oe eS rats Soieecinee rar Sees delete test el at tees I~ Ot we peagen ne Sy rash ry Lees peat : es Z ~ ees 2 : C wal 5 : Sb ee tw 5 zt i eats ¥ : t ~ Nees - E aot See ae eh hea riers BOER rors penta er eaeeiotie eo corres Sas 2 ane hey reese arp eae c oy re 282046. ret tt TAS EE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library httos://archive.org/details/yaletalksOObrow_0 aes Nit Nga Wl) Py emai | Yale Talks y Charles Reynolds Brown Dean of the Yale Divinity School Ml oo Eel fa HAS EE New Haven Yale University Press London : Humphrey Milford : Oxford University Press Mdccccxxiv COPYRIGHT, I919, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA First published, September, 1919 Second printing, March, 1920 Third Printing, May, 1924 Foreword HESE “Talks” were given in Battell Chapel at Yale University. Some of them were also given at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Brown and other colleges. In putting them in book form I have retained the more intimate style of direct address as best preserving the atmosphere of personal conference in which they were first uttered. They are brought together here in the hope that they may be of use to other young men who are making up their minds as to their mode of life and decid- ing upon the purposes which are to rule the great years that lie ahead. Cuas. R. Brown. Yale University, June 18, 1919. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. The True Definition ofa Man. . 9 II. The Value of an Empty Purse. . 24 III. The Lure of Goodness. . . . 39 IV. How Old Are You?. . . ee BS V. The Power of a Resolute veel A inane VI. Unconscious Influence. . . . 84 VII. The Lessons of Failure. . . . 7 VIII. The Men Who Make Excuse. . 112 IX. The Power of Sentiment . . . 126 X. The Wounds of Wrongdoing . . 141 pent, te Na He Pu ii 3 1 I The True Definition of a Man HERE is one question I would like to ask you now that the examinations are over. It’ is a question every fellow must answer as he makes his way up to his maturity and when he gets his marks they are not made on paper, they are made on him. He may not answer my ques- tion in writing, but he will answer it in the choice he makes of a ruling ambition. How would you define a man? What does it mean to be a man? When we look back we find that a great variety ‘of answers has been given to this question. There was a time when everybody said, “Man is a victim.” He is “a victim crying in the night and with no language but a cry.” He is cursed by the gods, doomed to eat his bread by hard labor in the sweat of his brow. He is at the mercy of all manner of demons and hobgoblins with which the ancients peopled the unseen world. He is a poor worm of the dust, not entitled to hold up his head among these titanic forces which are hostile to him. ‘Man is a victim,” and they said it with a whine. We find a curious remnant of that notion in our 9 Yale Talks own day. Some men are still saying, “Heredity and environment have us bound hand and foot.” They insist that there is no such thing as freedom, no power of initiative, no will to choose. Man does not as he chooses, but as he must. We are what we are by the operation of forces which we cannot control. Whatever is had to be, whatever will be will be, whether we like it or not. Gloomy, disheartened determinism is not confined to a few sad-eyed philosophers shut up in a closet—it is sometimes proclaimed from the housetops and preached at the street corners. There are those who still insist that man is a helpless victim. But that idea has largely passed for people who are in sound health mentally as well as physically. Man saw a long time ago that he need not be a poor shuddering victim. He saw that he could have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air, over the cattle and the creeping things. He saw that he could compel heat and light, gravitation and electricity to minister to his own comfort and progress. He began to make himself at home among these titanic forces. He learned to stand erect and to read. He began to face the world undaunted. And whatever answer we might get from Young America today we may be sure that it would not accept the verdict that man is a victim. We come then to a second answer which has more edge on it. How would you define a man? TO I—True Definition of a Man There was a time when everyone said, “Man is a fighter.”” He stood in a militant attitude, fighting the common enemies of hunger and cold, disease and death, fighting also the neighboring tribes and making enemies of them. Every man was meas- ured by the length and the strength of his sword. The greatest man in the tribe was the man who could kill the largest number of his enemies without being killed in the process. : In ancient Israel Saul was made king because he stood head and shoulders above his fellows. He was neither a wise man nor a good man, but he was a big, strapping, successful fighter and they crowned him. In medieval Europe the men most honored were the plumed knights and the hel- meted warriors, who went forth with sword and spear to fight their good fights. In Japan the ancient aristocracy, the Samurai, belonged entirely to the military class. War was a trade and the trade held in highest esteem. If we had asked our question then, the answer would have come back with a clash of steel—‘‘Man is a fighter.” We find also a considerable remnant of that idea in our own day. The ladies have a way of indicating that their gentle hearts are strangely stirred by the sight of marching men in khaki. And men will pay larger sums of money for a briefer period of entertainment to witness a prize fight than for almost any kind of performance which can be named. The most respectable na- 11 Yale Talks tions show a strange satisfaction in their Krupp guns and dreadnoughts. If we should ask our question now, in some quarters the answer would still come back, “Man is a fighter.” But that mood is passing. The high office of Civilization is not to destroy men’s lives but to save them and train them in productive effort. The swords will have to be beaten into plough- shares. With the keen competition and the close margins in business, we have no steel to waste. The bright metal of the nation’s young manhood must more and more move out along those lines of action which are productive rather than de- structive. I say all this in the face of the most terrible war which has ever devastated the earth. Where there were ten men five years ago thinking about “a league of nations,” or some other effective method of keeping the peace and good order of the world, now there are a hundred. The thought of making the idea of public justice the determining factor in the life of the race has been taken out of the hands of impossible dreamers and brought upon the map of practical statesmanship. The ideals of the common people have been changing rapidly. When the people of France were asked some ten years ago to express their judgment in a great popular vote as to who was the greatest French- man in history, nine millions of ballots were cast. When the votes were counted, it was found that 12 T—True Definition of a Man the largest number had not been given to Napo- leon, the man of battles, who destroyed the lives of a million men. The largest number had been given to Pasteur, the man of science, who in the quiet work of his laboratory laid the foundations for saving the lives of untold millions. Man is not mainly nor permanently a fighter. We come then to a third and more practical answer—‘Man is a producer, a money-maker.” The greatest man in any group is the man who makes the most, if he makes it honestly. Men go about measuring each other not with yard- sticks, nor by the length of their swords, but with bank notes. Here is a man who is fifty thousand feet high! Here is another man who is one hun- dred thousand feet high. Here is a third man who is a million feet high—he is a millionaire! And here at the side is a poor chap who is decidedly “short.” He is no taller than thirty cents. The love of money lies at the root of all manner of things good and bad. It stirs up wholesome ambitions and it arouses the meanest desires of the heart. The wish to better one’s condition is honest and legitimate, but the spirit of greed becomes responsible for the lowest vices and crimes. There are men who believe in what they call “the economic interpretation of history.” They insist that history was not shaped by great men nor by great principles, but by the economic con- 13 Yale Talks ditions under which men found themselves. Men were thrust in this direction or in that by their Jove of wealth or by their lack of it. They insist that the desire for gain has been the determining principle in human action. I can not hold with them, but I confess that there is something about the career of a man who organizes and develops some industry to the point where he accumulates a large fortune which appeals to me strongly. The people who inherit their wealth do not necessarily amount to any- thing—all they had to do was to wait for some- body to die. The men who gamble for their fortunes, whether they do it on the stock exchange or at a green table, are not interesting to me—in order to become rich they made other men poor. But the man who goes out with nothing but his own energy of body and cleverness of brain to a mill or a mine, a farm or a factory, a store or a railroad, and by enlarging the scope of it as a social utility becomes rich, that man appeals to me most strongly. And I have noticed that the young man, who talks scornfully about money and money-making as being entirely beneath his notice, is usually in- sincere or looney. Money is a very nice thing, a very necessary thing, and no man of sense speaks scornfully of money. And because the desire for gain does enter so powerfully into human experience, if we should ask our question 14 I—True Definition of a Man about the definition of a man in the market place, the answer might come back from a thousand throats, ‘Man is a money-maker, and the greatest man here is the man who makes the most, if he makes it honestly.” But this answer will not stand. It leaves un- provided for great areas of man’s nature. We cannot define the nature or measure the success | of any man in terms of dollars and cents. “How much is that man worth?” we sometimes ask. Ordinarily we are not thinking of the worth of the man, but merely of the value of the things he happens to own. This can be easily ascertained from Bradstreet or the assessor’s book or from his report on income tax. The worth of the man is another question altogether—it turns upon his qualities of mind and heart, upon the amount of good he has done and the character he has won. He may be worth a great deal in addition to the things he owns, or with a vast abundance of things he may not be worth enough to pay for the powder and shot it would require to blow him up. The worth of the man is a question of personality. The current ideals are changing here. When I was a boy the names of the richest men in America were names to conjure with; they sent a thrill through any popular audience. The names of the richest men in America today are not always names to conjure with. It all depends upon the measure of public spirit and the quality T5 Yale Talks of personal character in the man. The thought of man as a money-maker does not touch the deeper things of life, and this answer, therefore, will not stand. We come then to an answer which would re- ceive more acceptance on a college campus— “Man is a thinker.” The true measure of a man is not to be found in the length of his sword or in the size of his roll of bank notes, but in those curious gray convolutions of the brain which make possible his intellectual life. The man of insight and judgment, of outlook and discrimination! The man of original and creative ability—here surely we find man at his best. And if the man can not only think but write, then how great he becomes! Here is a man who can sit down without weapons or wealth, with no army at his back, with no powerful organization to give him influence—with nothing but pen, paper and ink! By what he writes he can influ- ence men by the thousand, by the million, it may be! Men of his own land and of all lands, men of his own day and men of generations yet un- born! ‘There is not an hour in the twenty-four when the sun is not shining straight down at high noon somewhere on the plays of Shakespeare and the poems of Dante. There is not a land nor a language where the orations of Moses and Isaiah, the songs of David and the proverbs of Solomon, the letters of Paul and the parables of Jesus, are _ 16 1—True Definition of a Man not exercising their influence upon the aspirations and the conduct of men. Great is the man who can think, and think until he has something to say, and then say it in such fashion as to lodge his truth in the life of the race! Surely we find man here at his best! We have coined this estimate into proverbs, “Knowledge is power.” “The world belongs to the man who knows.” “Wisdom is the principal © thing. Therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding.” And the names to conjure with today are the names of Plato and Aristotle at one end of the line and Kant and Hegel, Darwin and Huxley, Edison and Metch- nikoff, at the other. These are the men who show human nature at its best, for man is beyond all else a thinker! Now far be it from me to utter one syllable in depreciation of knowledge. This last answer is not an unworthy one, but is an imperfect one. It does not reach that which is fundamental. I have passed in review these four answers, the victim with his whine, the fighter with his sword, the money-maker with his roll of bank notes, and the thinker with his book. In my judgment not one of them is worthy to stand. Here in the house of the Lord suppose we ask the Lord Himself how He would define a man. We will appeal from these lower courts to the highest in order to have a Supreme Court decision 17 Yale Talks on this vital question. “OQ Thou who knowest what was in man and needed not that any should tell Thee, how wouldst Thou define a man?” Listen! ‘Ye know that among the Gentiles the great ones exercise lordship and dominion. It shall not be so among you. If any man would be great among you, let him serve. The greatest of all is the servant of all.” Man at his best is a servant. He rises as he stoops to serve. He reaches his greatness through his competence and his willingness to serve. This is what the Perfect Man said and this is what the Perfect Man did. “He took upon Himself the form of a servant and went about doing good.” Wherefore God and the ages have exalted Him until His name is above every name. You can see at a glance that we have now reached that which is fundamental. The life of any individual will be measured and estimated in the long run by its utility in serving the more permanent interests of human society. In the great kingdom of moral reality, usefulness is the ultimate standard. Ideally, ‘Man is a servant.” What made those two men, born the same year, one on that side of the water, one on this, men so unlike in the whole outward setting of their lives and so essentially in agreement in spirit—what made those two men, William Ewart Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln so highly esteemed and so widely beloved? 18 I—True Definition of a Man Gladstone was born to wealth, his home was in a castle. He had a fine social position from the first, every house in England was open to him from Buckingham Palace down. He had all that education could do for a man—he was a graduate of Christ Church College in Oxford University. _ He enjoyed the benefits of foreign travel. He was one of the handsomest men of his day and thoroughly accustomed to all of the amenities of social life in one of the great capitals of the world. He thrice became Prime Minister of the British Empire and was esteemed great. Abraham Lincoln was poor. He was born ina log cabin. He was never allowed to attend school but twelve months in his whole life. He gained his education mainly as he lay upon the floor before an open fire piled with pine knots reading such books as he could command. He was one of the homeliest men who ever walked and he knew little about the conventions of “society.” He was never outside of the United States. But he, too, became genuinely great. These men were esteemed because they lived and died to serve. However men might agree or disagree with some of the policies of Gladstone, they came to feel that here was a man bent upon laying his splendid abilities upon the altar of ser- vice in the British Empire. And Abraham Lincoln lived in the spirit of that Book which John Hay, his secretary, tells us lay always on his desk, and 1Q Yale Talks in which he was accustomed to read every day. The Book says, “Whosoever saveth his life shall lose it, but whosoever loseth his life for My sake shall find it.”’ Lincoln found himself, he found his place in the hearts of his countrymen, and he found his niche in the temple of fame because he lived and died to serve. It was so in the life of the Perfect Man. He took these broken lights of human greatness and set them in their true perspective. He also suf- fered, but not as unwilling victim—He suffered as one who freely sacrificed Himself for others. He, too, was a fighter, but never with the carnal weapons which destroy men’s lives. He fought with those spiritual weapons, instruction, persua- sion, moral appeal, the power of right example, which are mighty through God to the pulling down of the strongholds of evil. He was rich in per- sonal endowment and in high privilege, yet for our sakes He became poor that by His poverty He might make many rich. He was a thinker— He could speak as never man spake, and say without fear of contradiction, “I am the Truth.” But underneath all else He was a servant. He translated the language of religion into terms of life as “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.’”’ He became the Eternal Servant of that larger good which waits upon the spirit of unselfish devotion. Let me read you a single leaf from the book of 20 I—True Definition of a Man experience! It is not a newspaper story—it occurred in my own parish while I was a pastor in California. There was a woman, a wife and a mother, who had undergone a capital surgical operation. She did not rally afterward. The loss of blood and the nervous shock brought her to the verge of death. The surgeons after a hasty consultation told her husband that unless some- thing radical was done at once her life could not be saved; that indeed the only hope lay in the’ transfusion of blood from some healthy, vigorous body. She had three sons, great, strapping fellows in the heyday of their youth. When the facts were made known to them, they offered themselves at once. The surgeon took them apart in the ad- joining room and had them strip that he might hastily decide which one would best serve. If any one of them had allowed his blood to be tainted by some wretched vice, if he had depleted his vitality by some miserable indulgence, he would have been cut off in that high hour from the chance of serving the mother in her time of peril. The surgeon ran them over and found every one of them sound, clean, abundantly alive. They were all fit—any one of them would do. One of them was chosen and the artery of strength was opened and connected with the veins of weakness. Then the heart of that young man, clean in every sense of the word, pumped out of 21 Yale Talks its own store of life a fresh stock of vitality into that other life which trembled on the brink. The mother’s life was saved and restored. She is alive today, rejoicing in the companionship of those three fine sons. How splendid that they were in shape to do it! How fine that in the years past they had so lived that when the call came not one of them needed to flinch. All unwittingly for her sake they had lived the life. It is the strongest incentive to righteousness, it is the strongest deterrent from evil that I know—the thought of serving some other life in a time of emergency which may be physical or mental or moral. For her sake, for his sake, “for their sakes, I sanctify myself” and live the life. Give me your answer then—How would you define a man? What do you propose to show to the world thirty years from now and say to it, “This is my conception of what it means to be a man.” If you show it a victim whining because life has been hard and the luck has been against you, you will be ashamed of yourself every time you look in the glass. If you show it a fighter, beating and bruising your way, injuring others in order to succeed, all of your friends will be ashamed of you. If you show it nothing but a money-maker, feathering your own nest to make it soft and warm, you will deny all the best tradi- tions of this university. If you show it merely a aa I—True Definition of a Man thinker, who does not carry his insights over into achievements and translate his knowledge into power for service, then still your life will be barren. But if you will say to yourself, “Man isa servant,” and allow that thought to rule your life, then you will count one in that sacramental host which is destined to trample evil in the dust and make this earth at last as fair as the sky. 23 II The Value of an Empty Purse ERE is a short story about a young man who had been having his fling! He had come into a large fortune early in life, which is always a perilous experience. Where a young fellow earns his money by the sweat of his own brow he usually learns something about the value of money. Where he earns his pleasure by hard work first, he knows something about the real meaning of pleasure. But where all this is thrust into his hand by a piece of generosity which he calls “good fortune” and God calls “misfortune” oftentimes, he is liable to make a mess of it. This young fellow had also been living abroad, which is another perilous experience. He had gathered all together and had taken his journey into a far country. The young man in Paris or Vienna with a big bank account or a generous letter of credit is not nearly so well placed as he would be if he were earning his own living plowing corn in South Dakota or working in a factory in Paterson, New Jersey. The odds were against him—it would have taken a strong moral nature to have faced that 24 [I—Value of an Empty Purse combination of circumstances successfully, and this young fellow had not the necessary stuff in him to do it. He fell down. He wasted his sub- stance in riotous living. He made friends with men who were bad and with women who were worse. He went the pace and it was rapid. He thought he was having the time of his life—in his poor silly little head that was all he knew. But ‘he soon came to the end of his time such as it was—he' bumped his way down the cellar stairs until he found himself at the bottom. “He had spent all and he began to be in want.” He took out his purse and there was nothing in it—not asou. And just there “he came to himself.” He began for the first time to get his bearings. He saw the value of an empty purse. What help did this young man get out of his pocketbook when it was as flat as his own feel- ings? In the first place, he was compelled to cut out a lot of evil indulgences.” It costs money to be downright wicked. No man can travel the primrose path unless he has the price. He may have been in the habit of getting drunk, but if he is entirely out of money he will have to live soberly for a while. He may have been indulging in the excitement of gambling, but with an empty purse he will have to call a halt on that form of vice. He may have been making merry with harlots as this fellow had been doing, but without money he cannot go on—their smiles have to be 25 Yale Talks paid for in cash. The way of the transgressor is expensive as well as hard—and it grows harder and more expensive the longer a man travels it. This is God’s own good way of reminding the transgressor that he is off the track. This young man had to stop because his money was gone—he could not pay for any more dissi- pation. It is an honor to a man when he can walk the streets of the wickedest city on earth with a full purse and turn his back on all the allurements to wrongdoing. He could, but he will not, because he is a man of principle. If, however, a man has not reached that level of moral development he had better have his supplies cut off for a season. If he is unable to carry a full purse and run straight, let him carry an empty one for a time. It was a distinct advantage to this young man to be cut off from further indulgence by his lack of means. “He had spent all and began to be in want”—and at the same time he began to be a man. In the second place, his empty purse compelled him to go to work. He had to do it to put bread in his mouth. He was “perishing with hunger and no man gave to him.” He, therefore, stood out in the open and said to the world, “Make me a hired servant. From this hour let me pull my own weight in the boat and earn my way man-fashion.” The sting of want—it is the only thing that is sharp enough to transform many an idler into a 26 II—Value of an Empty Purse worker! It takes the hard slap of necessity to change the spender into a producer. You meet droves of people who have fallen into the easy, disgraceful habit of eating their bread by the sweat of other men’s brows. They are parasites on the social body, feeding on the vitality of others without producing anything of their own. They are like those fat, lazy, green worms, which crawl around on the trees in the spring filling themselves with food which they did nothing to produce. They have not energy enough to change the green leaves into any decent sort of flesh color. They simply lay their food around their bodies in soft, green wads—you can look at them and tell what they ate last. Heaven be praised for hard work! Heaven be praised for the necessity which makes it for most of us not an elective but a required course! We might not take it otherwise—it is so easy to look for snap courses in the world. It is the making of a man; it furnishes the necessary discipline to transform human pulp into manhood with some genuine mental and moral fibre in it. Let every soul offer that same prayer—“Make me the hired servant of my own need and of the common good.” Wherever men and women are allowed to go on indefinitely, finding the way greased for them by lavish expenditure and gener- ous tips, with no chance to come into contact with the rough side of the board, they are liable to 27 Yale Talks bring up in perdition. ‘Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” Paul said once to a young man he had in tow. ‘Study to show thy- self a workman that need not be ashamed.” It is in that direction that honor lies. It would be a great gain if every young man had to face the world with his coat off; if he were compelled to lay hold on some difficult task with both hands; if he were made to lift on some heavy load until the sweat came; if he were set to think hard upon some problem until he felt the tug of it on his own brain. It is by that process that muscle and gray matter and character are de- veloped. It is by meeting some situation which offers a challenge to the best powers a man has and meet- ing it without flinching that he adds cubits to his stature. What under Heaven is life for but just that! And I am afraid that hundreds of us might not do it unless we had to. It is the empty purse, the sting of want, the thrust of necessity which drives many a man out and bids him strive. Hear this word of Edison, the great worker as well as the great inventor of our day! ‘‘Genius,” he says, “may be two per cent inspiration, but it is ninety-eight per cent perspiration.” One of his assistants told me that Edison worked for ten years to invent his storage battery, which would harness the forces of the lightning to the homely tasks of earth; and that during that period he was 28 1]—Value of an Empty Purse always in his laboratory at seven-thirty every morning. He had his lunch sent to him in the shop. He went home to dinner, but he usually came back in the evening to have another try at it in the quiet of the night. He was there working, often until midnight, while thousands of empty-headed pleasure seekers of whom the world will never hear were dancing up and down the great White Ways of earth with more dollars than sense. He made hundreds of experiments during those years. He built models by the score and then discarded them. But through repeated failure he moved ahead to a splendid success. He invented his storage battery and the whole world is richer for what he did. And he tells us that his highest joy in life has been found in matching his strength and skill against baffling problems and seeing them finally win out. In these recent years we have been putting rub- ber tires on pretty much everything and it has not always been an unmixed advantage. We need some of the jolts. It is possible to make life so easy and comfortable as to fail of the best results. With high-priced kindergartens at one end of the educational system making the business of learn- ing a sweet little game and with certain colleges at the other end of the system offering unlimited electives and no very searching requirements, there are young people who may get it into their 29 Yale Talks heads that there is such a thing as “painless edu- cation.” Painless education to match the “pain- less dentistry” we sometimes see advertised, chiefly by quacks! There is no such thing—it cannot be done. You cannot be carried to the skies of mental and moral efficiency on flowery beds of ease, it matters not how much money you are prepared to pay for the privilege. There are no parlor cars on the trains which run that way. Somewhere along the road, all along the road, I would say, there must be hard, serious, manly study. The only men who arrive are the men who take the middle of the road with all the dust and discomfort that may involve and put it through. They work out their own salva- tion. And when they get it worked out it is salvation. In the county where my father lived for fifty years there was a young man about my own age, who was born to wealth. He had a home filled with comforts and luxuries. His father generously gave him a good education, the advantages of travel and all the other good things which money could buy. In that case the result was that when the young man was forty years old he had failed in his chosen profession, he had added nothing whatever to the moral forces of the community and he was a very indifferent sort of citizen. He was simply one hundred and eighty-five pounds of well-dressed meat. He was bewailing the poor 30 II—Value of an Empty Purse use he had made of his life to a friend one day. He remarked, “The best thing my father could have done for me when I was twenty years old would have been to have given me a half a dollar and kicked me out into the street.”’ “George,” the friend replied, “why did you not take a half a dollar and kick yourself out?” He had not the strength of mind to do it. He had genuine ability and a great deal of personal charm, and I have | the feeling that an empty purse might have been the making of him. Who was it who said this, “My Father worketh even until now and I work’? His highest concep- tion of God was of a Being who from the first hour when the morning stars sang together down through the countless ages, had been engaged in a ceaseless, tireless, beneficent putting forth of His energy in work. His highest conception of human life was embodied in the action of a Man who took upon Himself the form of a servant, went about doing good and kept it up until He could say, “I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do.” The Master worked voluntarily because He was the Perfect, the Typal, the Representative Man, the Son of Man. But however it comes, whether - from choice or from necessity, from a high resolve or from the promptings of an empty purse, honor that impulse which sends you forth to your own appointed work. In the third place, the young man’s empty purse 31 Yale Talks enabled him to see the difference between false friends and true. While he was rich he was im- mensely popular. He had friends galore, as he thought. He was “a good spender,” as the foolish phrase runs, and he found plenty of foolish friends, male and female, to help him spend his money. He was courted and flattered on all sides. He thought that all those people liked him when as a matter of fact they merely liked his money. The moment his money was gone he found that all those false friends were gone, too. “He began to be in want and no man gave to him”—that was the heartbreaking part of it. Among all those fol- lowers who had been drawn about him by his reck- less spending there was not a man nor a woman who cared enough for him to give him a meal. His fat purse had blinded him to their real charac- ters, but now with an empty purse as a field glass he could see them as they were, and he saw them vanishing in the distance as rats leave a sinking ship. It is good for us to get down to hardpan now and then, where we are liked or disliked not for what we have, but for what we are. It is good for us to meet men not as the paid servants of our pleasure nor as tradesmen eager for our pat- ronage, but simply man to man. No man’s life consists of the abundance nor of the scarcity of the things he possesses. The only friends worth having are those who take us not for what we 32 IiI—Value of an Empty Purse own, but for what we are. And those real friends are in no wise affected by the ups or downs in our bank accounts. But when a man’s purse is empty he knows “who’s who” without looking in a big red book. He can distinguish instantly between the false friends and the true. _ In one of Martin Maartens’ stories he speaks of the social habits in a certain city which had be- come hopelessly commercialized. If a man was poor they shouted his name at him in harsh tones as if they had been announcing the name of some small station on the railroad. If aman was worth a hundred thousand dollars they addressed him in tones of quiet respect. If he was worth two hun- dred thousand they gave him exactly twice as much deference. If he had a million they lowered their voices almost to a whisper and folded their hands in his presence as they did when they were in church. They did not reverence the man, but they reverenced his money. “They worshipped money,” the author says, “because they felt that a man who does not worship money is a socialist, and a socialist is an atheist, and an atheist is a man with no religion.” Therefore, because they were religious “after their kind” they worshiped money with a deep and holy reverence. In that city no one knew who his real friends were unless his purse was empty. There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother, whose feeling for us is in no wise affected 33 Yale Talks by our rating in Bradstreet. He was equally at home with Zaccheus, the richest man in Jericho, and with that blind beggar, who was the poorest man in Jerusalem. And He liked to construe His own relationships in terms of personal friendship. “T have called you friends,” He said one day to a group of eager, active, red-blooded, young men. “I have called you friends’—and friends they were, even though their means were small. Many a man flattered and pampered in the days of his prosperity never learns what a friend Jesus Christ can be until the hour strikes when all his pros- perity vanishes. In that hour, not knowing where else to look, he looks up, and sees a Friend. His purse is empty, but his heart is full because he has entered into that personal fellowship with an Eternal Friend, which is ennobling beyond any other influence which enters the human soul. Re- joice in the day of adversity if it enables you to see the difference between false friends and true. In the fourth place, the young man’s empty purse gave him a new standard of_values. He had been in the habit of purchasing his satisfac- tions with cash. He purchased some of them at the bar and some of them, the story says, in the brothel. He purchased some of them in worthier places, but they all came to him because he had the price. He had fallen into a way of thinking that there was nothing under Heaven or in Heaven which money would not buy. He said to himself, 34 II—Value of an Empty Purse “T am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing.” Then God stripped him of all he had and set him out in the open, a poor, naked, shivering soul with nothing but an empty purse. In that very hour “he came to himself.” He saw himself as he was in the clear daylight of reality rather than in the night-light of thoughtless dissipation. He said, “I have sinned—but I will - make an about face. I have been wasting my sub- stance as a useless spender, now I will become a producer, the hired servant of the common good. I have been throwing away my chance in this far country. Now I will go back where I belong. I have cut myself off from those relationships which are wholesome and rewarding. Now I will arise and go to my father.” And he went, step by step, a long, tedious journey of moral renewal, but every step in the right direction. He went poor in purse, but rich in high resolve and in a new appreciation of those values which are supreme. You may, if you choose, allow your empty purse to make you sour—you can stand off looking with envy upon those who possess what you would like to possess and cannot. You may, if you choose, allow your empty purse to make you hard and defiant—you fling out your resentment at a world which has dealt you such a sorry hand with no kings and queens in it. You may, if you choose, allow your empty purse to become so heavy with the sense of disappointment which takes the place 35 Yale Talks of bank notes as to send you through life broken and depressed. All these lines of action are open to you, and mistaken men travel them all. But, if you choose, you may allow that bit of adversity to furnish you the chance to show yourself every inch a man, honored and valued for your personal qualities of mind and heart. In that event your empty purse will give you a new and better stan- dard of values. | | There was a young man once who came to Christ with great possessions. He was a clean- living, serious-minded fellow, who had kept all the commandments from his youth up. The Master looked him over and took his measure. Then He said to him in effect something like this, “There are men who have the necessary moral fibre to be masters of their possessions. There are rich men who enter the Kingdom of Heaven, administering their wealth in harmony with the great Christian ideals. It is not an easy task—it is like putting a camel through the eye of a needle—but by the grace of God it can be done.” And where a rich man is thoroughly Christian in all his acts and attitudes he is a kind of masterpiece in God’s gallery of good men. “But you,” Jesus said to the young ruler, “have not it in you to do that great thing. Your only safety lies in parting with your wealth and in following Me. You need to meet your fellow men and your Maker with an empty purse because your means have blinded you 36 II—Value of an Empty Purse thus far to the deeper things of life.” The young man would not meet that hard test—it was a chal- lenge to the best there was in him, but he refused. He turned away sorrowful for he loved money more than he loved manhood. How fine, on the other hand, are the moral results of self-sacrifice and discipline! It is good for everyone to learn how to subordinate his own personal comfort and pleasure to some larger interest. In that school the men who have the future in their hands are now being trained. The Head Master of Eton, the famous English boys’ school, was at one time a stern, old chap whose name was Keats. One winter morning he met a small boy who was crying. ‘“What’s the matter with you?” the Master called out, in his gruff way. “T’m cold,” the boy whimpered. “Cold, you must not complain of the cold. This is no girls’ school.” It was a harsh reply, but the sniveling boy had a spark of manhood in him which caught fire. He stopped crying and he never forgot that stern command. Fifteen years later he was riding at the head of his own regiment of Dragoons in India. When the order came to charge on the entrenched Sihks he gathered up his bridle rein, swung himself into the saddle and called out to a brother officer who had also studied at Eton, “Well, as old Keats used to say, “This is no girls’ school!’ but here goes!” Then he rode on, to his death, as the event proved, but the charge brought 37 Yale Talks victory that day to the English Army and the ex- tension of the British Empire there beneath the Southern Cross. How splendid are the results of discipline, bravely met and nobly born, in the making of that manhood which is the image of God on earth. 38 ae ee III The Lure of Goodness HERE is a feeling in certain quarters that. being good is dull work. There are men who talk as if wickedness would always be found interesting and exciting, where righteousness would be tame and spiritless. When young men . speak of going off to some great city to “see life” they usually have in mind something immoral. They think that that sort of thing is “life” and that the decencies are more or less dead. The newspapers have helped to create that notion. They give an inordinate amount of space to the vices and crimes of men—it is out of all proportion to the real significance of such action. A man may go straight along about his business for fifty years without ever causing anybody to look around. But if he does something out- rageously wicked he will be in all the papers next morning with headlines and pictures. The news- papers insist that this is “news.” They think that everybody will want to read about it. They have the same curious notion that wickedness is inter- esting while goodness is dull. Now my own feeling is that all those people are 39 Yale Talks just as crazy as they would be if they went around insisting that two and two make five or fifty. They have not learned to add or to subtract. They cannot even see the figures on the board and tell what they mean. The most fascinating pur- suit in the world is that of being good. The finest form of adventure upon which any man can enter is the quest for goodness and for God in the depths of his own soul. It has not become common enough to rob it of a certain air of romance. If you wish to find the zest and relish of life, do that. “The lure of goodness” is my theme and if I could lift it up so that you would see it as it is it would draw you to it. Here in the New Testament was One who made goodness interesting. He began His life in a pic- turesque sort of way. He was born in the manger of a stable, which was an odd place to be born. He grew up in a carpenter’s home and in a carpen- ter shop. He never saw the inside of a college, yet somehow He learned to think straight and to speak as never man spake. He had the courage of his convictions because He knew what He was talking about. When He was thirty years old He stood up boldly and said to the men of His day, “I am the Way, walk in it; and the Truth, believe it; and the Life, live it, and it will make you free.”” Some of the men who heard Him tried it, and they found that it was so. He went about turning the various maxims of 40 T[I—Lure of Goodness human conduct end for end. “It hath been said by them of old time, but I say unto you”—some- thing entirely different. And when He did that everyone saw that those principles of righteous- ness fitted into the needs of everyday life as they never had before. He went about turning things upside down, and when He did that people saw that for the first time things were right side up. He was free, brave, original, in His method of being good and when men watched Him live they went away saying, “We never saw it on this fashion.” He taught not as the scribes who had learned their lesson out of a book but as one having the authority of first-hand knowledge of spiritual things. He clothed His message in the ordinary words of everyday life, ‘and the common people heard Him gladly.” He said that the new prin- ciple of life He had come to introduce into the world was like “salt,” it was like “yeast,” it was like “mustard seed.” He compared it to all man- ner of homely things which had some punch in them. He said in a blunt way, “No man can serve two masters.”’ Men cannot serve God and money at the same time without getting things mixed. He said obedience to the law of God was like building one’s house on solid rock, and disobe- dience was like building it on the sand. He said that prayer is as simple and natural as the act of a child asking his father for bread or fish or an 4I Yale Talks egg. And because those fathers in Palestine, faulty though they were, knew how to give good gifts to their children, they felt the force of the claim He made on behalf of prayer to the Heavenly Father. When the common people heard Him talking about goodness after that man- ner they followed Him about in droves as if He had been a circus procession instead of a teacher of religion. They had never heard it on that fashion before and they could not seem to get enough of it. He went habitually among the people who needed Him most. He chose publicans and sin- ners for His intimates and made saints of them. He picked up worthless beggars and women of the street and by the sheer contagion of His own life made new people of them. “I came not to call the righteous”—He said this with a smile for He knew that those self-satisfied prigs who were sneering at Him were anything but righteous—“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to re- pentance.” He laid His strong, clean hands on lepers to their amazement for they had not felt the touch of healthy flesh for years; and when He took His hands away the lepers were cleansed. He told a lame man to stand up and walk and there was such a note of authority in His voice that the lame man tried and found to his joy that he could. He opened the eyes of the blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf, causing men to 42 Il {—Lure of Goodness see and to hear what they had never seen nor heard before. He loved men, bad men as often as not, because they needed it rather than because they deserved it. When He died He was not lying in a comfortable bed, he was hanging on a Cross. He was hanging there not bewailing His fate nor denouncing the men who had crucified Him. He was praying for them with a tenderness which ought to have melted a heart of stone—“Father, forgive them; for they know not.” And when He went out of this world He was carrying a penitent robber in His arms—“into Paradise,” He said. Now all that is interesting! There is not a dull line anywhere in the life of the Perfect, the Typal, the Representative Man, the Son of Man. We print and circulate more copies of the little book containing the story of His life a hundred times over than of any other volume you can name. It came out nineteen hundred years ago and it is still a best seller. We date our calendars from the date of His birth—r1919 we say, for it is just that long since He was born in the manger of the stable. We call the fairest portion of the globe “Christendom’’—His part of it. His words have become household words in more homes and in more hearts than those of any other one who ever walked the earth. He has a grip on the thoughts, the hopes and the high resolves of men at this hour which cannot be matched. He is interesting. 43 Yale Talks Lift Him up anywhere until men see Him as He is and He draws them to Him. How do you account for it? What is the secret of the interest which attaches to his style of good- ness? I can think of several elements in it which are suggestive. In the first place He was perfectly natural. He never posed. He never seemed to be playing a part. He was not being good to be seen of men. He never said to Himself, “(Now this is what would be expected of a man in my position.” He was what He was without ever seeming to think about how it might look to others—He was not con- cerned about that. _ You know Bernard Shaw says that if you go to a symphony concert you will find many people who are there not because they like classical music but because they know they ought to like it and that it is the proper thing to be seen at the sym- phony, and so they go. In like manner, when you get to Heaven you may find people there who are there not because they have any real taste or fitness for that sort of thing but because they feel that they owe it to their social position to be in Heaven. How mighty are the conventions of society and how dull and tiresome they make thou- sands of people who become slaves to them! Those people might be interesting if they would only be themselves. How simple and natural Jesus was. He lived 44 TI I—Lure of Goodness not as the scribes but as one whose goodness was vital. His life, therefore, was with power. He began his public ministry not in the syna- gogue nor at the temple but at a wedding. He wrought His first mighty work there because the ,people He was interested in were at the wedding. - When He turned the water of the occasion into . wine the people felt that the best joy of their lives ‘had been kept until that hour. He came not like John the Baptist, neither eat- Ing nor drinking in an ordinary way but living apart in the desert on locusts and wild honey in an unnatural, ascetic fashion. He came eating and drinking oftentimes with publicans and sin- ners. His table talk changed the lives of hard- headed business men like Zaccheus and Matthew. He was just as much at home with poor men like that beggar in Jerusalem who was born blind. While He was with them it never occurred to them that they were poor. In His presence all hands felt that no man’s life consists of the abundance of the things that he can buy. Life is made up of certain qualities of mind and heart and not of the things which men store up in barns or in banks. He told His friends that being good was being like the birds and the flowers. “Consider the ravens,” He said, “they neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them.” The ravens were not made to sow 45 Yale Talks and reap. They do the things they were made to do. They are true to the law of their being. They function according to their own natures. They live out their ravenhood flying to and fro, keen of eye and swift of wing, seeking their meat from God, and in the great natural order which enfolds them they are fed. “Consider the lilies,” He said, “they neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was never so well dressed as one of these wild flowers.” The lilies were not made to toil and spin. They do the things they were made to do. They are true to the law of their being. They function accord- ing to their own natures. They live out their lily- hood reaching down and claiming all that the soil has for them, looking up to receive all that the sun and the rain and the dew have for them, and so they are clothed with beauty. “Do that,” Jesus said. Do the things you were made to do. Be true to the law of your being. Function according to your own natures. Live out your manhood and your womanhood. What- soever your hands, your minds and your hearts find to do, do it well. Seek first the Kingdom of God and righteousness—that is what you were made to do. And when you are striving for self- realization along the line of the Divine Purpose for you, intelligently and conscientiously, you, too, will be fed and clothed. You will be fed indeed with the Bread that comes down from above and 46 I1I—Lure of Goodness clothed with that righteousness which is the fine linen of the saints. The Master was always sim- ple and natural in His method of being good. And that was one reason why men found Him interest- ing. In the second place, His goodness was abso- lutely spontaneous. He lived at a time when the good people of the world were keen on rules and regulations. They had reduced righteousness to a- science, as they believed, and it took a well-posted man to remember all the moves in the game as the Pharisees played it. There were thirty-three dif- ferent ways in which men could break the Sab- bath. There were fifty-seven varieties of mint, anise and cummin, which had to be carefully tithed. They had bound upon the consciences of men burdens grievous to be borne by their insist- ence upon endless details in the art of being good. Religion had become legalism; righteousness was an affair of rules. And the whole system had be- come as dull as a page torn out of a trigonometry. Jesus set Himself against that whole method. “Except your righteousness exceeds the righteous- ness of the scribes and Pharisees, except your goodness becomes more interesting and vital than that, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” A good tree brings forth good fruit naturally, spontaneously, inevitably. It cannot otherwise. It does it just as a bird sings. Therefore, make the tree good and let the fruit come as it will— 47 Yale Talks the fruit will be all right. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good deeds. He does it naturally, spontaneously, inevitably. Therefore, make the heart right and let the con- duct come as it will. Love God with an honest heart, and love your neighbor as well as yourself, and then do as you please. With that sort of heart within, your own spontaneous action will be right. Love works no ill to anybody; therefore, love is the fulfilment of all law. Now that sort of goodness is interesting and worth while. The rule-keeping sort is always dull and weak. The young man who is always think- ing when he should put his right foot forward and when his left never becomes easy and graceful as a dancer—he can hardly walk across the room without falling over the flowers in the carpet. The young woman who is always trying to remem- ber Rule 53 or Rule 97 in some “Guide to De-. portment” or “Book of Etiquette,” never becomes a lady. She is not gaining that spirit of thought- ful, kindly consideration for others which is the essence of all good breeding. The people whose eyes are forever on rules of conduct graven on tables of stone rather than upon the temper and disposition of the heart never become genuinely good. The Master was intent upon a mode of goodness which should be vital. When we read the story of the Master’s life it seems as if He went about thinking up new ways 48 I1I—Lure of Goodness of being good. He was always striking out on lines of His own. If we had not gone so far toward making Him a stained-glass window, or a cold white marble statue, or a narrative in a book which most men seldom read—if we could only see Him as He was, flesh and blood, warm, real, alive, our hearts would leap at the sight of His goodness, as did the hearts of those men in Gali- lee. They were accustomed to the cut-and-dried - style of goodness, but when they saw His method they cried out, “This of a truth is that prophet that should come.” ‘They saw in Him what the nations had been waiting for during all those centuries. He was simple and natural, genuine and spontaneous, and when that type of goodness is lifted up in any land it draws men to it. You have all read no doubt about the Bishop whose name was “Welcome.” His name fitted him—it grew out of him like his hair. Wherever he went he was just that, he was welcome. When he was first made a Bishop he found that the Bishop’s palace had in it sixty splendid rooms while the little town hospital across the street had only six. He visited the hospital first. “How many patients have you here?” he said to the head physician. “Twenty-six.” ‘Your beds are crowded and your rooms are poorly ventilated.” “Yes, your lordship,” replied the doctor, “but what can we do—we have no more room.” “There is some mistake here,” said the Bishop; “they 49 Yale Talks © have gotten these houses mixed up. It is per- fectly clear to me that you have my house and I have yours. Restore me my own—your place is across the street.” So he had the sick people all moved over into the Bishop’s palace with its sixty rooms and he lived for the rest of his days in the little one-story hospital. That interested the people of the Diocese—they had never seen it on that fashion before. It was said of him that as long as he had money in his pockets he visited the poor people of his Diocese that he might help them. When his money was all gone he visited the rich to ask them for gifts to help the poor. He announced one Sunday that the following week he intended to go up into the mountains to visit some poor shepherds who were keeping their flocks in an out-of-the-way place. The mountains at that time were infested with brigands. The Mayor of the town called on him that afternoon to protest against his going. “You would need an escort of soldiers,” the Mayor said, “and even then you would imperil their lives as well as your own.” “For that reason,” the Bishop said, “I shall go without an escort.” : “Alone?” “Alone.” “They will rob you.” “TI have nothing.” 50 III—Lure of Goodness “They will kill you.” “A harmless old priest passing along muttering his prayers? What good would that do them?” “What would you do if you met them?” “T would ask them for alms for my poor.” The Mayor saw that he could not do anything with such a man—he, too, had never seen it on that fashion. The Bishop set out the next morn- ing with one small boy who had offered to go’ along to show him the way. He found the shep- herds and spent the week with them, telling them about the goodness of God and administering to them the Holy Communion, which they had not received for years. And when he returned he brought with him a large treasure of gold, silver and precious stones which had been sent to him there in the mountains with this message pinned upon it—‘‘To Bishop Welcome from Cravatte.” Cravatte was the ringleader of the brigands! And when the Bishop was showing his treasure to his curate he said, “To those who are satisfied with little, God sends much.” “God,” the curate re- plied, “or the devil?” The Bishop looked at him long and searchingly and answered, “God.” Now that is interesting! Bishop Welcome was like his Master. His life was the light of men. Wherever he went they saw their way about, and in that light they walked toward Heaven. His goodness was not the rule-keeping sort. It was simple and natural, genuine and spontaneous. It SI Yale Talks was the real thing, and when men saw it they glorified God. What a tragedy it is where goodness is carica- tured! Where it is made to seem dull and mean! Where men are honest because honesty is the best policy rather than from any real love of integrity! Where men are clean because they dread the con- sequences of doing what they would really like to do! Where they tell the truth because they are afraid of being found out as liars! Where they do an occasional good deed because it is pleasant to receive the applause of men! Where men cari- cature goodness in that way they become the enemies of the race. They are guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against the Kingdom of God. They ought to be shut up somewhere until they learn better. And those people whose goodness is thin, meagre and commonplace with never a splendid outburst of real generosity in it, with none of that moral venture which leads men to stake every- thing on loyalty to principle, with none of that uncalculating devotion to an ideal which makes a life winsome—how all this becomes a hindrance in the path of goodness! And worse than all, those would-be superior persons who go about thinking about how much better they are than anybody else, the moral prigs and spiritual snobs who stand up and thank God that they are not as other men are! How they injure the cause of 52 I1I1—Lure of Goodness goodness! They make us feel like saying some- thing wicked. But goodness seen as it is, goodness where it is simple and natural, genuine and spontaneous, goodness as it burned with a steady flame in the life of Bishop Welcome and shone resplendent in the life of Jesus of Nazareth—goodness like that is the most interesting and winsome thing on earth. It is the wine of life. It is the poetry of human existence. It is human action set to music and singing the same tune the morning stars sang together in that high hour when all the sons of God shouted for joy. Now what can we do about it, you and I? What can we do to help to restore goodness to its. rightful place of honor and of interest? I know of nothing better than to undertake to show the world some of our very own. The best service anyone can render to the cause of music is not to go about arguing until he is red in the face, trying to convince people that Beethoven and Wagner, Schubert and Brahms, were great composers. That does not accomplish anything. The best service he can render to the cause of music is to learn to play a little of it or to sing a little of it in such a way that people hear and feel the power and beauty of real music. Do it. Do it yourself. It is the only way. The same principle applies to this more im- portant interest of goodness. We cannot all learn 53 Yale Talks to play, we cannot all learn to sing. We could not, if we chose, render the Fifth Symphony or the Overture to Tannhauser in such fashion that the hearts of all who heard would be hushed and awed. But we can learn to live, and being good is just that—it is living. It is living out one’s real self and not some unworthy caricature. It is living out one’s best self and not some poor third- rate substitute. “This do,” the Master said, “and thou shalt live.” The other mode of life is dying by inches or by yards, as the case may be. What those young men saw in the big city was not “life,” it was death. “I am come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” When by the grace of God you are making your own life simple and natural, genuine and spontaneous in its goodness, you will enter into life to go no more out. And when you lift up that sort of goodness it will draw men to- you and it will draw them to Him. 54 IV How Old Are You? HEN Jacob learned that his son Joseph was still alive he went down to Egypt to visit him. While he was there, Joseph as a mark of respect to his father had him presented at court. And when the old patriarch stood before Pharaoh, ruler of the land of Egypt, the king said to him courteously, “How old art thou?” Jacob answered, “The years of my pilgrimage have been one hundred and thirty, and they have not yet attained unto the years of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” It was a gracious answer. It was a polite way of telling Pharaoh that he did not feel like an old man at all, even though he had lived a hundred and thirty years and that he thought he might be good for some years to come. Let me ask you that question—How old are you? It is a personal sort of question. If I should go about pressing it upon people indi- vidually I might not meet with a very hearty response. Men as well as women show some re- luctance about giving the exact figures, especially when the gray hair has begun to show above their ears. 55 Yale Talks But I am not asking how long ago you were born—that would touch only the surface of my question. How much have you lived?—that is the real point of my inquiry! You cannot tell how much a man has lived by looking in the family Bible where the births of the children are recorded. Life is not measured solely by years. You must look at what you find written in the man himself. How much have you seen and heard and felt? How much have you loved and aspired and achieved in the depths of your own soul? How much actual experience of a worthy sort Stands recorded opposite your name where the angels of God are writing all the time? Measure your life in that more intelligent way and tell me what you find! The moment you undertake this more accurate appraisement you discover that life has various dimensions. It has length—that we all know and the length of a man’s life can be easily stated in years and months and days, as in a funeral notice. But life may also have breadth and height and depth. However it may be in mathematics, there is a fourth dimension in human experience, and we must bear all these dimensions in mind when we undertake to ascertain how much anyone has lived or is likely to live in those years that lie ahead. Let me speak first of the eng of life, It is not the most important of the four dimensions, 56 TV—How Old Are You? but it is not to be lightly regarded. A man must have some length of days, to achieve anything of value. The little child that is born today and dies tomorrow does not accomplish anything—it had no time to show its capacity for living. It was only a bud on the tree of life, which never opened into a fragrant blossom, to say nothing of reaching the stage of ripened fruit. It is im- possible to do a day’s work in ten minutes or a life-work in ten years. And how many long-lived men have done their best work when they were past sixty—some of them when they were past seventy! Gladstone became Prime Minister of the British Empire three times after he was sixty years of age. He added immensely to his fame and to his useful- ness by the ripened service of those later years. William Cullen Bryant wrote his famous transla- tion of the Iliad when he was almost eighty. John Wesley, founder of the largest Protestant denomi- nation in the English-speaking world, lived to be nearly ninety, preaching, writing, traveling, or- ganizing, until within a few weeks of his death; and some of his best work was done in his old age. Lyman Abbott and Washington Gladden in those years which lie in the vicinity of eighty, were preaching with great acceptance to college stu- dents and writing leaders for the papers to influ- ence the thinking of their fellow men, and pointing the way of social and spiritual advance for the 57 Yale Talks nation. “With long life will I satisfy Him and show Him my salvation”—this was the promise made of old to the man who dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. The wise man plans for length of days that with ripened powers he may still bring forth fruit in his old age. We may say all this heartily, yet the length of a man’s life is only a secondary consideration. The long life is not necessarily an interesting or a useful one. There was Methuselah! The modern scholars tell us that the names of those long-lived old fellows in the Book of Genesis were probably the names of tribes rather than of individuals. However that may be, Methuselah will serve as an illustration. Here is the record of his career as it stands in Holy Writ,—‘“And Methuselah begat sons and daughters and he lived nine hun- dred and sixty-nine years and he died.” That is all that is said about him—apparently that is all there was to say. His life was a life of one dimension; namely, length. “He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he died”—a long, narrow, uneventful, uninteresting life! No breadth of interest worth recording; no depth of conviction to be noted; no height of aspiration to place another worthy ideal in the sky of human desire! Nothing but length—nine hundred and sixty-nine years! Suppose he did outlive all his contemporaries! Suppose he lived longer than any other man in 58 1V—How Old Are You? history! Suppose he had lived to this hour— what of it! If he accomplished nothing worthy of being recorded save the fact that he had a family and lived a long time, then the full measure of years allotted him would only add to his disgrace. How long did Jesus Christ live when He was here on earth? Not long, speaking after the manner of men. He was only thirty-three when they put Him to death on the cross. Methuselah lived thirty times as long. But how much did Christ live in that brief time? He spent thirty of those years in mental pre- paration and spiritual discipline. No wonder the three years of which we know so much were great when we think of those thirty silent years of which we know so little standing behind them! Ten years of preparation for one of public service! Ten days of thought and prayer for one day of healing, redemptive action! Ten hours of silence for one of speech! How much He packed into those fleeting years of ministry to human need and of contribution to the cause of human betterment! How mighty those three years were in their holy and permanent influence upon the life of the race! His life was short but it was great. When men speak of Him they do not ask, “How long did He live?” but “How much.” “In Him was life,” life in all its dimensions and to this hour that life is the light of men. The length of any life is the least important fact about it. 59 Yale Talks ye When we come to the breadth of life how wide is that man you have in mind? We cannot tell by the use of a tape line. He may not be as broad as a barn door, yet he may serve. If he is a true man he has a certain breadth which must be measured in more vital fashion. What is the range of his interests? How far afield do his sympathies go? How many points of contact has he with the life of his city, his state, his nation? How broadly does he think when he reckons up the forces that make for or against human well- being? How many different forms of stimulus cause him to react? Here is a man who prides himself on being a specialist. He emulates the spirit of that German scholar, who having given his entire attention to Greek nouns regretted on his death-bed that he had not specialized more strictly by devoting his whole life to the study of the dative case. This man I have in mind is ignorant of pretty much everything outside his own particular field. In that field of interest he is as bright and as sharp as a cambric needle, and as narrow. His eye will not hold anything larger than the fine thread of his own specialty. He has no taste for music— Beethoven and Wagner simply bore him; he cares no more for the Fifth Symphony or for the Over- ture to Tannhauser than he does for a last year’s bird’s nest. He does not care for pictures—‘‘Why should I tramp wearily through long galleries 60 IV—How Old Are Your wearing out my legs and my eyes,” he says, “merely to look at a lot of old saints and Madonnas and angels?” He is not interested in philosophy —Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Eucken and Bergson are to him simply “dull old chaps who never got their feet on the ground.” He has no use for religion—to him “‘it is all up in the air,” vague, uncertain, mysterious. He has narrowed his life to a single line of interest, losing out of it- the fine quality of breadth. Here is another type, the prosperous, self-made, self-satisfied man! He trots along the narrow tow-path of his own material success as if he had the universe at his feet. He thinks that a man’s life does consist in the abundance of the things that he owns, a certain eminent authority to the contrary notwithstanding. He has never allowed his interest to be deflected from his own success by any sympathetic feeling for others. He says, “Charity begins at home,” thereby excusing him- self from any participation in the benevolent activities of the day. His charity begins at home and ends there in its own dooryard. He has fenced up his path until it is a narrow, meagre runway. If he were a man of any size he would be unable to squeeze through. He is more to be pitied than poor Methuselah for his own life lacks breadth and he will not be allowed anything like nine hundred and sixty-nine years of it. How far those men are from the Kingdom of 61 Yale Talks God! How far they are from the method of Jesus! His life was broad in its sympathies, wide in the range of its interest. He could sit at meat with Zaccheus, a rich man who had been dis- honest and miserly, until the man of means was moved to say, “Half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man wrongfully I restore him fourfold.” He could talk with the poor beggar who was born blind until his eyes were opened and the man was say- ing, “Once I was blind. Now I see.” He could talk with Nicodemus, a master in Israel, until the man of culture was born anew. He could talk with those fishermen in Galilee until they said, “We never heard it on this fashion before.” Jesus was an all-round man, the Perfect, the Typal, the Representative Man. He was the Son of Man, the heir of all that is splendidly and eter- nally human. He said to His friends, “Love your neighbors as I have loved you.” Love the man next to you. Love the man who needs you. Love the man on the Jericho road, who has been beaten and robbed—help him along to a place of safety and renewal. Let your sympathies leap over the barriers of race, of religious belief, and of social class until you feel your kinship with all hands. Break down the walls which shut you off from those other fields of thought and action where your brother men are finding so much to enjoy. Brush away the silly social conventions which 62 ere .