bankers of the kindness shown them 
 by their depositors during panics. If they are 
 worthy of credit the bankers would be very glad 
 to grant it; that is the banker’s business—he is 
 looking for just such customers. The banker 
 however, acts in a judiciary capacity and should 
 never let his sympathy for individual adversity 
 be affected by remembrance of how the bank was 
 treated by the public during a panic. Each bor- 
 rower must stand on his own feet and his obliga- 
 tion for a loan must be considered on his indi- 
 vidual merits. Worthy borrowers confer as 
 
154 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 great a favor on the bank when they borrow its 
 money and pay interest on it as the bank confers 
 on them by letting them have the money. The 
 transaction is purely one of mutual benefit 
 equally shared on both sides of it. 
 
 ‘During one of the panics, | asked a customer 
 to pay a matured loan and on his declining to do 
 so, I requested him to sell some of the collateral 
 securities we held for the debt. His answer was: 
 “You will have to sell them yourself if they must 
 be sold; by so doing you will become guilty of 
 financial murder, but you cannot expect me to 
 commit financial suicide.’ The securities could 
 not then be sold except at a terrible sacrifice. 
 Neither murder nor suicide took place, the loan 
 was carried through the panic, and both the 
 borrower and the bank survived; both came out. 
 financially. sound and are to-day in excellent 
 credit.” 
 
 Vil 
 
 The recent war has strengthened the impulse 
 to think internationally. It is evident that 
 economic welfare is dependent upon a sound 
 financial policy throughout the world. Modern 
 states were rather isolated in their development. 
 Hence, the economic problems were largely of a 
 national character and within the separate 
 
THE CHRISTIAN BANKER 155 
 
 states. Now that the nations are closely de- 
 pendent upon one another those who plan the 
 economic program of any nation must think in 
 terms of humanity if they desire to avoid strife. 
 The nation which cannot adjust itself to the fact 
 that it has a place in a world order will promote 
 contention. [If we are to learn anything from the 
 late war it should be that suspicion, hatred, and 
 selfishness must be displaced by good will in 
 which the welfare of all is sought as the means 
 of safety for each one. Since bankers represent 
 the united financial strength of any nation, a 
 program of codperation among bankers which is 
 international in scope has become a_ business 
 necessity. The exact form which the effort 
 assumes is immaterial; that it should be at- 
 tempted is obvious. 
 
 Bankers can reckon with Jesus as the only 
 reconstructive power able to lead mankind into 
 a fraternity of nations, or they can disregard him 
 and fortify the economic situation in each nation 
 as best they can in preparation for other wars. 
 Allegiance to Jesus has become an economic 
 necessity. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 
 I 
 
 F the editor is to be a recorder of events of 
 
 public interest and an interpreter of the 
 changes which occur in society, he must have 
 at least a partly formed philosophy of the nature 
 of the world whose happenings he chronicles. 
 The query, “What is truth?” is very modern as 
 well as exceedingly ancient. The answer given 
 will finally depend upon what one conceives to 
 be the nature of reality. 
 
 Men have divided into two groups as they 
 have attempted to answer this question. On the 
 one hand, they have said there is such a thing 
 as absolute truth, and they have hoped and 
 believed that it could be known. On the other 
 hand, they have held that truth is more or less 
 ready-made and is created, in fact, by the one 
 who really tries to discover it. The idea that 
 truth is some petrified thing with a very ancient 
 history, already complete in itself, and that it is 
 to be dug out of the débris of ancient civilization, 
 is sharply questioned in our day. Truth has a 
 way of appearing as the necessary thing that 
 
 156 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 157 
 
 should be done in our present life. It wraps 
 itself about us in our practical needs. It fur- 
 nishes the connections without which we would 
 be unable to advance. It has that elusive 
 quality which we describe as suggestive. It 
 carries that solid impact made by the axioms of 
 mathematics. It guides us near to that which 
 seems final and finished in thought only to dis- 
 close to us that farther on we may draw nearer 
 to that which is real. Always it supplies some 
 of our multifarious needs and lures us into un- 
 explored realms where marvelous vistas of virgin 
 fields lie before us. To suggest to many that 
 truth is something which grows is to give them 
 a severe nervous shock. In their scheme of 
 things, it has become so beautifully finished, so 
 comprehensively grasped, so aristocratically es- 
 tablished, that the discovery that it may be 
 modified and enlarged, makes them mentally 
 dizzy and confused. To others, the plasticity of 
 truth offers a challenge because it can be modi- 
 fied by grafting on here and lopping off there 
 until it is more satisfactory and is not so stunted 
 by sapping growths. The possibility of a better 
 world, even though the truth must take chances 
 of not always developing in the most satis- 
 factory way, is always a sufficient compensation 
 
158 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 for the loss of one too formal and rigid with out- 
 worn conventions. A conservation of values 
 which have come to us out of the past is all that 
 we may reasonably expect in a growing world. 
 Truth gathers itself about a viewpoint. The 
 carpenter squints along the edge of a board and 
 if it is straight he calls it true. The mechanic 
 adjusts a wheel until its motion is even, and 
 then says it runs true. So we may say without 
 disparagement of any of these dignified and even 
 austere subjects, that there may be a religious, 
 economic, political, evolutionary, or esthetic 
 approach to the same facts, depending on the 
 way in which the subject matter is viewed. 
 While truth may have this pliability for restless 
 and inquisitive souls, it is none the less to be 
 recognized that there are many definite re- 
 straints upon it because of things which are self- 
 evident, and also on account of the products of 
 an extensive experience which set very definite 
 boundaries to the liberties that may be taken 
 with it. 
 
 Grant the editor the wide margin of freedom 
 that is consistent with a liberal view of truth, 
 and still for him there is penty of room for moral 
 heroism, devotion, and a genuine service. The 
 core of commonly accepted responsibility is: 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 159 
 
 sufficient to demand the full use of all his talents. 
 Should he be a creative spirit in furthering 
 human welfare, a tolerance founded on the per- 
 spective of history will be a great aid to him in 
 all his constructive endeavor. However, the 
 moral problem of the editor is much simpler than 
 any refinement concerning the nature of truth 
 in the abstract would suggest. His moral 
 problem is very humble. Will he refuse to lie 
 when he knows clearly that he should not? Will 
 he print the obvious truth? Will he state the 
 facts concerning those events which are of 
 public interest, when to do so would promote 
 public welfare? Will he be honest in the ordinary 
 meaning of that term? 
 
 The more conscientious editors feel that at all 
 times and under all circumstances they should 
 be blind to everything but the truth. Each pro- 
 fession rests on some fundamental virtue. Thus, 
 the fundamental virtue of the soldier would be 
 courage. In journalism the essential virtue is 
 _truth-telling, just as with the banker the primary 
 virtue is honesty. Cowardice will disorganize an 
 army and hypocrisy will eat in a church like a 
 cancer. Likewise, failure to print the truth 
 destroys the moral value of a newspaper whether 
 it is a weekly or daily sheet. This does not mean, 
 
160 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of course, that occasional lapses from the truth 
 because of the inaccuracy of some reporter, or 
 even the careless perversion of some news, is 
 necessarily fatal to its usefulness, but it does 
 mean that habitual untrustworthiness renders it 
 a moral menace to the community. Those papers 
 which thrive financially by means of the perver- 
 sion of the truth are a moral menace, as are 
 unjust judges or corrupt physicians or dishonest 
 bankers. In so far as the editor fails to endeavor 
 earnestly to print the truth, he becomes a force 
 working for the disintegration of the highest 
 ideals that have been developed within his 
 calling. 
 
 The practical problem which confronts the 
 editor is whether or not he will be a truthful 
 man. It is the problem of moral faithfulness not 
 to some obscure or even questionable standard, 
 but to one that is generally accepted as right and 
 worthy by practically all his colleagues. The 
 great decision which has to be made is whether 
 or not he will steadfastly serve the truth, or 
 whether he will be controlled by temporary 
 expediency or even by the firmly established 
 forces of evil. The great decision resolves itself 
 into a test of moral integrity. Will the editor 
 be sincere? Will he be truthful? Will he set his 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 161 
 
 face to travel the road of truth-telling, though 
 often it is rocky and uphill? Where will he be 
 found when tested in the making of this momen- 
 tous decision? And once he has decided to 
 champion the truth, will he not be weaned from 
 his high resolve by the numberless demands 
 made upon him to be less than sincere and 
 strictly honorable? 
 
 The more extensive the interests of any com- 
 munity, the closer it should come to an apprecia- 
 tion of facts and the stronger and the more suc- 
 cessful should be the efforts that are made 
 within it to understand the facts. No com- 
 munity can long continue to progress which does 
 not have a high regard for facts. The more 
 numerous the interests of any community, the 
 more urgent is the need of uncolored or im- 
 partial news. It has come to pass that a great 
 newspaper mirrors a very important part of the 
 life of the people. The details of that life should 
 be depicted more and more accurately, for a 
 thorough appreciation of the life of various sec-. 
 tions and peoples is the only basis to be laid for 
 mutual regard and the harmonizing of existing 
 differences. The facts in any single event are 
 the same for our western coast as they are for 
 our eastern border. Facts are what they are in 
 
162 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 themselves, and are not subject to changes 
 because of geography. The facts of a theft in 
 Portland should be no different when the same 
 story is reported in Galveston or Charlestown. 
 The people are entitled to the facts concerning 
 any event of public interest. If their information 
 is accurate they may decide concerning public 
 issues in such a manner as to promote public 
 welfare, but if their sources of information are 
 biased by selfish interests then they can only 
 muddle through, no matter how earnestly a 
 majority may seek to promote public welfare. 
 It is no unreasonable demand that publications 
 should give the facts to the public. 
 
 Jesus had a passion for facts. For him, certain 
 things were eternally true for man, and he with- 
 held his approval from the sham and false con- | 
 ventionality of his day. His ministry was one 
 on behalf of unalterable facts of which he was 
 fully aware. The faith of the apostles was 
 factual, resting on two pillars: First, they knew 
 Jesus personally; and second that he rose from 
 the dead. No other teacher ever faced evil so 
 squarely and fearlessly. One less factually in- 
 clined than Jesus would have minimized the 
 heinousness of evil and blurred the moral dis- 
 tinctions which he gave to mankind. Thus, the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 163 
 
 love of facts is deep-rooted in Christian teaching. 
 
 There is the temptation for the editor to speak 
 without adequate information because the read- 
 ers expect instant utterance on topics of current 
 interest. Since the work of journalism is neces- 
 sarily hurried, it naturally follows that opinions 
 are often formed without due deliberation. A 
 reputation for veracity may be established by 
 dealing with the more reliable news agencies, 
 employing the more conscientious reporters, and 
 writing on such themes as are somewhat thor- 
 oughly understood, or at least are open to careful 
 investigation. 
 
 The pith of democracy is that in the long run 
 the average man will do that which is fair and 
 for the best interests of the group. To believe 
 in the fairness of the average man, and to commit 
 our interests to him with the conviction that in 
 the main his judgment will be just, is to accept 
 democracy as a fact rather than as a theory. 
 The newspaper is the school of the people and it 
 - depends upon them for its support. By believing 
 finally that the judgment of the people will be 
 just, the editor is only faithful to that light 
 which illumines the way for all men of the same 
 character and faith in democracy. The news- 
 paper is so fitted to be the champion of de- 
 
164 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 mocracy that it is a tragedy when it becomes the 
 mouthpiece of any class possessing special privi- 
 leges. In such an aristocracy there is a settled 
 distrust of the average man which prevents the 
 existence of any real confidence between them 
 and the people. The camaraderie necessary for 
 the finest united effort cannot be secured. Where 
 there is conviction of the fairness of the average 
 man and of his willingness to support that which 
 is right, there is a union which furthers trust and 
 makes possible an esprit de corps that inspires the 
 whole group to accomplish the things that pro- 
 mote its welfare. 
 II 
 
 Is there any single newspaper suited to meet 
 the needs of the American people asa whole? 
 Such a publication is-hardly possible because of’ 
 the vast distances between the various parts of 
 the country, the diversity of the interests of the 
 land, the lack of uniformity in national spirit 
 and life. Where the people of a country hold the 
 same ideals, observe like customs, are controlled 
 by the same sentiments, and are not sharply di- 
 vided in religion, education, and politics, there 
 is the possibility of a paper’s fashioning and di- 
 recting the thought of a whole people. in our 
 sreat cities there are multitudes who cannot 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 165 
 
 read the English language, and although they 
 are held together by the bonds of democracy, 
 the culture of the Saxon peoples is to them a 
 closed book. They have recreated the life of 
 their mother countries within this land. Even 
 though there were a uniformity of ideals, which 
 is now lacking, the interests of the different 
 sections of the land are so diverse that no single 
 paper would answer for all. The interests of 
 New York are not those of vast agricultural re- 
 gions of the Middle West or of the mining sec- 
 tions of the far West. When geographical isola- 
 tion of the various parts of the country is added 
 to the almost insurmountable difficulties already 
 mentioned, then the possibility of the single 
 great American newspaper vanishes. 
 
 When all these diversities are noted and to 
 them is added the consideration that the local 
 paper represents the interests of a number of 
 groups rather than the community in its totality, | 
 the demand that the editor should be well in- 
 formed becomes apparent. Even in a small 
 town the interests of a small paper are widely 
 varied. All phases of political, religious, busi- 
 ness, and social life are brought to the attention 
 of the editor and he is forced to value them in a 
 harmful, helpful, or commonplace way. The 
 
166 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 business directory in the back of the telephone 
 book of any city will suggest the public that is 
 to be informed through the paper and the mul- 
 titude of interests lying within the life of a 
 municipality. 
 ae LET 
 
 The position of the ancient Greek philosopher, 
 that to know the right is to do it, is hardly 
 tenable because the will to accomplish the right 
 is often weak; yet the editor cannot deal justly 
 with the people about him unless he is intelligent. 
 He should be acquainted with the facts about 
 any matter which he may discuss, else he will 
 not only form shallow judgments but in all 
 probability will do injustice as well. The editor 
 stands in need of that practical education which 
 will make him conversant with at least the core 
 of the main facts of life. With regard to this 
 consensus of knowledge, he should have passed 
 judgment upon it and assigned to the parts 
 their relative worth. This is what may be meant 
 by a liberal education—the system of judgments 
 held as valid by the world at large. With such 
 a foundation in the knowledge of the essentials 
 of life, he will be saved from the blind service of 
 a number of unworthy causes. This culture will 
 guard him from furthering errors of government, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 167 
 
 education, and religion and it will maintain him 
 in the sane and constructive views of that fine 
 common sense which is the inheritance of all 
 who will acquire a liberal education. When he 
 has sensed the continuity of the world’s life and 
 has realized that our present life is largely con- 
 trolled by the accumulated wisdom of the past, 
 he will then be able to accept a worth-while 
 policy which will stand the test of experience and 
 enable him to be loyal to a constructive program. 
 
 It is in religion that a man is first able to lo- 
 cate the North Star of his life and the cardinal 
 points indicated thereby. Religion deals with 
 man’s life in its totality and makes him aware 
 of his origin, his present obligations, and _ his 
 destiny. What is true for him as an individual 
 also holds as explanatory of the life of all man- 
 kind. It might seem that religion bakes no 
 bread, but it does that which is of much more 
 value to men; it makes life infinitely worth- 
 while by furnishing it a constructive program 
 and assuring it of an altogether profitable out- 
 come in which life is secure and each is to re- 
 ceive the reward he has honestly won. Christ 
 had almost unbounded confidence in men. He 
 taught that the day would come when all would 
 serve him as members of his Kingdom. Then he 
 
168 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 left the establishment of that Kingdom to the 
 apostles and those who were to succeed them. 
 Men have been marvelously trusted by the 
 Christ who believed that out of their hearts and 
 minds and by the labor of their hands, inspired 
 and strengthened by him, the new world society 
 was to become a reality. We live in a day when 
 that which was a world vision of the Saviour is 
 swiftly becoming a fact, when whole nations are 
 discarding the trumpery of kings and when the 
 sway of the people is being felt as never before. 
 These movements are essentially Christian in 
 spirit because they trust mankind as such. At 
 first glance, it might seem that Jesus trusted 
 only those whose hearts were right, but a closer 
 scrutiny reveals the profound conviction that 
 there would be a day when all men would be- 
 come virtuous and spiritual and happy. The 
 optimism of Jesus considered all the hard facts 
 of life and then in spite of the strength of evil 
 as it was intrenched in habits and barricaded 
 behind unworthy traditions, He assumed that 
 the day would come when wrong should be 
 utterly banished from this fair world and only 
 love should have sway. The editor needs Christ 
 as the North Star of his life that he may be able 
 to orient himself and that he may be truly 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 169 
 
 democratic at heart, not weakening in the con- 
 viction of the final and complete triumph of 
 democracy. 
 IV 
 
 Journalism as it exists to-day is of compara- 
 tively recent growth. The professions of teaching 
 and medicine and the calling of the clergy are 
 ancient. In the latter, a moral idealism has de- 
 veloped in which the obligations of the members 
 are sharply defined and where the finest stand- 
 ards of morality are the common working prop- 
 erty of the members of these professions. There 
 is no printed canon of ethics for journalism. 
 There is a growing sentiment that a more posi- 
 tive morality should become the recognized 
 standard of all journalists. Such norms of con- 
 duct have not been definitely formulated by 
 journalists as a class and then generally and 
 firmly accepted by them. In practice, journalists 
 should be as moral as the better groups of pro- 
 fessional men. In the learned professions, the 
 teaching of Jesus has played a very important 
 part in the formal statement of their obligations. 
 It yet remains for journalism to state with clear- 
 ness the ethical standards which are to be ac- 
 cepted as its moral guides. When this is done, it 
 is to be hoped that it will be strong in permanent 
 
® 
 
 170 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 idealism. There is much in our day to cause us 
 to believe that this task will be attempted and 
 that it will be well done. 
 
 V 
 
 The editor maintains many contacts with so- 
 ciety where, for money considerations or those 
 of preferment or advancement, he finds that it 
 would be expedient for him either to be silent or 
 to pervert the truth. On the one hand, there 
 may be peace, friendship, social position, and a 
 more pronounced business success. On the 
 other, there may be the loss of intimate friends, 
 the hatred of many, financial reverses, and 
 mediocrity in business success. The distinction 
 is as Sharply drawn as has just been indicated. 
 We have no reason to believe that a man may 
 not suffer real loss as well as get gain in the 
 service of righteousness. A patience is born 
 when undergoing testings on behalf of virtue 
 which springs from two great facts of religion: 
 First, that righteousness is sure to triumph in 
 the long run; and, second, that every man shall 
 be rewarded according to his deeds. The editor 
 who loses the capacity to discern moral dis- 
 tinctions with clearness will cease to be just, 
 fair, and open-minded, and will become biased 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 171 
 
 and hampered in his judgments. Then his paper 
 cannot but be a detriment to the community 
 which it should serve. 
 
 The temptation to injustice in journalism may 
 be reduced in part to certain definite types. 
 Business houses may demand advertising of a 
 type which the editor feels is not in harmony 
 with the policy of a paper of established integ- 
 rity. They may resent any statement about 
 their methods of treating employees, or the 
 manner of conducting their business, or any 
 derogatory review of their conduct in social or 
 political matters. They may even demand that 
 advertising of a harmful nature shall be carried, 
 and accompany these demands with threats of 
 financial loss. Business men realize the impor- 
 tance of having publications approve average 
 business methods since the strong and the weak 
 points of business are reflected in periodicals and 
 newspapers. Any publication which seeks to 
 print news impartially will be judged as hostile 
 to business, and will be either purchased, de- 
 stroyed, or continually fought by business men. 
 Few publications can hope to survive when ad- 
 vertising is withdrawn, and unless the editor 
 plays the game according to the rules laid down 
 by business he will be eliminated. This accounts 
 
172 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 for the disappearance of many really impartial 
 magazines or newspapers. They have not been 
 able to withstand the hostility of business for 
 any length of time. The newspapers and periodi- 
 cals of our country with very few exceptions are 
 owned or controlled by business interests and 
 the public has few sources of impartial informa- 
 tion. Even the editorials are colored to suit the 
 demands made by business. The reporter can 
 learn to write copy which is acceptable to busi- 
 ness or he will be discharged. If he is honest, 
 he will be humiliated repeatedly by seeing his 
 copy cut or rewritten to suit the demands of 
 advertisers. That which is most repugnant in 
 the situation is that many papers pose as pro- 
 moters of public welfare when in all important 
 matters they take their orders from business. 
 They may be very altruistic concerning affairs 
 in which business is not directly interested. 
 Great good may be accomplished by giving 
 publicity to such enterprise. However, the real 
 tests of manhood in editorial work are found 
 where the publication is in contact with busi- 
 ness. One of the bitterest contests fought by 
 intrenched interests against a periodical which 
 was at that time a valiant champion of public 
 welfare was when those profiting by the sale of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR WG 
 
 patent medicines attempted to restrain a weekly 
 paper from exposing the methods they used and 
 the evils they promoted. The religious press has 
 been used extensively to advertise these medi- 
 cines. In this particular, these publications 
 have failed to maintain a high moral standard. 
 Quack doctors and promoters of wildcat schemes 
 of securing money easily are eager to use the 
 newspapers as their advertising agencies to 
 further their nefarious practices. 
 
 Politicians may bring tremendous pressure to 
 bear on a paper to force it to favor their policies 
 in its editorials and to compel it to color its news. 
 They control so many influences that to oppose 
 them means financial loss, or another paper 
 started by them whose policies they can con- 
 trol. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a tendency to overstate 
 the influence of big business and of politics upon 
 editorial work as a whole. Since the great ma- 
 jority of our newspapers are printed according 
 to the judgment of the men who edit them, the 
 greatest need of the American press is character 
 on the part of its publishers. Newspapers are 
 generally successful when they are controlled 
 by upright men who own them and who give to 
 the papers their time and their talent. Such 
 
174 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 papers are successful because they merit rec- 
 ognition and are not controlled by political 
 interests or outside business influences. 
 
 Vi 
 
 It is important to know what not to publish 
 as well as what to print. Scarcely a day passes 
 without editors being asked to print some article 
 which would wound some heart or cause the 
 tongue of gossip to wag. Many items should be 
 omitted because their publication would cause 
 unnecessary and useless suffering since, at the 
 most, only a very few really may be concerned. 
 The possession of the qualities of discernment 
 and kindness are essential. If the editor is gov- 
 erned by pure motives and high ideals, questions 
 will be settled invariably by determining whether 
 the public will be served best by publishing or 
 omitting certain items. No real service of the 
 public demands brutal publicity of the private 
 life of individuals. Even when publicity be- 
 comes necessary, the subject may be presented 
 in such a way as to show fairness and kindly 
 consideration. Often after mature deliberation, 
 the editor will decide that articles are unfit for 
 publication on account of the direct or the in- 
 direct influence they would exert on the moral 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 175 
 
 interests of the community he would serve. 
 
 Christ’s teaching tends to prevent abuse or 
 unwarranted criticism of any individual. In 
 the heat of a contest it is often difficult to refrain 
 from making statements that might easily be 
 classed as abuse and it is natural to indulge in 
 derogatory criticism which may have no basis 
 in fact. The paper may easily be used as an 
 organ of spite and the editor may forget that 
 with a large audience on his subscription list, 
 he is taking a very unfair advantage of another 
 who has no public means of reply. Jesus’ teach- 
 ing has unconsciously restrained those who 
 would otherwise use the paper as a means of 
 revenge for fancied or actual personal wrongs. 
 
 Jesus has lessened the publicity that might be 
 given the frailties and shortcomings of others by 
 exposing them to the view of a curious public. 
 Even though some papers may print news al- 
 most irrespective of the feelings or interests of 
 those who are the most vitally concerned, still 
 there is a moderation shown by most papers, of 
 the source of which they may be quite uncon- 
 scious. Through the influence of some good 
 mother, teacher, business man, book, or friend, 
 they have unconsciously learned to apply the 
 Golden Rule of consideration for others. It is a 
 
176 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 rare compliment when it is said of a man that 
 he is fair in his judgments and dealings. It isa 
 mark of thorough training and fine achievement 
 in newspaper work to be able to gather and pre- 
 sent material of public interest from the view- 
 point of a disinterested and intelligent spectator 
 and without personal bias. 
 
 Vil 
 
 The editor needs the influence of Christianity 
 to create and maintain in him sensitiveness to 
 moral values. The love of justice was ingrained 
 in all Biblical writers. Not only is there a con- 
 stand demand made upon the editor to maintain 
 his personal integrity, but also in all moral rela- 
 tions which come before him for valuation, re- 
 buke, and approval, the need of righteousness 
 should be continually stressed. As the sharp 
 edge of a tool is dulled by constant use, so the 
 experiences of life often blur those fine distinc- 
 tions of right and wrong that were once very 
 definite and that furnished unequivocal guidance 
 in conduct. The teaching of Jesus not only wak- 
 ens convictions of righteousness but also sus- 
 tains and nourishes them by all the devotion in- 
 spired by a love of virtue itself. The believer 
 should be entirely committed to the furtherance 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR Ly 
 
 ~l 
 
 of righteousness. To its promotion our Saviour 
 gave his life, and one who serves him should be 
 consumed by a like zeal in seeking to hasten the 
 day when in all the relationships of life men shall 
 deal with one another in justice and equity. 
 
 There are various types of courage. There is 
 the arousal of instinctive bravery when threat- 
 ened by sudden disaster. The bigot or fanatic 
 may disregard disaster. The well-informed and 
 thoughtful person may face danger with a 
 knowledge of the real risk incurred. The 
 editor has little need of the first kind of bravery. 
 He may possess the courage of the bigot, but 
 what is most to be desired is that bravery which 
 is united with intelligence. When courage is 
 directed by intelligence, it is generally accom- 
 panied by kindness, for it is usually those of 
 either perverted or immature judgment who are 
 cruel. A balanced judgment is perfected by the 
 possession of refinement of feeling and a mind - 
 which has been stored with well-established 
 convictions. 
 
 The editor who has not simply the courage of 
 convictions but also the courage of convictions 
 that are worth-while is best fitted to serve his 
 fellow men. It is not always easy to fulfill an ob- 
 vious obligation, especially when it is clear that 
 
178 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 there will be some loss connected with it. Oft- 
 times it is a question of position, or of a chance 
 to work, or of advancement which is at stake, 
 rather than some momentous sacrifice. When 
 it becomes clear that loyalty to obvious duties 
 will mean a slow accumulation of forces which 
 will work disadvantageously, then the real 
 moral courage of a man is thoroughly tested. 
 It is easy to be gripped by pessimism or distrust 
 when there has been a prolonged struggle on 
 behalf of right, especially if there have been real 
 reverses. The mellowing influence of genuine 
 well-wishing for our enemies, as well as for our 
 friends, will do much to save from bitterness 
 those who have the courage to be found loyal to 
 their convictions. 
 
 A certain detachment is often to the advan- 
 tage of the editor, particularly if he seeks no 
 political office. If he is cordial, but not too at- 
 tached, to men in position of influence, he will 
 be able to act in an impersonal way when their 
 interests are at stake. Thus he will avoid that 
 worst sort of enemy, the one who has been a 
 friend and who feels that his friendship has been 
 betrayed. 
 
 The cause of promoting the public welfare is 
 that to which the editor should give all of his 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 179 
 
 talent and heart’s devotion. If over many years 
 he has lived to promote public welfare rather 
 than class interests, he is amply rewarded in the 
 consciousness of having served his fellow men. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Talk changes opinions. The place of the 
 school, the orator, and the Church has been 
 taken in large part by the press. It has no 
 audible voice, but 1t has become the educa- 
 tional agency for the masses of the people. 
 The trend of their daily thought is determined 
 by the newspaper they read and their convic- 
 tions are crystallized by what it approves or 
 censures. It is the greatest single agency in the 
 creation and direction of the opinions of mature 
 men and women. The ordinary citizen influ- 
 ences a very limited audience. The newspaper 
 may speak to thousands daily until they have 
 consciously or unconsciously become converted 
 to its views. It can crush or at least control any 
 vice or dishonest business practice by repeatedly 
 calling attention to its baneful influence. It can 
 make and unsettle politicians, compel our in- 
 efficient police departments to enforce existing 
 laws, and put fear into the hearts of judges who 
 are controlled by outside influences. It can bring 
 
180 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 about reforms in business practices, alleviate the 
 condition of labor, promote education, encourage 
 religion, and advance every cause that seeks to 
 establish a more wholesome democracy. It may 
 be the greatest terror to the forces of evil and 
 the valiant champion of all worth-while causes. 
 ‘Pitiless publicity’’ is a phrase which describes 
 accurately the power of the press to crush an 
 existing evil by driving it into the light and re- 
 peatedly exposing its harmful consequences to 
 view. And the converse is just as true, that 
 through publicity any worthy cause may obtain 
 a hearing and secure a fair chance of victory. 
 Public opinion in its formation passes through 
 the same stages as those by which a crowd be- 
 comes united in thought and feeling. At first 
 there is little uniformity of opinion, individual 
 differences are prominent, and there is not the 
 compulsion which comes from large numbers 
 holding common beliefs. As the crowd is won 
 by arguments and by appeals to sentiment and 
 is thus welded together until there is uniformity 
 of conviction, so public sentiment forms slowly 
 under the stress of repeated arguments and ex- 
 hortations until the group holds common views 
 and is ready to act. In a crowd, the orator may 
 be the one who is able to bring about unity of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN EDITOR 181 
 
 thought and feeling, but when people are 
 scattered over wide areas, their attention can be 
 caught and retained only by a simultaneous ap- 
 peal through the press. A heavy responsibility 
 rests on an editor because he deals with the 
 public rather than with individuals. That is, he 
 may influence business one day, patriotism an- 
 other, athletics another, or all and many other 
 interests at the same time. The editor thereby 
 becomes a public person in a very pronounced 
 way because he is concerned with everything 
 which interests the public. His business is pub- 
 licity. It is his stock in trade. Every aspect of 
 his profession from the headliners of the front 
 page to the smallest want advertisement is ar- 
 ranged with a view to interesting the readers. 
 The attempt to produce an article which the 
 public will desire and approve develops a dis- 
 criminating judgment as to the news value of 
 the day’s happenings and a real appreciation of 
 social movements at the time when public 
 sentiment is being created. His profession offers 
 almost unparalleled opportunity for public serv- 
 ice if the editor has formulated any programs that 
 are really constructive. | 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 
 
 I 
 
 DUCATION ‘is the transmission to the mdi- 
 vidual of the information, attitudes, and 
 habits which are of the greatest value to him 
 in the civilization of which he is a part. It may 
 be either formal or informal. In the latter case, 
 education is received at home or in business. 
 While this type may be valuable, the material is 
 presented in a haphazard manner and there is a 
 ereat loss of time in acquiring useful informa- 
 tion. There is teaching in the formal sense where 
 the material is organized and given to the stu- 
 dent in a systematized way. This chapter con- 
 cerns those who are engaged in formal education, 
 rather than those in the wider field of informal 
 education. 
 I] 
 
 There are two types of schools in our country: 
 those which are supported by the state, and those 
 which are privately conducted. As a rule, the 
 latter either had their origin as Church schools or 
 are now affiliated with some ecclesiastical or- 
 ganization. These agencies constitute the equip- 
 
 182 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 183 
 
 ment of society for the education of the present 
 generation. 
 
 Experience has taught us some things which 
 cannot be ignored. The first is that an estab- 
 lished Church may not be an acceptable or ade- 
 quate means of religious education. Where civil 
 authority has supported an established Church 
 there has resulted irreligious conduct. The 
 history of Christianity from the days of Con- 
 stantine has been one of hatred, bloodshed, and 
 brutality whenever the political sanction of the 
 State has been used to enforce religious beliefs. 
 If history has any lesson to teach, it is that when 
 great power has been placed in the hands of civil 
 authority to secure religious conformity, it has 
 always been abused. 
 
 It would be quite another matter if the Bible 
 were to be taught in all our schools and credited 
 as a part of the course of study. It could be 
 taught as one subject among other subjects as a 
 part of our general cultural inheritance. There 
 is a growing movement in this direction, but it is 
 retarded by confusing Bible teaching and an 
 established Church, and by the rather ground- 
 less fear that perhaps giving the Bible any place 
 in our schools may develop into the equivalent 
 of an established Church. 
 
184 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Til 
 
 Religious education cannot be severed from 
 culture, for both religion and culture are the 
 works of God. The history of Christianity 
 shows the fusion of these two elements. When- 
 ever culture has not been genuine, then Chris- 
 tianity has suffered. Christian faith sometimes 
 developed in unprofitable directions because the 
 culture with which it came in contact was crass 
 and artificial. There is no real knowledge of 
 Christianity as an historical fact which does 
 not recognize the part which culture played 
 in it, for current culture is in every book of 
 the Bible. 
 
 The modern mind has a new transcript of our’ 
 universe. The historical method is revealing the 
 real facts concerning the content and the growth 
 of our present racial inheritance. Natural 
 science is giving us the facts concerning the 
 physical world. The social sciences, such as 
 economics, sociology, social psychology, the 
 pscychology of religion, and social ethics are 
 remaking the conception of our social relations. 
 The intellectual problem is to take this new 
 transcript of reality and so weld it to religion 
 that there may be such a union of all the values 
 of life that man may have once more a program 
 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 185 
 
 by which he can live aggressively and content- 
 edly in a united world. 
 
 The soul of man wearies when he cannot see 
 his universe in such a way that it does not war 
 against itself. Before there can be that exuber- 
 ance out of which will flow, spontaneously and 
 creatively, a satisfying life, this last transcript 
 of reality will have to be united to religion. This 
 is taking place before our eyes. It is not being 
 accomplished in a very satisfactory manner in 
 departments of religious education. ‘Too often, 
 they are out of touch and sympathy with what 
 men know to be real in the realm of culture. It 
 is the teacher of sociology who feels deeply the 
 need of principles which can guide in the creation 
 ofa new society who turns to Jesus as the true 
 Revealer of the laws by which men can live to- 
 gether profitably and helpfully. It is the econo- 
 mist who is convinced of the inadequacy of 
 selfishness to establish economic stability who 
 recognizes the validity of the claims of Jesus. It 
 is the psychologist, with his clear knowledge of 
 our animal inheritance, who can teach with force 
 of Jesus as a regenerating power in human life. 
 Wherever men struggle in the modern world to 
 promote human welfare by scientific means, 
 there Jesus makes his strongest appeal. The 
 
186 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 sreatest movement in the modern educational 
 world is that in which teachers unite the culture 
 of this age with the program of Jesus for men. 
 
 This fusion of religion and culture may take 
 place in any school. Whether the institution 
 calls itself Christian is immaterial. Any institu- 
 tion is only the teachers and students and 
 officials who have labored there. Individual by 
 individual, men further the cause of Christ in 
 education or they hinder its progress. There are 
 no Christian educational institutions and no 
 secular educational institutions. There are 
 creative, forward-looking Christian men in every 
 educational institution of any consequence. 
 There are individuals who have no real influence 
 for religion in all educational institutions. More- 
 over, in all such institutions there are those who 
 promote hate and bigotry and are enemies of all 
 true religion, no matter how familiarly they may 
 use pious phrases and religious platitudes. An 
 educational institution is the sum of the individ- 
 ual acts of each student, teacher, and official, 
 
 and nothing more. That is to say, an educational 
 
 institution is its history. That history has in it 
 all shades of moral acts. Some of these acts have 
 been sublime, many are entirely commonplace, 
 while others have been evil and harmful. Evil 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 187 
 
 acts are never washed white because they fall 
 within the life of a school which has named itself 
 Christian. 
 
 There are two views of teaching which, after 
 all, are one. The first is to give to students the 
 values of civilization for the promotion of their 
 welfare. The Christ who was not above satisfy- 
 ing the physical hunger of men will not divorce 
 himself from any effort to present the values of 
 civilization to students. In the second place, to 
 interpret our present transcript of the universe 
 so that the God of love reigns throughout it as 
 the God of law, is genuine teaching of the most 
 constructive type. It is a significant period in 
 the life of any man when he comes to believe 
 that to know our universe in any part is to know 
 the God of love. 
 
 There is a reason why the teachers remain in 
 Christian institutions. It is not that the equip- 
 ment of these schools generally can compare 
 favorably with that of our better state institu- 
 tions. It is the fact that a multitude of Christian 
 parents have carefully trained their children in 
 the Christian faith and have sent then to®Chris- 
 tian institutions in the hope that civilization 
 may be interpreted to them in a Christian way. 
 Young people who believe in Jesus pour into these 
 
188 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 institutions in great numbers. They come as 
 radiant believers in Jesus with open minds and 
 hearts. The true teacher imparts to them the 
 
 values of culture in such a way as not to destroy | 
 
 love as the motive of their daily living. If his 
 life has been fortified within by culture and 
 religious faith, there are few places where the 
 teacher can accomplish a greater work than in 
 a school where all the students are trying to live 
 the Christian life. This makes each teacher a 
 religious educator. If the work of religious ed- 
 ucation is to be accomplished it can only take 
 place when the program of religious education is 
 coextensive with the culture of each age. 
 
 The greatest religious forces in the history of 
 Christianity have been ‘teachers. It is not by 
 accident that Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and 
 Luther were all teachers. These men had the 
 intellectual power to discern the significant in 
 religion, and the first two were able to unite 
 religion and culture. Augustine, the greatest 
 man in the history of the Church since the days 
 of the apostles, was a close student of the culture 
 of his age, particularly of its philosophy. The 
 effort to harmonize the truth of God in culture 
 with the revelation of God in the Bible runs 
 through all his writings. Thomas Aquinas har- 
 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 189 
 
 monized the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle 
 with religion in the Middle Ages and his teaching 
 of the relation between religion and culture is 
 still the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 IV 
 
 The aim of the teacher may be defined in a 
 number of ways, and these aims may also be 
 combined in a variety of manners. It may be 
 viewed as training others for service, as instruct- 
 ing them that they may be able to appreciate 
 and appropriate the real values of life, as 
 preparing them for rational living; as aiding 
 others to conform to law and order, as establish- 
 ing right attitudes and ideals; as helping others 
 to find themselves, through a harmonious de- 
 velopment of all their powers; as character- 
 building, as adjusting the individual to his 
 environment, as training for making a living; 
 as emancipating the spirit, as imparting culture, 
 as arousing and fostering worthy ideals; as 
 meeting the real needs of life through training 
 in knowledge of what should be done. These 
 definitions of the purpose of education may be 
 viewed as arcs from a circle. No single definition 
 will carry all the truth of what is meant by 
 education. Some of the arcs in the circle of a 
 
190 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 complete definition are omitted through lack of 
 knowledge and some of them are now being 
 formed. Education as a means of promoting 
 human welfare should be conceived as within the 
 larger program of God for our welfare. 
 
 Then we turn from the definitions which men 
 have formulated and find in Jesus’ teaching 
 both the exactness which we demand for direc- 
 tion and the liberty which we also desire. Jesus 
 differed from many prominent educators of our 
 day in defining for us the vital reason for educa- 
 tion. He conceived of earth as a place where the 
 will of God was to be done. The perfect purposes 
 of God were to be the supreme interests of men 
 and unbroken fellowship with God was life’s 
 greatest blessing. Not only was life infinitely 
 worth while on earth, but this world was also 
 introductory to another in which the spirit of 
 God would have full sway and where life was to 
 be eternal. Man craves for himself unity with 
 an abiding spiritual world which will include 
 within itself all the facts and aspirations of this 
 life and also all his partly formed hopes for the 
 future. In other words, we must know the real 
 in the universe if we are to live a life of true 
 proportion while here. Until we apprehend the 
 truth in this large way, we are not able to handle 
 
 —— 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 19] 
 
 the details that make for its realization in our 
 own life. This is what ails all partial schemes of 
 education. There is no comprehensive unity 
 running through all the worth-while fragments 
 of educational ideals. There is nothing within 
 such ideals, apart from Christianity, by which 
 they may be properly valued. 
 
 Jesus formulated those abiding moral and 
 religious principles by which the world is able 
 to gain a perspective of what constitutes true 
 life. Principles are not rules in the sense that 
 they indicate just what is to be done in each 
 particular instance. The principles of physics 
 can be given on a page, but their application in 
 invention is immeasurable. Jesus did not dic- 
 tate the details of conduct, but he did state those 
 principles through which conduct may become 
 all that can be desired. They constitute that 
 necessary core of settled truth which is so essen- 
 tial to complete living. The application of those 
 principles he has left to us. With these thoughts 
 in mind, we can return to the fragmentary 
 educational ideals of our day and give them a 
 proper setting in Jesus’ more comprehensive 
 ideal of the Kingdom. In his Kingdom, all 
 necessary work may be made a spiritual service. 
 No legitimate interest of any life need lie outside 
 
192 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 the boundary of the Kingdom. In the concep- 
 tion of an ideal society, such as was maintained 
 by Jesus, the various educational aims finally 
 are united in him. Without his teaching they 
 would remain but disconnected fragments. 
 
 The various conventional educational stand- 
 ards need themselves to be enriched by con- 
 ceptions not now recognized as an integral 
 part of them. They should be enlarged by ideals 
 which are religious if they are to serve as ad- 
 equate guides for educational endeavor, for it is 
 to religion that they themselves must come for 
 a final valuation. Religion claims the right to 
 designate what are the eternal values of life and 
 to judge of the relative worth of all ideals in the 
 light of its more permanent standards. 
 
 If the aim of education is training for service, 
 personal loyalty to Christ will be needed to 
 travel the long and rough road of human better- 
 ment with the heart strong and the eyes un- 
 dimmed as a servant of one’s fellow men. If it is 
 to appreciate and to use the real values of life, 
 once the needed knowledge has been acquired it 
 should be correlated with that satisfying and 
 worthy system of thought and conduct given in 
 the teaching of Jesus. Ifthe test of education is 
 rational living, the teaching of Jesus will furnish 
 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 193 
 
 the inexorable laws of a healthy personal and so- 
 cial life. [If education is to be conceived as estab- 
 lishing helpful personal and social attitudes 
 which will make for a better world, love must - 
 be the motive which fashions these new social 
 attitudes. Should the aim of education be the 
 harmonious development of all of our powers, 
 the capacity for growth in the spiritual life 
 cannot be ignored. In the province of character- 
 building, Jesus stands unique. His conviction 
 of the reality of an unseen spiritual world having 
 immeasurable worth and slowly triumphing in 
 the earth is without a parallel and demands that 
 all shall adjust themselves to it. In his teaching, 
 for the first time, the bread-and-butter aim of 
 education is correctly subordinated to the more 
 vital needs of life, and culture is found profit- 
 able only as it is an aid to service and true self- 
 realization. The great spiritual Church which 
 Jesus founded bears witness to his power to 
 loose individuals from the guilt and grip of sin, 
 to bring liberty to the soul through growth in 
 virtue, and to impart new life to men. These, 
 and all other educational aims which could be 
 mentioned, are included in Jesus’ program and 
 their relative worth can be determined by what 
 he taught, 
 
194 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Morals and religion are unique in that every 
 field of endeavor offers ample opportunity for 
 their exercise. The physicist may have little 
 need of the chemist, the biologist may have 
 forgotten his mathematics, the historian may 
 have limited skill in the fine arts, the lnguist 
 may not be versed in psychology, and the inven- 
 tor may have a meager knowledge of sociology. 
 But religion and morals are vital concerns for all 
 workers. They are lke the sunlight, giving light 
 and life to all human endeavor; they furnish the 
 causes for all our acts and make them worth- 
 while by establishing them in a far-reaching and 
 permanent moral order. Of course, the fields of 
 knowledge overlap in some cases more than in 
 others and they are necessary to one another, 
 being related in as vital a way as are the members 
 of the body. But as the whole body is controlled 
 by one spirit, so all our achievements are dead 
 works until morals and religion quicken them 
 and give them life. Some would divorce their 
 work and the methods used in it from religion 
 and morals. It may be done only in part, and 
 then at a sacrifice, for no man’s thoughts can be 
 limited to fragments of the field of knowledge 
 with no consideration of other fields, without 
 being greatly hampered. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 195 
 
 V 
 
 Adults have reached a somewhat fixed level 
 of life and, as a rule, their behavior will not vary 
 greatly from a conventional standard. Children 
 and youths are great because of what they 
 may become. Every child is rich in undiscovered 
 talents, with immeasurable power of growth 
 in directions almost without number. Youth 
 is not fascinating because of its achievement but 
 rather on account of the potentialities that lie 
 dormant within. It takes us back to all things 
 sweet and clean and enthusiastic. It awakens 
 in us a sense of reverence because the wondrous 
 privilege of fashioning life itself has been com- 
 mitted to our hands. 
 
 The connected verses in Matthew which are 
 quoted reveal the heart of our Lord and the 
 thought he cherished about children. “In that 
 hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who 
 then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And 
 he called to him a little child, and set him in the 
 midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, 
 Except ye turn, and become as little children, 
 ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble 
 himself as this little child, the same is the great- 
 est in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall 
 
196 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 receive one such little child in my name receiveth 
 me: but whoso shall cause one of these little 
 ones that believe on me to stumble, it is pro- 
 fitable for him that a great millstone should be 
 hanged about his neck, and that he should be 
 sunk in the depth of the sea. 
 
 ‘“‘Woe unto the world because of occasions of 
 stumbling! for it must needs be that the 
 occasions come; but woe to that man through 
 whom the occasion cometh! And if thy hand 
 or thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, 
 and cast it from thee: it is good for thee to enter 
 into life maimed or halt, rather than having two 
 hands or two feet to be cast into the eternal fire. 
 And if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck 
 it out, and cast it from thee: it is good for thee 
 to enter into life with one eye, rather than having 
 two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire. See 
 that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I 
 say unto you, that in heaven their angels do 
 always behold the face of my Father who is in 
 heaven. How think ye? if any man have a 
 
 hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, — 
 
 doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and go 
 unto the mountains, and seek that which goeth 
 
 astray) And if so be that he find it, verily I say _ 
 
 unto you, he rejoiceth over it more than over the 
 
 . 
 4 
 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 197 
 
 ninety and nine which have not gone astray. 
 Even so it is not the will of your Father who is 
 in heaven, that one of these little ones should 
 perish.” 
 
 These verses are pregnant with meaning for 
 the teacher. There is no material which can be 
 reckoned as the equivalent of the life of a child. 
 The verses show the high regard of Jesus for 
 those unspoiled by the conventions of society 
 who were open-minded and eager to be taught. 
 When he saw that his disciples were set in their 
 ways and strongly influenced by worldly desires 
 for prominence, he called to a child, and when it 
 was seated in their midst, he said that they 
 needed to be transformed in their lives and to 
 become like the children. He discerned the 
 advantage of youth over maturity in its possi- 
 bilities of unhampered growth. He made it 
 obligatory upon his disciples to seek humbly for 
 themselves and to possess the loving, trustful 
 spirit of youth if they were to have a place in 
 his Kingdom. He possessed such a spirit and 
 he realized how much it had meant in his own 
 life; hence he could say to his disciples that in 
 receiving even one chiid they had received him, 
 since he had a child spirit. 
 
 It was a matter of supreme concern to Jesus 
 
198 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 that the environment should be wholesome. 
 He was concerned that those who associated 
 with children should realize the rare privilege 
 which was theirs in imparting those ideals which 
 would fashion sensitive lives. Better to sink in 
 the sea with a great stone tied to the neck than 
 to cause a believing child to become offended. 
 That they might be adequately impressed with 
 the seriousness of misleading children, he con- 
 tinued, pointing out that offenses would come, 
 that it were better to lose a hand or foot or eye 
 than falsely to instruct a child, for to do so 
 would be to merit everlasting punishment. 
 No other teacher has ever indicated with such 
 clearness the penalty which comes to the one 
 who misdirects a child in its spiritual growth. 
 In contrast to the offense of causing a child to 
 disbelieve is set God’s watchful care over the 
 children and his special nearness to them, when 
 Jesus says that the angels of children ever look 
 upon the face of the Father. Then, lest there 
 remain any doubt in the minds of the disciples 
 about his relation to children, he told them the 
 beautiful story of the shepherd who, leaving the 
 ninety and nine safely in the fold, went into 
 the mountains to seek that which had strayed. 
 When the shepherd had found the lost sheep, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER Loe 
 
 his heart warmed as it could not over those 
 safely sheltered within the fold. The beautiful 
 parable concluding Jesus’ discourse about chil- 
 dren closes with the assurance that it is God’s 
 will that not a single child should perish. As 
 the teacher comes to appreciate Jesus’ attitude 
 toward children, his own partly formed con- 
 victions of the worth of their lives and the 
 divine privilege of fashioning their characters 
 are settled and truly interpreted to him. 
 
 VI 
 
 Jesus as a teacher met many of the problems 
 common to all teachers. In the remainder of this 
 chapter, with the exception of the last para- 
 eraphs, a number of these more technical 
 problems are considered in their relation to the 
 experience of Jesus. 
 
 The teacher of science believes that is true 
 which he can subject to the test of experience or 
 rationally infer from experience. Experience 
 must furnish the data upon which the conclu- 
 sions are to be based. The first reaction of the 
 Church to modern science was one of hostility, 
 for it felt that the truth of the Scripture could 
 not be the product of experience. Unknown to 
 itself, the Church had departed from the method 
 
200 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of Jesus of ascertaining the truth. Jesus con- 
 sidered all available material at hand and then 
 made his decisions. It is evident that he did not 
 
 accept the Old Testament as the sole basis of | 
 
 authority. The principle which he followed in 
 these decisions was the promotion of human 
 welfare. The acme of religious culture in his day 
 was the observance of the Sabbath. In a single 
 keen thrust, he lifted the yoke they had imposed 
 upon men when he said that the Sabbath had 
 been made for man. He made his decisions in 
 the light of his total experience. He had the 
 scientific attitude toward life. Scientific prog- 
 ress, whether in the natural or the social 
 sciences, has been the result of an attitude of 
 mind. It developed from a constant testing of 
 conclusions in the light of experience. Jesus took 
 the responsibility of deciding upon the basis of 
 experience what he would say and do. Each 
 soul must assemble all the evidence of which it 
 is capable and make its decisions concerning that 
 which it will believe and do. Jesus did it himself 
 and he expects his followers to do likewise. This 
 is a part of our responsibility because we are 
 human. 
 
 Jesus used both the deductive and inductive 
 methods of teaching. The Sermon on the Vount 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 201 
 
 is filled with fully matured and perfectly formu- 
 lated generalizations. They sink into the heart 
 with a sense of finality. They are fragments of 
 the constitution of a heavenly Kingdom and 
 their perfection is in keeping with the society 
 which they seek to establish. 
 
 Not only did Jesus give to his disciples these 
 finished generalizations in the field of moral and 
 religious guidance, but he also taught them by 
 stories. He illustrated almost every phase of his 
 teaching with stories which convinced. They 
 were unified, attractive, and adapted to his 
 hearers. When Jesus wished to fasten the fact 
 of the love of God toward man in the world’s 
 thought and life, he told the story of the Prodigal 
 Son. It needs few if any comments. In itself the 
 story carries conviction, has unchanging attrac- 
 tiveness, and makes a strong appeal to men to 
 surrender their lives to the Father. It is a story 
 which fires the imagination, warms the heart, 
 and stirs the will to action. It is short, fascinat- 
 ing, and compelling in its appeal. The stories of 
 Jesus linger in the minds of all Bible students 
 when other portions of the Scriptures are diffi- 
 cult to recall or have passed from memory. As 
 Jesus taught of God’s love towards us by means 
 of a story, so he also taught us of love to one 
 
202 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 another through the use of another story, that 
 of the Good Samaritan. This story is the com- 
 plement of that of the Prodigal Son and is of 
 almost equal power. 
 
 Jesus’ illustrations and parables were taken 
 from common life. He taught from the known 
 to the unknown, using things that were natural 
 as illustrations of spiritual realities. To his dis- 
 ciples, he was Bread and Water and Light. He 
 was the Vine and they were the branches. He 
 was the Good Shepherd and they were the sheep. 
 He was the Host and they were the guests. They 
 were lighted candles, cities situated on hills, and 
 purifying salt. All these and other figures of 
 speech were from familiar experiences of their 
 daily life and could be easily understood. 
 
 It was a mark of Jesus’ teaching that it was 
 crystal-clear. The teacher understands that if a 
 subject is thoroughly understood its underlying 
 principles can be stated with simplicity. When 
 we come to the subject of morals and religions, 
 the ease with which Jesus instructs men shows 
 that he had that comprehension of spiritual 
 truth which appears only after complete famili- 
 arity with it, mature meditation upon it, and 
 habitual reactions to it. The teacher attempts 
 to unfold truth in some field of knowledge to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 203 
 
 those who desire it as their possession. Though 
 a portion of his subject may be theoretical, yet 
 there is generally a small center of truth with 
 which he is very familiar and of which he is cer- 
 tain. This same familiarity and certainty ap- 
 pears in Jesus’ teaching about God and man, and 
 man’s relation to God. This assurance of Jesus 
 in religious knowledge may be appreciated by 
 the teacher when, reasoning by analogy from his 
 familiarity with his favorite subject, he seeks to 
 understand Jesus as a teacher of religion. 
 
 The greatest lesson which Jesus taught his 
 disciples was his own life. They could sense his 
 spirit in his works and listen to his words. His 
 words and works were backed by a masterful 
 and loving life and the Christ himself was ever 
 more than any of his deeds or words. The latter 
 revealed, only in part, the glory of his spirit. 
 A man is more than the statements he makes 
 and deeds he has accomplished. There are the 
 ereat silent and unknown places in every soul, 
 there are the dreams that have never been told 
 or realized, the burdens borne in secret, and the 
 mystery of the soul when it faces itself, which 
 make a man more than any outward expression 
 of his life. What a glance must have accom- 
 panied Jesus’ words, what joy must have glowed 
 
204 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 in his face at the discernment of some appre- 
 ciation of heavenly truth, what sadness must 
 have shadowed his features at the havoc wrought 
 by some sin, what indignation there was at the 
 desecration of the house of God for purposes 
 of business! He gave to his disciples a life plus 
 its words and works, and it is so with the teacher. 
 He is more than the subjects taught. He gives 
 more than instruction. What a man is, may be 
 as truly a gift to the world as what he says or 
 does. The Christian teacher is Christianity ex- 
 pressing itself through an individual. The pupil 
 is swift to discern the presence or absence of this 
 inner life. Ofttimes, all that the teacher says is 
 forgotten, but the spirit of the teacher makes an 
 indelible impression which the years are unable 
 to erase. 
 
 When Jesus’ secret life becomes vocal, we have 
 Jesus’ words. They spring from settled convic- 
 tions with the spontaneity which special oppor- 
 tunities might require; as when an inquiring 
 ruler visited him by night or an inquisitive 
 lawyer asked him a question, or a wayward 
 woman argued at a public well, or a trusting 
 disciple sought instruction because of some per-— 
 plexing problem which he had met. Almost all 
 of Jesus’ words that are left us are records of 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 205 
 
 conversations. He preached almost no sermons 
 and gave but few if any fixed addresses. He was 
 earth’s perfect conversationalist, highly esteem- 
 ing the privilege which by many is held of slight 
 value, that of talking to people. His table talks 
 were brilliant with pointed statements rich in 
 sympathetic approval and searching in telling 
 rebuke. His conversations were masterpieces of 
 ready adjustments to human needs; they were 
 marked by a sustained idealism. He should ever 
 be an inspiration to the teacher who prizes con- 
 versation as offering opportunities for instruc- 
 tion in the important matters of morals and 
 religion. 
 
 The inner life of Christ found expression also in 
 works. He was a man of mighty deeds. He 
 cleansed the lepers, restored sight to the blind, 
 caused the paralyzed to walk, and repeatedly 
 healed all manner of disease. Yet this was not 
 his primary task. He so lived and instructed 
 and wrought before a small group of men that 
 when he asked them who he was, one replied 
 that he was the Son of God. Jesus brought his 
 first followers to serve him as God, and in his 
 earthly life laid the foundation of a Kingdom in 
 which he was to control absolutely the whole 
 life of mankind. He was a man of marvelous 
 
206 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 works. When the written record is compared 
 with the scope of his work, it appears that he 
 was reticent of speech in the light of his vast 
 achievements. While it is now known that no 
 other spoke as did he, it is also established that 
 no other ever wrought such wondrous works. He 
 could make his works a ground of appeal for 
 trusting him, saying that if men were not able 
 to believe his words, they could at least receive 
 him because of his works. The words of Jesus 
 are fraught with such meaning to us that we may 
 fail to recall that they have the ring of authority 
 and certainty which is found where there is great 
 achievement. 
 
 Jesus can stand every test which may be ap- 
 plied in our day to detect a forceful personality. 
 The ordinary marks of positive personality in a 
 man are depth of thought, clearness of expres- 
 sion, and tenacity of purpose. These traits are 
 found in all strong men, whether or not they 
 have given themselves to the promotion of 
 righteous causes. ‘Their possession is an indica- 
 tion of natural strength. On the most difficult 
 and comprehensive of all subjects, that of relig- 
 ion, Jesus has given the clearest and most satis- 
 factory teaching. It isnot required that a teacher 
 shall possess literary skill, but he must at least be 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 207 
 
 able to express his thought in words which convey 
 with exactness the desired meaning. When we 
 consider Jesus’ fidelity to the accomplishment of 
 the will of God, he is the pattern of all who give 
 themselves without reservation to the realization 
 of some great purpose. In childhood he told an 
 anxious mother that she should expect him to be 
 about his Father’s business; in days of earnest 
 endeavor he referred to God’s will for himself as 
 his daily food; and in death he exulted that his 
 task had been completed. 
 
 There is now given to men an example of a 
 whole life so controlled of God that they are 
 able to accept that life as an exact revelation of 
 what God is in himself. Yet of the childhood of 
 Jesus it is said that he “advanced in wisdom 
 and stature, and in favor with God and men.” 
 Christian personality is a growth. It is the prod- 
 uct of high thinking, continuous effort, and a 
 fixed determination. Jesus left his disciples a 
 program by which they might develop person- 
 ality. If they would abide in him, they would 
 bear fruit; through abiding, they would continue 
 in his love, have their prayers answered, and 
 possess his joy. Habitual responses in right 
 action and the guidance of helpful attitudes are 
 gained by those who abide in Christ. Clearness 
 
208 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 of thought, ease of expression, and settled con- 
 victions grow in the life which abides in him, and 
 there is a winsome attractiveness about it which 
 is often lacking even in strong men. A teacher 
 may secure a salary by means of technical skill 
 and the conventional social graces, but strong 
 influence over the moral and religious life of 
 students is exerted by the teacher whose daily 
 walk shows forth the strength, beauty, and 
 charm of the Christian life. A Christan person- 
 ality is the greatest achievement of any teacher. 
 It gives him real control of those who come to 
 him for instruction. In knowing the man, his 
 students are ministered to by one who is an 
 example in the great Teacher’s stead. 
 
 Jesus met and dealt helpfully with all types 
 of people. He taught the scoffers, the indifferent, 
 the weak, the willful, the impulsive, the over- 
 zealous, the faithful, and the dutiful. His teach- 
 ing was largely that of individuals rather than of 
 groups. In fact, he sought repeatedly to escape 
 publicity and the crowd that he might give 
 individual instruction to a few disciples who 
 were traveling with him. Jesus’ personal and 
 friendly comment to Nathanael, that he was an 
 Israelite without guile, attracted him to Jesus. 
 ‘When a scholar sought him by night, his simple, 
 
 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 209 
 
 
 
 truthful, exalted, loving questions and answers 
 were such as are still treasured as among the 
 rarest words ever spoken by man. When an 
 alert and attractive yet sinful woman would 
 listen to his teaching, the same lofty thought is 
 maintained, the same searching questions are 
 asked, and patiently and in love she is brought 
 to the climax of the lesson when Jesus can tell 
 her that the one who is teaching her is the 
 Messiah. When a beggar who had been healed 
 of blindness had been cast out of the synagogue, 
 Jesus found him and revealed himself to him. 
 When a disciple had denied him with cursing, he 
 sent special word to the man that he wanted to 
 meet him again in Galilee. A careful examina- 
 tion of the Gospels will reveal that they are a 
 record of studies which Jesus made in individual 
 differences. His teaching sprang from contact 
 with definite persons whose needs he was seeking 
 to meet. He was not a teacher living in a world 
 of abstractions. As he met one concrete need 
 after another, the marvelous words just fitted to 
 the occasion were spoken. ‘Truth came into the 
 world by means of a Worker and a Conversa- 
 tionalist who wrought while it was yet day. 
 Truth vital to Jesus was given to men because a 
 definite person had been healed of palsy or blind- 
 
210 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 ness or leprosy, because a definite woman needed 
 to be reclaimed from sin, because a definite dis- 
 ciple was to be encouraged or corrected, or 
 because some definite scorner needed to be re- 
 buked. The main chance for Jesus seemed to 
 lie in dealing with individuals as such when he 
 could discover their problems and meet their 
 needs. It should encourage the teacher who 
 takes time from the classroom to work with 
 individuals that this was the method most used 
 and most highly prized by our Lord. 
 
 Jesus was a great disciplinarian. His followers 
 were attached to him by ties of love and the rule 
 of his school was that if they loved him they 
 would keep his commandments, His pupils were 
 mostly adults who had voluntarily joined him as 
 their teacher. Even in the apostolic company 
 there was constant need of correction. Many 
 were the heartaches caused by Judas and Peter. 
 Judas was the follower who was not reclaimed. 
 Even at the last, Jesus used only kind words to 
 him. While love was the law of Jesus’ school, it 
 did not mean that he was not severe. When 
 aroused by the desecration of the house of God 
 for commercial purposes, he used corporal pun- 
 ishment. When he had tried for three years 
 to win the leaders of a stiff-necked people, he 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 211 
 
 told them that they were as serpents, as graves 
 filled with the bones of the dead, that they were 
 fools, blind guides, and hypocrites. But it took 
 years of violent opposition before Jesus revealed 
 to them their true position, and then only after 
 he had tried to win them by gentle methods. He 
 was also severe with his disciples. He repeatedly 
 rebuked them for their false pride, misdirected 
 ambition, and lack of faith, while he taught 
 them with infinite patience. When he had used 
 such plainness of speech that the multitude left 
 him, indignant at his words, he turned to the 
 small band he had faithfully taught and asked 
 them if they would also leave. When he sum- 
 moned his apostles, he told them plainly that 
 they would be outcasts if they followed him, that 
 they would be beaten with stripes, thrust from the 
 synagogues, in danger of: death, and separated 
 from their own homes. To remain in Jesus’ 
 school, a man had to be able to stand the acid 
 test of living by his convictions of the truth. A 
 life of real love, pure, noble, and powerful, must 
 have a foundation of righteousness and truth. 
 The truthful and kindly life is that of love. In 
 every case of discipline, Jesus was truthful and 
 kind that men might be led to love God and one 
 another. Peter was Jesus’ most perplexing dis- 
 
21g SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 ciple. He was the natural leader of the apostolic 
 company. He was alert, daring, self-willed, 
 impulsive, and generous. Jesus encouraged him 
 by acknowledging his strength when he called 
 him a rock. He kept him near him in all the 
 trials in which hé craved the fellowship of the 
 beloved John. Peter was with Jesus when he 
 wrought great miracles. It was the mother of 
 Peter’s wife whom Jesus cured of a fever. He 
 saved Peter from death by drowning. He told 
 Peter that he had prayedfor him. He rebuked his 
 foolish speech when he would not permit Jesus 
 to wash his feet. He corrected him for cutting 
 off the ear of the high priest’s servant. He 
 recalled Peter when he had denied him and com- 
 missioned him to shepherd others when he ap- 
 peared to him after the resurrection. Through 
 months of discipline, Jesus fashioned the natural 
 leader of his small band of followers until he 
 became the leader in the apostolic company. 
 Every talent Peter possessed was brought, in 
 time, under the direction of Jesus. His hardest- 
 won disciple proved the greatest leader of the 
 Early Church. Slowly Peter’s will was volun- 
 tarily surrendered until he sought only the will 
 of his Lord and used the strength of his life in 
 his service. The circumstances determined the 
 
- THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 213 
 
 discipline which Jesus used, whether it was 
 corporal punishment, sharp rebuke, or loving 
 reproof. His aim was always to promote the 
 moral and spiritual life of those he corrected. In 
 each individual case, he gave that treatment 
 which would most likely safeguard the souls 
 from the assaults of evil. When his treatment 
 of the deficient is carefully reviewed, it can be 
 understood how severity and love may be united. 
 in discipline and how the most searching reproof 
 may be the greatest service which one person 
 may render another. 
 
 The teacher of young pupils is in a somewhat 
 different relation to his students from that of 
 Jesus to his followers. They were generally 
 adults and Jesus was always careful that their 
 choices of entering and continuing in his service 
 should be wholly voluntary. He was careful to 
 force, in no way, the will of another. The 
 teacher often stands in the double capacity of an 
 instructor and a disciplinarian. It is required of 
 him that he maintain order in the classroom. 
 He has parental authority while pupils are under 
 his care, yet the ideal for him is the same as that 
 of Jesus, that, if possible, his students shall be 
 trained to a voluntary selection of worthy ideals 
 of right conduct. 
 
214 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Jesus’ respect for the free will of the adult is 
 striking. Although he knew that he was the 
 Saviour of lost men and was convinced that if 
 they rejected him, there was no hope for them, 
 yet there is very little beseeching in his ministry. 
 Rather it was his practice to tell the truth in a 
 way which left it open to a man to receive him | 
 as Saviour; then he waited for the one addressed 
 to make the decision. 
 
 The consideration of Jesus in appealing to men 
 rests on the fact that they were responsible 
 beings who must make their own choices. No 
 finer tribute is paid to human life than the con- 
 sideration which Jesus showed in the appeals he 
 made to others to follow him. Men left him 
 because of this reserve, yet rather than desecrate 
 human life, he let them go. He was as aware of 
 the boundary of man’s responsibility and privi- 
 lege as he was of his own responsibility and he 
 regarded scrupulously the great privilege of 
 choice which is the endowment of every man. 
 Jesus could wait patiently for results. It was 
 only after months of faithful teaching and tender 
 working that he asked his disciples who they 
 thought he was. He waited for convictions to 
 form in their lives and he did not force their 
 erowth though his time was short. It was 
 
~ THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 219 
 tremendously important that they should rll 
 preciate him; yet it was so necessary that they 
 should reach these conclusions for themselves 
 that Jesus would not hasten their growth. While 
 he used every art compatible with maintaining 
 the dignity of human life to bring them to a true 
 knowledge of himself, he was not willing to 
 hasten their development beyond what they 
 were able to discover for themselves. The result 
 of such teaching was the development of men of 
 marvelous spiritual insight and power. He made 
 them do research work in the Kingdom of God, 
 and when he left them, they continued the same 
 type of constructive endeavor under the guidance 
 of the Spirit. The teacher who fashions men 
 should have the same high regard for life and a 
 patience which will attempt to accomplish a per- 
 fect work through years of faithful endeavor. 
 The youth trained in right ways will be slow to 
 leave them. That teaching will be most con- 
 structive which adds habit to habit until the 
 mind moves freely and forcefully in the subject 
 acquired. 
 
 Jesus’ business was the making of men; it was 
 to train others for citizenship in the Kingdom of 
 heaven. When the man was saved and nurtured 
 in Christian truth, then he would fill with credit 
 
216 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 a place in any vocation he might select. He was 
 a vocational teacher only in the wide sense of 
 starting manhood with the best possible equip- 
 ment for any work in life. If the vocational 
 teacher would follow his Lord, he should remem- 
 ber that his chief-concern for every man should 
 be that he may become a willing citizen in the 
 Kingdom of God. There is a need of more voca- 
 tional training, but there is a still greater need of 
 holding as of supreme worth manhood as de- 
 veloped in the Kingdom of God. There should be 
 ‘no less vocational education but a more vigorous 
 acknowledgment of God’s righteousness and 
 authority on the part of all engaged in educa- 
 tional effort. 
 
 Jesus created and maintained interest in his 
 teaching under the most adverse conditions. He 
 interested fisher folk, an exacting government 
 official, a devoted scholar, and a contentious 
 scribe. Not only did he attract their attention 
 to him, but he was also able to make them eager 
 to learn more and to maintain their interest in 
 his teaching. This interest he maintained in 
 spite of hatred on the part of many who were 
 socially prominent and who possessed authority. 
 He had no comfortable schoolroom where his 
 pupils could assemble daily and be taught under 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 217 
 
 favorable conditions. He was a wanderer, often 
 driven from one town to another, yet the people — 
 heard him with joy and men left all to be in- 
 structed by him. He met the exacting test of 
 being able to create and maintain interest in his 
 instruction under adverse circumstances. The 
 successful teacher must be able to awaken in- 
 terest. .No matter how much knowledge the 
 teacher may possess, if he cannot arouse interest 
 in his subject, the information will serve him 
 little as a teacher. He must be able to create 
 a desire to know and then to fan to a flame these 
 first sparks of curiosity until the will to know 
 shall become as a consuming fire. ‘Then there is 
 that abandonment in which every word spoken 
 is treasured and built into life itself. In sus- 
 tained interest the teacher finds the soil in 
 which the seed sown becomes most fruitful. 
 His Lord has left him an example of what it 
 means to create and sustain interest. 
 
 Teachers know that it is difficult to get pupils 
 to think for themselves. Pupils often have such 
 implicit confidence that they are willing to ac- 
 cept their teacher’s word with no modifications 
 and as final. The trust of the average pupil in a 
 worthy teacher is something beautiful to behold. 
 This is true even when the student is advanced 
 
218 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 and in college. There is a wealth of pure affection 
 lavished on the true teacher of which he may not 
 even be aware. The trust of youth should be as 
 sacred to him as was the trust of the disciples of 
 old to their Lord. He is often the way of life to 
 them. Without him they could neither discover 
 nor travel it. It will always be one of the re- 
 wards of this noble art that its devotees are 
 loved of many. 
 
 Our Saviour and Lord made teaching a life 
 work. When he was a child, he was found by his 
 anxious parents both answering and asking 
 questions at the college of teachers. When his 
 disciples had gathered about him, he taught 
 them in the lessons on the mount. In Galilee he 
 taught in the synagogues, preached the gospel, 
 and healed all kinds of diseases among the 
 people. In conversation and action, he was ever 
 seeking to instruct. When he gave the Great 
 Commission to his followers, his order was to 
 convert all nations and to teach them the things 
 which he had commanded. The seventeenth 
 chapter of John is the prayer of a Redeemer and 
 a Teacher. Its loving petitions are the natural 
 expressions of the yearning of a Great Teacher 
 for the welfare of his own. They voice the senti- 
 ment of those to whom teaching is a profession 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 219 
 
 and not a business. The teacher of true nobility 
 of character prays with his Lord, “Holy Father, 
 keep them in thy name which thou hast given 
 me.’ 
 
 Education without religion is failing to-day 
 as is shown by the moral conditions in our high 
 schools. Teachers are faced with moral laxness 
 in many high-school students. Many parents 
 fear to send their children to the public schools, 
 particularly in our cities. In the critical time of 
 youth the teacher has hours of fellowship with 
 them. Here is the great opportunity to aid those 
 who are confused in life and sensitive to genuine 
 leadership. It is not enough to be passive before 
 such students. The aggressive teacher can be the 
 most helpful. It is not sufficient simply to impart 
 information. The teacher should be clean-cut 
 in his statements in every moral discussion 
 which arises, and, what is more important, he 
 should be Christian in conduct. Moral issues 
 hover over every field of human interest and are 
 the backbone of such subjects as literature, his- 
 tory, sociology, and economics. ‘Those teachers 
 who respond naturally and helpfully in the moral 
 issues raised in the course of the day’s work will 
 render an invaluable service to the youth of this 
 generation. Not only will such teachers present 
 
220 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 our historical inheritance and value it for their 
 pupils but the pupils will bring their problems 
 as the days pass and the whole of their life 
 interests will be interpreted in terms of the 
 finest manhood and the most attractive woman- 
 hood. Those teachers who understand Jesus as 
 a teacher will be most serviceable to their pupils. 
 
 Vil 
 
 Teachers are closely related to the two most 
 pronounced movements of our day, namely the 
 erowth of science and the development of 
 democracy. In the past the larger part of the 
 course of study in our schedule has been idealis- 
 tic. It has followed that those who were leaders 
 in education have generally been apt in express- 
 ing themselves concerning matters of morals 
 and religion. They have been trained to discern 
 and express moral distinctions, and perhaps they 
 have also received a religious education. In con- 
 trast to this type of training, there has developed 
 a form of education which is scientific in its 
 nature. The scientific worker is methodical, un- 
 emotional, and ordinarily taciturn. The dis-_ 
 coveries of science which have so greatly blessed 
 mankind have occurred only after long and 
 painstaking research. The years of uneventful 
 
THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER 221 
 
 endeavor to discover some practical boon for 
 mankind are often such that very little can be 
 said about them. The work is impersonal be- 
 cause it is scientific. Of course, the natural scien- 
 tist may have definitely in mind that his labor 
 is an unselfish service to promote the welfare of 
 mankind, yet there may be no particular reason 
 why his motives should be expressed or thrust 
 into the foreground. The scientific worker is a 
 new type of religious worker. The day might 
 easily come in education when the teachers of 
 natural science would constitute a majority of 
 those engaged in educational work. While it 
 may be difficult for scientists to adjust them- 
 selves to conventional religion and for classical 
 scholars to appreciate natural science, yet it is 
 inevitable that a new type of religious worker be 
 recognized, namely the fact-loving, unostenta- 
 tious scientist. 
 
 The development in our day of equal impor- 
 tance with the progress of science has been the 
 erowth of democracy. The success of democracy 
 depends upon the intelligence of the average 
 man, and the school is the social agent for the 
 diffusion of knowledge. Therefore, success of a 
 democracy is almost certain where there is prev- 
 alent a high type of education. The growth of 
 
222 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 universal education is closely related to the rise 
 of Protestantism, for the right of all men to a 
 common-school education was first actively 
 propagated during the Reformation. Education 
 makes self-reliant citizens who are able to deter- 
 mine the relative worth of the different values 
 which come to them for their consideration. It 
 enables men to appropriate for themselves the 
 highest values. It trains in that discrimination, 
 judgment, and initiative which are necessary to 
 the preservation of a democracy. The teachers 
 of a country train the on-coming generation to 
 safeguard and enjoy the fruits of democracy. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE NEW PROFESSION 
 I 
 
 HERE are three marks of a professional 
 
 man. He must have a technical education, 
 skill in the use of his knowledge, and an attitude 
 of helpfulness toward others. No matter how 
 blurred the qualifications may have become in 
 any single instance they are the historical 
 inheritance of those who practice the well- 
 established professions. They have never ceased 
 to be clearly defined theoretical, if not always 
 practical, guides in conduct. The professions 
 are fortified by an ancestry who had the courage 
 to think across class interest and to exemplify 
 these convictions in life, and now the business 
 man is asked to raise his conception of life to 
 that professional level. In the hour when 
 business is viewed as a profession, the idealism 
 of Jesus, latent in the professions, will become 
 the accepted standard of conduct for the civi- 
 lized world. The professions will be saved from 
 commercialism, and business will have become a 
 profession. Numerically, the new profession 
 will outrank all others combined. 
 
 220 
 
224 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 What should be the basic moral ideal of this 
 new profession? It must be the promotion of 
 human welfare, for this is the only aim worthy 
 of the service of human life. Before any man 
 can work whole-heartedly for any great ideal he 
 must be convinced of the essential validity of 
 his aim. Has Jesus anything to say to the aver- 
 age business man that will challenge his man- 
 hood, commend itself to his sanity, and offer 
 to him a cause which is worthy of the sacrifice 
 of his life; or must Jesus be a Spectator sitting 
 on thé side lines while others play the game? 
 
 What was the judgment of Jesus concerning 
 the thing worth-while? Because we are often 
 literalists, we fail to see the far-reaching con- 
 sequences of the attitude of Jesus toward life. 
 We confuse his illustrations with the principles 
 beneath them until both become unreal. Many 
 of the illustrations which he used are foreign to 
 our manner of thought. Because we quibble at 
 the literal meaning of the material which he used 
 to reénforce principles, we do not grasp firmly 
 the great guides to conduct which he left us and 
 they lose their power to control us. 
 
 The judgments of Jesus were based upon what 
 he knew would promote human welfare. In his 
 public ministry he was called upon repeatedly 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 225 
 
 to define his position. He faced each issue 
 squarely and when human welfare was im- 
 periled by tradition or by the Old Testament, he 
 set both aside. He dealt with the live topics of 
 his day and made them reveal the principles 
 which are good for our guidance for all time. 
 Some of the more important subjects of common 
 interest were Sabbath observance, worship and 
 Temple service, property, oaths, the family, 
 justice, mercy, and revenge. A number of these 
 topics are now of secondary importance. How- 
 ever, it is in just these matters that the principle, 
 used to reach a decision, is most clearly revealed. 
 For that reason they are noted. Hungry dis- 
 ciples broke the Jewish law of Sabbath observ- 
 ance by plucking grain for breakfast. The 
 amazing thing about the situation is that when 
 the religious leaders questioned Jesus about the 
 matter he drew no fine distinction between the 
 Old Testament Sabbath and their convention- 
 alized Sabbath, but handled the whole problem 
 of Sabbath observance on the basis of its merits. 
 He settled the issue in terms of human welfare. 
 He ignored the teaching of the Old Testament 
 that would put to death a man for bearing a 
 burden or kindling a fire on the Sabbath, and 
 appealed to experience and to human welfare. 
 
226 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 There are at least four reasons which Jesus gave 
 as a justification for placing the humble need of 
 breakfast before religious institutions and tradi- 
 tions, even when based upon the Old Testament. 
 God was always working and that gave him the 
 right to do works of healing on the Sabbath. 
 David and his followers ate the sacred bread, 
 when hungry, to satisfy human needs. Priests 
 worked on the Sabbath in performing their 
 religious duties. Finally, the prophets placed 
 deeds of mercy above sacrifice. Every appeal 
 by which Jesus defended his disciples was to 
 human experience and to human welfare. He 
 closed the discussion by reference to the principle 
 of human welfare when he said that the Sabbath 
 was made for man. This principle had been the 
 touchstone of all his other tests. What becomes 
 clear in the controversy is the principle which 
 Jesus used to settle the issue. 
 
 The matter of fasting was of no great moment 
 to him, because it bore neither one way nor the 
 other on our well-being. In the Temple men 
 were not to be disturbed, for worship was a 
 deep-seated human right. The Jews had made 
 a market of the only place within the Temple 
 area where the Gentiles were permitted to wor- 
 ship, and the din of business made worship 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION pat 
 
 impossible. He cleansed the Temple that the 
 welfare of the devout Gentiles might be furthered 
 and not because the place as such was sacred. 
 His teaching stressed mercy since it made for 
 human welfare. He battled against the spirit of 
 revenge because of the harm which it wrought in 
 personal and social life. He was stern in his 
 condemnation of divorce because it destroyed 
 family life. When the Jesus of the Gospels is 
 understood, there is no decision which is not 
 reached on the basis of human welfare. The 
 custom of being compelled to carry a load a mile 
 may lose its force for modern life; the gift of a 
 cloak may be supplanted by modern charities; 
 but the principle abides that we should love one 
 another and seek the welfare of our fellow men. 
 
 To cite these incidents of a past age as they 
 are handled by Christ is no artificial thing, since 
 the new profession of business cannot afford to 
 guess concerning the foundation upon. which it 
 is to be built. The principle underneath a judg- 
 ment may stand clearly revealed even though 
 the incidents in connection with which the judg- 
 ment is formed may themselves seem trivial in 
 character. Thus it has happened that the judg- 
 ments of Jesus in a number of minor matters 
 have brought into the foreground the principle 
 
228 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 upon which his decisions were based, namely, 
 that a problem should be solved by a considera- 
 tion of that which best promotes human welfare. 
 
 The most significant characteristic of a pro- 
 fession is that it is pursued to promote the wel- 
 fare of others. Those who are worthy of their 
 places in the professions work for the welfare of 
 humanity. They are not controlled in their con- 
 duct by class divisions and they refuse to make 
 financial profit the measure of their success. The 
 practical idealism which places fraternal rela- 
 tions with all men in the foreground of living is 
 the glory of the well-established professions. 
 Even though many are disloyal in conduct to 
 their ideals, they know that they are violating 
 the commonly accepted standard that human 
 values are of primary importance in all personal 
 and social relations. It is the teaching of Jesus 
 that men should think and act in terms of human 
 values and that when class interests are opposed 
 to human welfare they should cast their lot on 
 the side of those who decide in favor of humanity 
 and not with a class which seeks to profit at the 
 expense of the larger group. The business man 
 is asked to do what many others have already 
 done, that is, to live for others rather than for 
 himself and to refuse to make financial gain the 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 229 
 
 sole measure of success. The practical question 
 which faces the modern business man is whether 
 he will function in society as a Christian in his 
 work. If he is not to fail, he must have a genuine 
 appreciation of the principle beneath the judg- 
 ments of Jesus concerning all our human rela- 
 tions. 
 
 If business cannot be raised to the rank of a 
 profession, it will continue to debase the weaker 
 members of the long-established professions. 
 Business men know well enough that they can 
 secure from any of the professions as many men 
 to do their bidding as they desire. They are not 
 so crude as to proclaim it from the housetops, 
 but they have the assurance that they can pur- 
 chase any following that they desire. It is the 
 cynical conviction of many business men that 
 the clergy will behave very nicely when any 
 matter which concerns business interests is at 
 stake. Any number of ministers can be secured 
 whose messages are well adjusted to satisfy the 
 demands of their business layman. It must 
 grieve our Lord that so vigorous and searching 
 and constructive a thing as his gospel should 
 become as flaccid and vacuous as it does in many 
 a modern pulpit. Clergymen themselves say, 
 “What can we do?” in a sort of apology for the 
 
230 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 lack of courage to follow Christ. Business men 
 know that teachers can be employed who will 
 be the parrot-like reciters of any economic creed 
 that they may advance. It is common knowl- 
 edge that law has fallen largely to the level of 
 average business ‘practice. Throughout profes- 
 sional life, there is the trail of the serpent of an 
 unworthy commercialism. 
 
 If the prostitution of the professions is to be 
 remedied the cause will have to be uprooted. 
 Shall the professions be commercialized? Shall 
 such men cease to serve humanity and work only 
 for profit? The better men in the professions 
 never have commercialized their work. The hope 
 of the future is to make a profession out of busi- 
 ness. This is the greatest single undertaking of 
 this day. The forces of labor and capital keep 
 the economic issues forward. The public will 
 not let economic problems remain undisturbed. 
 Shall the teaching of Jesus and our social interest 
 which is economic in character, come together 
 to produce the most important fusion of religion 
 and culture ever consummated in the history of 
 the world? 
 
 This is the most urgent question of this day. 
 How are the vast economic forces of our com- 
 monwealth to be handled? How are they to be 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 231 
 
 codrdinated to promote human welfare? Not to 
 take a religious interest in economic problems is 
 to fail at the point of the most vital and far- 
 reaching interest of this age. It may be said 
 that only one other hour in the history of man 
 was fraught with equal interest. That was when 
 his Son lived in our midst. This hour has thrust 
 forward the most far-reaching program of any 
 age for the promotion of human welfare in the 
 correlation of religion and business. The key 
 to the situation is a business man who will do 
 what he believes Christ would have him do. The 
 next key is the next business man who will do 
 the same thing. There never will be any other 
 key. Groups follow leaders in the beginnings of 
 any great movement. Then the ideals and prac- 
 tices of such men become common property. 
 Christ can build an economic order worthy of 
 himself only by building on the first business 
 men who feel the imperative necessity of using 
 their business as a means of uniting religious 
 and economic interests. We are not so com- 
 placent about our excellencies as was the former 
 generation. The shadow of the Great War is 
 still over us. A desire for commercial supremacy 
 helped to bring it about and the proceedings at 
 the peace conference following the war showed 
 
232 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 that commercial considerations were still of 
 primary importance. We can Christianize busi- 
 ness, or we can prepare for another war to which 
 the horrors of the last war will not be com- 
 parable. 
 
 i 
 
 The modern business man finds himself in a 
 stratified society in which men are linked 
 together in groups for the purpose of self-defense 
 and the promotion of their mutual welfare. In 
 addition, there is the depressing fact that many 
 business men are pirates in modern society, con- 
 trolled in their business relations by the ethics 
 of a semipagan civilization. They are members 
 of a group against which other groups are ar- 
 rayed with their loyalties. This opposition 
 frequently amounts to hate. At the same time, 
 the buccaneers of modern trade are running wild 
 through all the groups. 
 
 After all, is not the corporation in itself a 
 number of codperating units? Moreover, what 
 is a trust in itself but a combination of coédperat- 
 ing corporations? The most significant phase of 
 modern business life is the fact that the many 
 ramifications in consolidation which have taken 
 place now offer unprecedented opportunity for 
 the practice of the Christian religion. A public 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION poo 
 
 conscience yet remains to be created relating 
 these larger groups which are frequently at war 
 with one another. That we have come so far in 
 codperation is very suggestive of what may be 
 reasonably hoped for with regard to the larger 
 groups in their relation to one another. 
 
 The present content of the psychology of the 
 group as it now dominates group activities will 
 have to be reconstructed by modern Christian 
 business men. The interests of this age are those 
 of groups. The Christian man of to-day should 
 be able to think of the problems of the group to 
 which he belongs in terms of the teaching of 
 Jesus. This means that he must have appre- 
 ciated the principles which Jesus enunciated in 
 order that he may be able to relate his group 
 problems to them. It takes intelligence and 
 effort to maintain a worthy home. Yet the 
 family is a small group bound together by love. 
 In the larger group relations, it will require 
 knowledge of the facts, clearness of thought, and 
 earnestness of purpose to perceive what the 
 principles of Jesus mean in these relations. Be- 
 cause many of the interests of modern life are 
 those of groups rather than those of individual 
 interests as they were in the days of Jesus, it is 
 now absolutely necessary for men to live in the 
 
234. SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 light of principles with their applications to 
 modern life if the teaching of Jesus is to affect 
 this and coming ages. The principle of his teach- 
 ing concerning our human relations is simplicity 
 itself; that is, the welfare of all and not that of 
 a particular class: should be the objective of all 
 sroup and individual activities. There are suffi- 
 cient Christian forces in any group to compel it 
 to respect the principle which Jesus taught. The 
 interests of modern life are so closely connected 
 with group activities that the Christian man who 
 will not strive valiantly to view his group inter- 
 ests in their relation to the whole community 
 cannot hope to do the largest possible service for 
 his Lord. It will take heroism to put the teach- 
 ing of Jesus into practice within these great 
 group interests. 
 
 Louis B. Brandies had shown before he became 
 a member of the Supreme Court that no really 
 conspicuous American trust owed its success to 
 superior efficiency only, but also to its ability to 
 control the market and thereby to increase its 
 profit. Such organizations have been moral out- 
 laws, for they have placed their group interests 
 before those of the commonwealth and have 
 taken toll because they had the power. There 
 never has been a time when any group has had 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 235 
 
 the moral right to sacrifice society in order to 
 promote its own welfare and there never will be 
 a time in the future when such will be the case. 
 Boards of directors of great corporations are 
 responsible for the manner in which they con- 
 duct their business. When the well-being of all 
 is sacrificed for the sake of a favored few, the 
 latter are in open warfare with society. If they 
 Jack the manhood to make an honest effort to 
 act in terms of public welfare, they may have 
 the outward form of religion but its inner con- 
 structive spirit is still untried and impotent in 
 their public relations. Employers need to grap- 
 ple with those of their own class in order that 
 they may lead in the great movements of social 
 reconstruction. Human welfare rather than 
 profit must become the slogan of the new in- 
 dustrialism. Labor unions will need to clear 
 their houses of the radicals who seek to promote 
 class warfare and class hate. It is common 
 knowledge that in many cities the more law- 
 abiding members of labor unions are intimidated 
 by those who use violence to control the unions. 
 The obvious duty of any member of a labor 
 union is to make that union function in terms of 
 the welfare of the whole community. Some may 
 have to get hurt and suffer loss to bring it about, 
 
236 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 but that may happen to any man who tries to 
 make the world better by promoting the welfare 
 of his group. Business men can take their choice. 
 They can reform their own groups, making the 
 sacrifice necessary to make these groups the 
 servants of society; or they can betray their 
 trust and refuse to plan and sacrifice in order to 
 make a better world. There is now sufficient 
 general intelligence and spiritual insight to judge 
 with a fair degree of accuracy of the worth to 
 society of any prominent business man. 
 
 Our international relations are increasingly 
 economic in character. Business men who refuse 
 to act in terms of public welfare are the real 
 creators of future wars. There is a passion for - 
 peace in the world to-day. It can become a 
 reality only as business men apply the teaching 
 of Jesus in their business relations. The common 
 people throughout the world are weary of being 
 plunged into war for business advantages. Men 
 of means have it in their power to allay this deep 
 resentment of the average man toward economic 
 greed as a cause of war. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A survey of the forms which social life has as- 
 sumed will quickly reveal that in many ways the 
 
~ THE NEW PROFESSION 237 
 
 modern business man is confronted with prob- 
 lems which, in outward form at least, differ 
 widely from those met by the workers of Jesus’ 
 day. ‘The newspaper is the product of a com- 
 paratively recent period. There are no detailed 
 instructions given in the New Testament by 
 which a newspaper may be conducted. On no 
 page of the Bible is there a specific program by 
 which an insurance company might be directed. 
 The present elaborate educational system which 
 trains for entrance into almost all walks of life 
 and at the same time is not controlled directly 
 by the Church is unlike anything in Palestine in 
 A. D. 30. Child and adult hospitals, the pro- 
 ducts of a developed medical science, and our 
 more sympathetic social conscience were then 
 unknown. Centralized industry with its multi- 
 plicity of problems and its disadvantages as well 
 as its advantages could not have been antici- 
 pated in their most fanciful dreams. The family 
 felt no necessity of a restatement of the rights 
 of woman and the privileges which she should 
 enjoy. Only in our day is the glamour fading 
 from the kings of earth and the word “‘monarch”’ 
 rapidly becoming obsolete. In the day of our 
 Lord the highest obligations of a subject were 
 formulated in terms of obedience to a king. 
 
238 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 However, the broad principles of the teaching 
 of Jesus are as valid now as when he gave them. 
 But the man who will not think in terms of 
 principles will accomplish little in human better- 
 ment. Jesus left principles which, because they 
 are such, have a way of leaping over the out- 
 ward changes that have occurred and of furnish- 
 ing guidance for us in our present problems, so 
 that our readjustments may still be in harmony 
 with his essential spirit. Principles in them- 
 selves are wonderfully flexible in their applica- 
 tions, but they easily become prisoned in some 
 customary form of interpretation which may 
 have ceased to be tolerated or even desired. 
 Life has a most unexpected manner of assuming 
 new forms when repressed or restrained by out- 
 sTrown conventions. 
 
 IV 
 
 A home of culture would find difficulty in for- 
 mulating a definite set of rules which would be 
 descriptive of its life. The lives of the inmates 
 are controlled in part by habits, the reasons for 
 which may not have become explicit, by senti- 
 ments for which there are no clearly formulated 
 reasons, by customs and traditions and the 
 loosely organized beliefs of those who have re- 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 239 
 
 gard for the finer things of life. There is an 
 atmosphere in such a home which is felt more 
 than analyzed and which might be summarized 
 by saying, “The spirit of the home is one of 
 culture.’ To many people, to speak of the spirit 
 of a person or of a group is to mention something 
 which is indefinite, intangible, and altogether 
 unreal. In point of fact, the spirit may furnish 
 one of the most exacting tests that can be em- 
 ployed to value the facts of life. 
 
 Every day in any home a multitude of deci- 
 sions must be made which are submitted to the 
 test of whether or not they are in harmony with 
 a wholesome and attractive family life. The 
 spirit of culture not only furnishes a flexible 
 guide for conduct but it may be exacting in its 
 demand, ofttimes regulating in a most detailed 
 way the particulars of daily life. There may be 
 no visible or even thought-out rules in such a 
 home. The details of finished living are woven 
 together in such intricate patterns that it may 
 not be possible to state in particular instances 
 just what they all may be and to indicate the 
 relations which they sustain to one another. 
 Yet this lack of analysis in no way hinders that 
 finished consideration for others which is the 
 mark of a truly cultured member of society. 
 
240 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 A like application of the flexibility of the spirit 
 and the exactness of the guidance which it fur- 
 nishes for conduct may be discovered in any well- 
 established business. The house or the factory 
 comes to maintain certain business standards 
 which are consciously or unconsciously applied 
 in the routine of business practice. Here again, 
 it may be that the spirit controls rather than the 
 letter, for if the members of the firm were asked 
 to state in detail just the elements which entered 
 into a particular decision, perhaps it could not 
 be done. But that does not mean that their 
 judgment has not been both exacting and yet 
 flexible in the demands it has made for a worthy 
 business practice consistent with the spirit of the 
 house. The daily life of upright business men 
 is controlled by the spirit of their business rather 
 than by a set of standards which they are able 
 to state in any very concrete way. To the 
 literalist this means the loosening of all moral 
 restraints and a most careless and unworthy way 
 of determining conduct. But the one who has 
 tried to live after the Spirit amid the swiftly 
 changing circumstances of life has found the 
 demands of such a life infinitely exacting; and 
 and at the same time he has had that flexible 
 guidance which he so much craved. Jesus could 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 241 
 
 assemble the facts in any social situation and 
 make a decision which was for the welfare of 
 men. The modern business man must win the 
 same spiritual independence. He must think 
 fearlessly in the light of all of the facts, 
 seeking the welfare of his fellow men, and 
 then he must act on his convictions, beliey- 
 ing that is what Jesus would do, and so, is 
 what Jesus would have him do. 
 
 V 
 
 Business men should relegate philanthropy to 
 a place of secondary importance and emphasize 
 the payment of wages and taxes. It is obvious, 
 to even a careless observer, that colleges, hos- 
 pitals, playgrounds, art galleries, and libraries, 
 when constructed by philanthropic gifts from 
 men who have made vast fortunes in business, 
 are largely a transfer of wages from the men who 
 did the work to the public as gifts. Philan- 
 thropy should be a minor test of business worth 
 and usefulness. The payment of taxes is a re- 
 ligious obligation taking precedence over gifts 
 to promote worthy enterprises. We live under 
 a government in which many reformers have 
 labored. The reforms which they advocated are 
 now viewed as rights and are embodied in laws. 
 
242 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 Taxes maintain these rights. If all the private 
 schools were discontinued, the state schools 
 could do the work of education. City hospitals 
 care for the sick. Public parks are open to all for 
 recreation. Every great reform movement finally 
 gets itself embodied into law. Hence, the 
 createst promoters of our most cherished privi- 
 leges are those who pay taxes. It would be a 
 healthy spiritual practice for each business 
 man to review his practice with regard to 
 the payment of taxes during the last five 
 years. This would be one way among others 
 in which to make a test of his piety and 
 public spirit. 
 
 Another test of the worth of a business man is 
 whether he develops manhood in himself and 
 promotes it in others in their relations with him. 
 An employer should want his employees to re- 
 spect themselves and to respect him only when he 
 is right. Does a business man expect those less 
 fortunate than himself to be servile in his pres- 
 ence? Does he in turn fawn before those more 
 successful than himself? Can he meet every man 
 without servility or ostentation? The high re- 
 gard of his various business associates is one of 
 the finest compliments any business man can 
 receive. 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 243 
 
 VI 
 
 The Christian business man must solve the 
 problem of the relation between his religion and 
 his business in a competitive system. In almost 
 all business transactions men acting upon the 
 basis of competition, which is recognized by the 
 law of the land as our present platform of trade, 
 struggle to secure positions in the business world. 
 
 The spirit of Christ will enable a man to orient 
 himself in the business of the world. The intri- 
 cate and complex machinery of business as ma- 
 chinery, including shipping, banking, and adver- 
 tising, is not in itself opposed to the Christian 
 life. What is needed is a new view of the task in 
 hand and a recognition that all legitimate busi- 
 ness offers the opportunity for service. ‘The 
 spirit of loving service was the spirit of Jesus. 
 The outward circumstances of his life varied 
 greatly from those of the modern world, but the 
 same attitude toward the facts of life may be 
 maintained by the business man. In fact, Jesus’ 
 view of life must be the possession of the modern 
 Christian, or he has ceased to serve the Christ 
 and is living by something more vital to himself 
 than the stewardship to which he was appointed 
 by God. 
 
 There are sufficient incentives in the spirit of 
 
244 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 service to cause a man to train himself for busi- 
 ness. Skill in one’s calling is only efficiency in 
 accomplishing the tasks at hand, and should be 
 sought as a means to the end. The prestige 
 which accompanies success may only enlarge the 
 possibility of usefulness. When reputation is 
 viewed as an asset to service, it is shorn of that 
 vulgarity of personal display which often is so 
 marked in the arrogant rich or the near rich who 
 are overimpressed with the fact that they are 
 self-made men. In the presence of a crude self- 
 assertion on the part of the successful, it may be 
 admitted that they are self-made and that their 
 contention is largely true. The humility worn 
 by those who use success and honor as means 
 further to extend some worth-while endeavor, in 
 the consciousness that they have been prospered 
 in former undertakings, is a fitting apparel with 
 which to be spiritually garbed at any time. 
 There is a comradeship in the ranks of those who 
 serve their fellows in business. The severest 
 testing of character among business men is, how 
 do they respond to trust bestowed on them in 
 financial matters? There is a wealth of fine 
 character in those who react to such confidence 
 with justice and equity in all transactions. There 
 is a comradeship of moral life which has been 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 245 
 
 refined and tried in a furnace of pure gold when 
 those who are sensitive to moral values dis- 
 charge their obligations with a scrupulous regard 
 for standards of truth and honor. Such men are 
 brought near to Christ, with his passion for moral 
 integrity and faithfulness to moral obligations. 
 
 Whenever a man serves in the business world, 
 his first problem is to remain there and, by the 
 introduction of a new spirit rather than any out- 
 ward readjustments, to transform his business 
 into a highly organized and aggressive instru- 
 ment of service. Restless inquisitiveness and 
 thoroughly matured foresight, united with unre- 
 mitting effort to produce results, are values to be 
 secured to the Kingdom of God through a vital 
 union of religion and business. The highly 
 trained skill of business may be viewed as re- 
 ligious skill; too long, acquiescence and surrender 
 have been held as the distinctive traits of the 
 religious life. 
 
 It is to be admitted that a high regard for fair 
 dealing may frequently demand sacrifice. No 
 worthy cause can be served without the payment 
 of the price that goes with devotion to furthering 
 its interests. There is a common bond of 
 sympathy and regard which binds together men 
 who have met temporary or even serious re- 
 
246 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 verses for the sake of fair dealing. The words of 
 an ex-mayor of Philadelphia and president of a 
 great’ belt works are significant in this connec- 
 tion. He said, in substance, that after fifty 
 years in business he had noted that all those who 
 had not been strictly honorable in all their busi- 
 ness dealings had dropped out. There is a close 
 connection between spirituality, in the sense of 
 sterling morality, and strict business integrity. 
 The sacrifices of war are counted as a privilege, 
 and those of business may be viewed in the 
 same way if permeated with the same heroic 
 spirit. 
 
 Throughout the teaching of Jesus there is a 
 clear impression of the necessity of self-sacrifice. 
 He desired no follower who had not the sacri- 
 ficial spirit. He winnowed those who professed 
 allegiance to him, retaining in his service those 
 who had the fortitude to complete the task which 
 he outlined for them. His life was one long story 
 of the price which is exacted of those who try to 
 make the world better. Many business men 
 think it highly commendatory that professional 
 men should exemplify the sacrificial spirit, with- 
 out the remotest idea that exactly the same 
 obligation rests upon them. It is one thing to 
 approve of sacrifice in others; it is quite another 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 247 
 
 
 
 matter to make the sacrifice yourself. Men in 
 the professions are moving the world forward 
 because they deny themselves the privilege 
 which they feel that they otherwise would have 
 aright to enjoy. They serve causes which they 
 know to be worthy of their finest endeavors. As 
 long as professional men are convinced that 
 sacrifice is necessary for the promotion of human 
 welfare, they will continue in their callings, pay- 
 ing the price exacted by work which is indispen- 
 sable to society. 
 
 The sacrifice of adults comes from no glow of 
 youthful enthusiasm. It is the deliberate convic- 
 tion of such men that sacrifice is a social neces- 
 sity. It is no longer simply a personal matter. 
 In the stream of the life of the world, each 
 generation dies that another may live. This 
 knowledge, as nothing else, takes the sting and 
 the bitterness out of sacrifice. Men need the 
 steadying power of a cosmic view of the necessity 
 of sacrifice if they are to persevere in such a 
 manner of life. We might not have arranged our 
 universe in its present fashion had it been of our 
 own ordering. It was here long before we came 
 on the stage of action and will remain after we 
 are gone. A great liberation occurs in the life 
 which comes under the yoke of sacrifice and sees 
 
248 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 itself as a part of a cosmic process, including both 
 nature and human life. 
 
 Business men are asked to accept this law of 
 life as their own because business itself is worthy 
 of a sacrifice that will lift it to the level where its 
 ideal is the service of humanity. When business 
 is seen in this light the greatest revival of all 
 history will be here. The redemptive movement 
 of society will have shifted its center to business, 
 which will then be the greatest single agent for 
 producing manhood in all who labor and do the 
 work of the world. God will dwell with men in 
 business itself and not simply in enterprises sup- 
 ported by its gifts. Just the same type of sacrifice 
 and faith as is being exemplified by the more 
 worthy professional men will redeem business, 
 and the profound insight of Jesus concerning 
 the necessity of sacrifice will then be understood 
 as binding upon all men. 
 
 Many were the nights Jesus spent with his 
 disciples under the clear Syrian sky where each 
 star glowed like a soft, warm lamp. Dusty and 
 travel-worn, they would gaze at the glorious 
 stars, and their messages of permanence and 
 peace would be borne to them. One in the 
 company was such a soul that He could tighten 
 his sandals and walk the pavement of stars. 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 249 
 
 Business may curse men, destroying the soul, or 
 it may furnish the sandals by which they may 
 tread a pavement of suns. 
 
 Vil 
 
 Since business includes in its scope the activi- 
 ties of an innumerable multitude having endless 
 varieties of standards of conduct, it is not sur- 
 prising that the same uniformity of practice is 
 not to be discovered in it as in the learned pro- 
 fessions. It includes within its activities the 
 mass of mankind. Where the whole of society 
 is engaged in an activity such as business, that 
 activity will possess as many faults as the 
 blemishes discoverable on that society. The in- 
 fluence of numerous ignorant, immoral, and 
 practically criminal persons will lower the tone 
 of the whole group. There is an undertow in 
 business practice with its evasion, concealment, 
 trickery, and fraud. Those who enter business 
 with high ideals of service are forced to be con- 
 stantly on their guard because of those unworthy 
 of confidence with whom they have to deal, lest 
 they be defrauded and perhaps made bankrupt 
 by their associates. This is particularly true 
 when the merchant may be failing or only 
 partially successful. 
 
250 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 But the greater danger lies in the silent, but 
 none the less powerful, appeal which low stand- 
 ards of business make to men. Slowly, worthy | 
 ideals of conduct are surrendered because viewed 
 as impracticable, and the rapacious, cunning, 
 and brutal practices of associates are adopted 
 and made one’s own. The bulk of these men who 
 fail in the moral life slip first in their business 
 practices. What part have they with Christ? 
 They have defrauded widows, betrayed the. 
 trusting, made themselves enemies of mankind, 
 and so lived that in their hearts they know that 
 they have no part in Christ’s life or Kingdom. 
 The greatest single tragedy of American life, 
 outside that of sex, is the surrender of its busi- 
 ness men to standards of morality which are of 
 the jungle, and which ruin character, because 
 they are determined to be practical in securing 
 results. 
 
 Few appreciate the ability of the ceaseless 
 pressure of public opinion to fashion their lives. 
 A child is formed by its reactions to the influences 
 about it. It acquires the manner of speech of its 
 locality and its social and moral ideals are de- 
 termined by its elders. The youth feels his way 
 slowly to the prevailing ideals of his section of 
 the country and unconsciously makes these 
 
_ THE NEW PROFESSION 251 
 
 standards of conduct his own. So it is with the 
 man of business. Out of his childhood he gradu- 
 ally emerges into the business world. Its ideals 
 are unwittingly made his own. He watches, with 
 an exacting scrutiny, men who are judged suc- 
 cessful, for he realizes that only as he appreciates 
 their methods of business can he hope to win a 
 like success. He is in the position where he gives 
 ready assent to the practical guides which they 
 use to determine conduct, with the result that 
 the fine aspirations of early life are later regarded 
 as foolish sentiments and the noble ideal of 
 service is held to be the vagary of good but 
 impracticable people. 
 
 It is just here that the teaching of Jesus may 
 be misinterpreted by the conscientious business 
 man. He may feel that Jesus is hostile toward 
 business because of his repeated warnings con- 
 cerning the dangers of riches. The approach of 
 Jesus to the problems of life is spiritual. It is 
 easy to be ruled by conventional standards of 
 success rather than to make the struggle to be a 
 Christian in all human relations. The rewards 
 of business success are tangible and immediate, 
 while spiritual success, although no less real, can- 
 not be so concrete. Jesus was-not hostile toward 
 business, but he was zealous that no man should 
 
202 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 surrender the spiritual life and refuse to deter- 
 mine his conduct by it. Warnings were needed 
 in his day against the insidious and destructive 
 temptation to turn from God and integrity and 
 truth in order to gain success by sacrificing the 
 welfare of other men. Our Saviour opposed the 
 loss of manhood and spiritual sensitiveness. to 
 the leadership of God through any unworthy 
 practice. He struggled to keep the soul true to 
 its spiritual birthright in order that it might be 
 loyal to the best in all human relations. The 
 warnings of Jesus concerning the dangers con- 
 nected with wealth should be taken seriously as 
 emphasis upon real dangers against which the 
 Christian should guard himself with scrupulous 
 care. 
 
 It is an epoch-making experience when a busi- 
 ness comes to be viewed as a Christian service; 
 when the ingenuity of the worker is taxed to the 
 utmost to extend the business that a larger circle 
 of customers may be served; when the task that 
 was once secular has become sacred because the 
 Kingdom of God includes within itself all legiti- 
 mate human interests. Then the religious life 
 is most natural in its expression, for it offers 
 constant and varying opportunities for loyalty 
 in Christian service. The ordinary conception 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 203 
 
 
 
 of a part of life as religious and the rest as sepa- 
 rate from all possibility of religious control must 
 pass away. Rather, it will come to be held that 
 unless all life can be lived in a religious manner, 
 no part can truly be said to be thoroughly re- 
 ligious. When religion is really seen to be a life, 
 with all the natural divisions of work, play, and 
 worship as only different aspects of its normal 
 expression, then religion will have become fully 
 appreciated. In his worship, the business man 
 may obtain that perspective which will enable 
 him to discern that the main chance offered to 
 him by business is that of a Christian service. 
 In his worship and play there is refreshment and 
 release from care. With mind serene and clear, 
 and energies renewed, he can return to his task 
 with eagerness and zest to render a better service 
 than ever before. Instead of religion’s becoming 
 a handicap to a business man, it is found to be 
 one of his greatest sources of strength, fortifying 
 his integrity, cheering him in his despondency, 
 comforting him in his reverses, and holding him 
 faithful to the spiritual citizenship which is his 
 as a servant of Christ. 
 
 Thus, the varied and rich talents of mankind 
 developed in the business world may be brought 
 into the service of Christ. The merchant may 
 
254 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, 
 shelter the unprotected, and provide those beau- 
 ties and comforts which make for satisfaction 
 and gladness, not simply that he may gain more 
 but also that he may serve better. One of the 
 finest business sentiments ever uttered was that 
 of Jesus when he said that the man who saves his 
 life loses it and the man who loses his life saves it. 
 It is cast in terms of the market, in the figure of 
 profit and loss. It is one of the fundamental laws 
 of life that the person who serves becomes secure 
 in his own soul and that the one controlled by 
 erasping greed becomes dwarfed in the inner life. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The form of business has changed rapidly in 
 the last fifty years. Where once the employer 
 hired but a few men, now many thousands may 
 be under his control. The centralization of 
 industry has created captains of business who 
 hold in their hands unprecedented power. When 
 the employer was in personal touch with his men, 
 the human element was not lacking but it was 
 that very element which was often too pro- 
 nounced. The workman was subject to the 
 temper and caprice of his employer. He might 
 be discharged for many incidental reasons. He 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 255 
 
 could not be sure of his position, for the small 
 merchant, because of his limited capital, had to 
 save closely in hard times, could not make far- 
 reaching plans for his business which involved 
 the uninterrupted expenditure of money, could 
 give no assurance of a material increase in salary 
 because of experience obtained in the business, 
 and could almost utterly disregard the demands 
 of an employee for better wages. With the en- 
 largement of business, the employee is treated 
 much more consistently on the basis of merit 
 and the way is opened for almost unlimited 
 advancement. As a member of a labor organiza- 
 tion he may state a grievance, be heard respect- 
 fully, and receive a recognition not possible under 
 the old system. 
 
 To be a member of a great business concern 
 makes for social solidarity in a way in which the 
 accentuated individualism of limited business 
 could not, for the worker can sense his place in a 
 concern of national, or even world importance, 
 and his life thereby becomes connected with 
 national and international interests. In sacrific- 
 ing in some measure the personal touch, it may 
 be that a finer and better relation has been won. 
 Anyway, it does not necessarily follow that the 
 personal element must be lacking when the busi- 
 
256 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 ness is large, although such is generally the case. 
 Swift recognition of talent and full pay for honest 
 work with consideration of the workmen in the 
 light of the totality of their obligations will make 
 for a much more desirable business life in the 
 future than the past has ever known. 
 
 Among others, there are two opposite tenden- 
 cies in modern trade that are worthy of consider- 
 ation: either business purifies itself as it in- 
 creases in size; or unparalleled wrongs are 
 committed because of the power resident in the 
 few who are in control of great combinations of 
 capital. In a pointed and constructive letter 
 written by the president of a great locomotive 
 works, he has enlarged upon the impulse within 
 a growing business to purify itself and he has 
 stated the Christian view of business with clear- 
 ness when he says: “ Business is an exchange of 
 service. Regarded from this point of view, 
 anything savoring of trickery or sharp practice 
 is not legitimate business but fraud. The larger 
 the business, the more necessary it is to conduct 
 it upon the principle of exchange of service. 
 Practices contrary to the teachings of Jesus 
 Christ can readily be carried out by an unprin- 
 cipled busmess man having a few employees, 
 which would be impracticable in a great organi- 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 207 
 
 zation having many thousands, because what is 
 known to so many must be susceptible to the 
 closest scrutiny. The principle of service is the 
 principle of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule 
 epitomizes the teachings of Jesus Christ. I con- 
 ceive that there is no necessary conflict whatever 
 between the problems of business and the teach- 
 ings of Jesus. The business man who honestly 
 prays: ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
 earth, as it is in heaven,’ must necessarily carry 
 into his business the effort to bring about the 
 extension of the Kingdom of God on earth. In 
 endeavoring so to extend the Kingdom of God, 
 it is natural and necessary to endeavor to per- 
 form the greatest service for one’s fellow men. 
 There is no broader instrumentality for doing 
 this than through the organization of business.” 
 The detrimental tendency in business is shown 
 by the investigations made by our Government 
 into the workings of many of our most gigantic 
 corporations and is a sufficient commentary on 
 the dangers inherent in great combination of 
 capital. 
 
 To have the direction of the interests of many 
 lives is to be conscious of possessing great 
 authority. A Roman centurion had a servant 
 very dear to him who was near to death. When 
 
258 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 he had exhausted all the means of recovery 
 known to him, he tactfully sent Jews whom he 
 had befriended to Christ that they might inter- 
 cede for him on behalf of his servant with the 
 hope that Christ would heal him. When it was 
 evident that Jesus was near, this Government 
 official requested these chosen friends to speak 
 to Jesus, indicating that he was unworthy to 
 have Christ within his house and that if Jesus 
 would only speak the words, his servant would 
 be made whole. The centurion recognized the 
 authority of Christ. He was the more able to 
 appreciate it because he himself possessed 
 authority from the Government and daily exer- 
 cised it. There was this tie between the Saviour 
 and the centurion which the army officer 
 recognized. The business man who directs the 
 activities of an army of business men can say to 
 one, © Go,” and he goes, and to another, ““Come,”’ 
 and he obeys. He can order regiments to ad- 
 vance and they move forward, or he can com- 
 mand an industrial retreat and they fall back. 
 He may appreciate, as the average man cannot, 
 what Jesus meant when he said, “All authority 
 hath been given unto me in heaven and on 
 earth.”” He possessed authority, not only on 
 earth, with its age-long history and myriad 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 259 
 
 changes, but also in heaven, the thought of 
 which is freighted with the hope of immortality 
 and eternal blessedness. The one who has great 
 authority on earth may draw nigh to Jesus 
 Christ the Lord, who possesses all authority, and 
 feel the kinship of great power. When human 
 authority presses into the presence of Christ, 
 then there comes to it the recognition that no 
 matter how great the power any man may 
 possess, he has received it from the Saviour and 
 is responsible to him for the way in which it is 
 exercised. It is natural for men of great affairs 
 to be reverent, for the magnitude of their affairs 
 often forces them to consider the Source of their 
 authority and the best ways of meeting their 
 responsibilities. 
 
 It would be only natural that those having 
 sreat wealth should be influenced first by the 
 conventional conceptions of charity and philan- 
 thropy. Historically, the earliest expressions 
 of the religious life take the form of gifts to 
 better the conditions of others. But now it 
 would be hard to conceive of any great business 
 only as a means of securing profits which might 
 be used as gifts for the benefit of those not suc- 
 cessful in financial undertakings. Business has 
 worth in itself, and as this becomes clearly 
 
260 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 recognized, better wages and the payment of 
 taxes will take the place of gifts to causes only 
 indirectly connected with the business. Then 
 the business itself will become an immediate 
 means of service to God and business responsi- 
 bility will be viewed as a direct religious obliga- 
 tion. Business authority, like any other form of 
 legitimate power, is from God and should be so 
 used by those possessing It. 
 
 It used to be that practically all business was 
 quite limited. When an article was purchased, 
 the one who bought it could immediately com- 
 municate with the maker of the product. If it 
 was not satisfactory the manufacturer could be 
 told to his face that he had practiced fraud. This 
 direct disapproval of the purchaser was a strong 
 incentive toward fair dealing. The merchant at 
 once felt the approval or disapprobation of the 
 customer. Adverse public sentiment might be 
 quickly created against him because of any un- 
 fairness, even in a very small matter. With the 
 development of modern business all this is 
 changed. The manager of a great business may 
 never see the customers. Their only connection 
 with him may be that they use his products. 
 They may speak all the languages of the world 
 and dwell in its remotest corners. There may 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 261 
 
 be no sympathy of a common racial inheritance, 
 no restraint of common religious ties and no 
 presence of a united public opinion to modify his 
 conduct. He is left to deal with people in an 
 impersonal way in relations which, by their 
 nature, are impersonal. What if strangers are 
 made unhealthy by adulterated food, what if 
 men are killed because of a defective casting, 
 what if miners die like rats in a trap because the 
 supports in the mines have been neglected, what 
 if women waste away in uncongenial employ- 
 ment, what if little children are dwarfed and old 
 before their time? It requires a truly great man 
 to control a large business in our day and to deal 
 with customers and employees with justice and 
 kindness. He needs the perspective of Jesus 
 which was his because of the world vision which 
 he possessed. The business man should be able 
 to deal honorably with a man whom he may 
 never see, whose language he may not under- 
 stand, and whose ideals may even be repugnant 
 to him. And this is no idle demand. In the 
 employ of a single company may be men of every 
 nationality and the customers of the company 
 may be from the nations of the world. How can 
 the manager treat his customers with fairness 
 unless he has the world vision of Jesus himself? 
 
262 SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 His ideal of brotherhood is needed by men of 
 large affairs that they may be able to be essen- 
 tially just. Half the markets of the world were 
 closed but yesterday to Americans because they 
 could not rise to a conception of the worth of 
 those who do not speak their language and whose 
 social and religious customs differ widely from 
 their own. There is a balance in judgment which 
 is the possession only of the capable business 
 man who has Christ’s world-wide vision of human 
 life. Increasingly, the need of this broader view 
 of life is making itself felt. 
 
 With the expansion of business there is an 
 increasing demand for men who can direct large 
 affairs. They are difficult to find. The intellec- 
 - tual acumen required is rare, and the sterling 
 moral worth which is the slow growth of years of 
 right living is often not attained. No better 
 investment of life on the part of men equipped 
 to control big business can be made than to sub- 
 mit to Christ and then aggressively to achieve 
 Christian character. The tests of business are as 
 frequently moral as any other. Only in religion 
 can that substantial morality necessary for abso- 
 lute integrity in all business affairs be fully de- 
 veloped. The true Christian increases in moral 
 power with advancing years. As more important 
 
THE NEW PROFESSION 263 
 
 trust is imposed on him with the development of 
 the business, the growing Christian is able to 
 meet this larger responsibility. Never as in the 
 present has business offered so many opportuni- 
 ties to alert Christian business men, and the near 
 future will increase the possibilities of advance- 
 ment manifold. 
 IX 
 
 Many women are in business of necessity. 
 They are forced to support themselves or others. 
 The necessity of laboring for food and shelter is 
 the only justification such women need for being 
 in business. The right of life is the oldest and 
 most fundamental of all human rights. When 
 life is at stake, then who would say that women 
 should not have the right to labor that they may 
 sustain life? Women stream into factories 
 stores, offices, and schools, doing a large share of 
 the work of the business world. Here they face 
 a multitude of new problems which were not 
 theirs before. In ancient days the trusty sword 
 of the male members of her family commanded 
 respect for a woman. Now they, like herself, are 
 scattered in industry and may have little knowl- 
 edge of the conditions under which she works, 
 and perhaps little interest. The employer com- 
 mands her best strength. Her vitality is drained 
 
264. SEVEN PROFESSIONS 
 
 in her working hours, for the demands of busi- 
 ness are exacting. The finest Christian chivalry 
 in our day is in the business house where her 
 surroundings are made pleasant and sanitary,. 
 where moderate hours are observed, and where 
 those in authority do not use their power to lure 
 her from the path of virtue. To the Saviour 
 women were human and their souls were as 
 valuable as those of men. He said little about 
 the treatment of women, but the spirit of his life 
 was such that he met them as those of equal 
 importance with men, and he showed toward 
 them that fine comradeship which was pure, 
 wholesome, strong, and without condescension. 
 None were in his presence without being made 
 to feel the dignity of their own lives and the 
 infinite value of their souls. Those who seek to 
 live after the spirit find all the guidance neces- 
 sary in the spirit of Christ’s life to furnish them 
 with an elevated, soul-constructing, and satisfy- 
 ing program of conduct toward women. Whether 
 they know it or not, business women are coming 
 to demand that the spirit of Christ shall be mani- 
 fest toward them in their lives. Many of their 
 struggles in this day are gropings after such a 
 program of consideration and mutual regard 
 rather than a one-sided service. 
 

 
heological Seminary Libraries 
 
 iii 
 
 2 01208 2865 —