Fig tow oes aene rere See - SS ee iS etgsetane wsasese eee eee + om — ee way Pe: SE a ee op er dad ery a TE geass f peestease tasengeeaeaasssentomn paighosesseat oes ets soe csee eee SS SS ee Cras ares - a ye ers 5 wong ene Ase ST reap oe ee Re res weet ee ey rere eT = Sasa se Pao = Five ieeteesopeaaeeeeee gb estas ciereess SS 5 snares = Seca S SSSI Soe ae een Sewae oon Sree ~ tay 24 1926 | iy _ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/standinguptolifeOOatki STANDING UP TO LIFE WO Rew IS bay Frederick A. Atkins Standing Up to Life A book of suggestions and advice for a , courageous attitude toward the problems Of Life nes siecle aed ae eee $1.25 Life Worth While A volume of Inspiration for Young Men of dl oday us Pa Ce een 1.00 First Battles and How to Fight Them Friendly Chats with Young Men.. .50 Moral Muscle and How to Use It A Brotherly Talk with Young Men. .s50 Standing Up To FREDERICK A. “ATKIN S Author of ‘‘Moral Muscle’; ‘First Battles and How to Fight Them’’; “Life Worth While,”’ Ete. New York CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LoNDON AND EpDINBURGH Copyright, McMxxv, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To 1 fat veae a A Good Friend. Preface (aay) EORGE BERNARD SHAW has said sh ) (‘ But for the life of me,” he says, “I A ae cannot remember where or when’’) 2) that Jesus was the only gentleman who came out of the war with His reputation intact. “ Like all sinners,’ wrote my friend, H. W. Mas- singham, the famous Editor of the London Nation, “I’m fond of Jesus Christ, but I never make an effort to do what He tells me to do. Somehow this world has slipped out of His control, and yet, if tt knew, tt would find in Him a quite happy and easy way of living.” Olive Schreiner, when a very young child, read for the first time the Sermon on the Mount. “ Ske van to her mother, putting her finger on the passage in great excitement, and saying, ‘ Look what I’ve found. Look what I’ve found. It’s what I’ve known all along. Now we can live like this, When she found, as she very soon did, that people did not ‘live like this, and had not the smallest intention of doing so, she chilled rapidly.” That is really the theme of this little book. The world today is restless and distracted because it has rejected the teaching of Christ. It is true, we render Him a certain homage, for we realize that if 7 8 PREFACE we had followed Him, He would have saved us from the wholesale carnage of the war and the devastating vengeance of the peace. But we still commit the incredible folly of ignoring His teach- ing. We know that He has a secret to impart—the secret of how to live—but we have no intention of accepting His terms. As a matter of fact, we have lost our way. If the world is to escape disaster, it must turn to Christ and follow His way of living. For He alone can bring us personal happiness, social justice and international brotherhood. FE. AvAY London. On . ON . ON . ON wON: . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON . ON Contents PuTtinc First THincs First Bretnc L&tss THAN ONE’s Best SEEING THE BEst IN PEOPLE . KEEPING Up APPEARANCES HAVING A SENSE oF Humor . TAKING FRESH COURAGE . TAKING ONESELF Too SERIOUSLY SPEAKING A WoRD IN SEASON Sirtinc LooseLy To THINGS . RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP LETTING Byconrts Bg Bycongs Purtine THE BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE . TRYING To Dopck DiFricuLTY SERVICEABLE SAINTS . THE VALUE OF LOYALTY . MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 13 25 33 43 51 59 67 75 85 95 105 be) LEQ 127 . 139 . 149 Beha ca (oan ae att hay i I ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST “The Carthaginians had wealth beyond the dreams of avarice together with a commerce which made them masters of the Mediterranean; yet, in the sequel, they became the mere puppets of a soulless splendor and ultimately they were crushed beneath their weight of golden circum- stance.’—Dr. S. ParkEs CaDMAN, “Gold is the obvious and natural idol of the Anglo-Saxon. He is always trying to make money; he reckons everything in coin; he bows down before a great heap and sneers as he passes a little heap. He has ‘a natural, instinctive ad- miration of wealth for tts own sake?” —WALTER BAGEHOT, “ The things seen are trivial; the unseen things are majestic.’—S1r Oxiver Lonpce. I ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST ASG RDINARY sound sense would seem to aA & suggest that we should give priority to ‘33// > the things that matter most, and yet G32) the very last thing we do is to put first things first. To attend to the things of the spirit before thinking of the demands of the flesh would appear to be the inevitably sane and wise course, but the vast majority of people would laugh at the suggestion. They would undoubtedly regard money as by far the most important thing in the world. We all have false conceptions of what is good and lasting and of what is not so good and merely temporary, and so we lead a topsy-turvy, one-eyed, badly-proportioned sort of life, building paper houses on shifting sand instead of abiding mansions on the eternal rock. That is why even the prosperous are discontented and unhappy— they have devoted themselves to their fragile possessions and forgotten all about their imperish- able souls. We put rights before duties, cleverness before character, appetites before convictions. We prefer showy stunts to dull thoroughness. In politics, we give first place to the swagger of ma- 13 e EE ————————————————————_ 14 STANDING UP TO LIFE terialism and the exclusiveness of nationalism, when we ought to be thinking of the shame of the slums, the tyranny of industrialism, and the peril of international hate. One day we shall have gov- ernments that will put first things first, and work for world-brotherhood and international peace, but that will be when the people are represented by men who have shared their burdens and know their needs. Thus the masses will solve their own prob- lems, and shape their own destiny. As Principal L. P. Jacks suggests in his book, A Living Uni- verse, the old politics which specialized in the quest for material power will give way to the new politics which will be essentially cooperative rather than competitive. “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ’”—that is, if he puts secondary things first? We talk of a man who has succeeded in amassing wealth as a man who has risen. What has he risen to? Not to any spiritual elevation or to any increased capacity for enjoy- ment. What has he gained? He cannot eat any more, for his stomach was the first of his servants to go on strike. He travels about in a luxurious limousine and so deprives himself of healthy exer- cise, his home is about as cosy as a cathedral—he has twenty rooms and lives in two; he has more leisure and it only brings him an intolerable bore- dom that drives him into feverish, debilitating and vulgar pleasures. So prince and pauper in one, he ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 15 finds life chill, sterile, dull. ‘‘ For man walketh in a vain shadow and disquieteth himself in vain, he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.” He used to drive and control a business, now a business drives and controls him. He has been caught in a machine from which there is no escape. He endures the crushing servitude of a barren materialism. The fact is, man cannot live by bread alone, and when he is fool enough to attempt it he suffers the dull ache of a starved soul, and a frustrated life. It is hard enough to be a Christian under any circumstances, but there is one way by which you can make it almost impos- sible—you can become rich. The worst of it is that the pursuit of wealth can become such a blind- ing, devouring passion that its victims do not even know their own peril. To all of us it must have seemed rather strange at first that Jesus should say: ‘“‘ Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” One would rather have expected Him to say: “ Ye can- not serve God and the devil.” But He knew what He was talking about. He knew that mammon is always God’s greatest competitor. The opposite of faith is not unbelief but materialism. I doubt very much whether any man ever set out deliberately to serve the devil, but almost everybody sets out to serve Mammon. What miserably inadequate rewards the rich man gets in return for all his Herculean efforts to win material prizes! I have seen a multi- 16 STANDING UP TO LIFE millionaire lunching on a glass of hot water and two wheaten biscuits. It was all his recalcitrant stomach would accept. The other day, in a Lon- don club, I found a rich man pacing restlessly up and down the hall, looking angrily at his watch and muttering imprecations on his unhappy chauffeur who was a few minutes late. Pointing to a row of taxis outside, I said: “‘ My chauffeur is outside from eight o’clock in the morning until midnight— indeed, there are fourteen or fifteen of him always waiting for me.”’ These rich men cannot even buy anything with their money—except wearing anxie- ties and trumpery honors and houses too big to be homelike. Their minds seldom soar towards poetry and music, but only function in board-rooms and offices. They know no breathless ecstasy, no satis- fying spiritual vision. It was a well known “ cap- tain of industry ” who, after two days of infinite boredom in the Eternal City, said to a friend as he left the hotel: ‘ You can ’ave Rome.” They know nothing of pictures, except their price, they judge books by the richness of their bindings, and the most inspired music only sends them to sleep. And when they retire! With no cause to fight for and not even an idea to play with, their tragic condition of misery and dejection is best expressed in the words of Scripture: “In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! And at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning.” If we starve the inner life we must inevitably ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST D7, suffer sooner or later from shallowness and dis- illusionment. The best investment in the world is not to be bought in Wall Street; it is to be found in a serviceable, awakening, stimulating education, the development of a keen, lively, exploring mind, and in cleanliness and rectitude of character. A popular and very prosperous novelist once told me that his supreme ambition was to write one good hymn, and he explained why. A successful novel soon dies, but a good hymn is immortal. One would think that when we got safely inside the church we should naturally put first things first. I wonder! Do preachers always put first things first? Some of them put safety first— which, as Dr. W. B. Selbie says, is “a good rule for pedestrians in our crowded streets but a bad one for thinkers in a time of reconstruction.” I heard, some years ago, of a minister who had the words, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” pasted in his pulpit where it could not be ignored. This might appear to be an unnecessary precaution, but it is astonishing how little you hear about Jesus from Christian pulpits. During the War I used to get Canadian and British officers in London to attend some of our leading churches. It was not always an easy matter, but there were two preachers to whom they would eagerly and intently listen—Dr. Glover and Dr. Orchard. One night I asked some of them why, and they at once replied that these two men talked nearly all the time about Jesus and 18 STANDING UP TO LIFE appeared to think that He meant what He said! They told me—and my own experience confirms what they said—that you might hear a dozen ser- mons with scarcely a reference to the life and teach- ing of Jesus. They said they were sick of Old Testament stories and Pauline theology, and I should be sorry to record their opinion of some of the Psalms. But they adored Jesus Christ and were ready to run after any preacher who would talk about Him in a language they could understand. ‘¢ Shall I tell you what Jesus can do? ” said a Ca- nadian officer who was returning to the trenches, ‘ He can help you to be a gentleman in hell! ” We are greatly in need of preachers who will speak straight to our present-day life, with all its disil- lusionment and tiredness, its enervating fever and its disabling fears—men of fine insight, expanding vision and passionate sincerity. The Church will impress the world, not by a declaration of theolog- ical formulas, but by a demonstration of spiritual power, not by the assertion of authority, but by the mastery of life. I wonder sometimes whether we are right when we put preaching before prayer? Because we do. It is extraordinarily difficult for people to find a church to pray in, for most of our churches only condescend to open their doors for three hours a week. Suppose a man suddenly wants to pray. Most churches will tell him that he can wait until eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when he will be ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST ity able to listen to a curate reciting collects or hear a sermon by a more or less popular preacher. I know a stern and stalwart Protestant who, when he wishes to pray, quietly steals into a Roman Catholic church. I can conceive of circumstances under which it would be vastly more important that I should speak to Jesus than that a minister should speak to me. In all conferences on Christian Unity convened in recent times we have heard of nothing but the importance of agreeing amongst ourselves. Is that really the first thing to be considered? Is it not much more important that we should agree with Christ? As a matter of fact, we shall never agree amongst ourselves about sacraments or creeds; but what an amazing difference it would make if we agreed to obey Christ and accept His teaching as the supreme law of our lives. The divisions amongst Christians are no doubt humiliating and damaging. But the way to end them is not the way of reluctant compromise and timid expediency. Let us put first things first, and try to reach a living union based on an attempt to carry out the will of Christ, not only in our individual lives, but by applying it to social, commercial and political conditions. And the man who wants to know all about God before trying to do His will and all about religion before committing himself to its service is not put- ting first things first. Make the venture of faith 20 STANDING UP TOURS first and prove it by experience afterwards. It is not of much use believing anything unless you venture upon it and act as if it were true. Remem- ber these words from the “ Imitation”: ‘“‘ What does it avail to dispute and discourse high con- cerning the Trinity and lack humility and thus displease the Trinity?” “This it is to know Christ,” said Melanchthon, “ not to dispute of His nature or the modes of His incarnation, but to accept the blessings He gives.”” In Christ we have the only guarantee of social progress and personal peace. His ideal of life survives all attempts to ignore and suppress it. The hostility of its ene- mies cannot kill it, the blunders of its friends can only temporarily hinder it. Everything else has been tried and failed. Coercion and repression, craft and cleverness, the pomp of power and the capture of wealth—they have achieved no real suc- cess and brought no happiness or peace to the world. Christ’s amazing, disturbing Gospel of Love still stands waiting to be accepted and tried. When it controls our wills and masters our lives, all the old contaminating pleasures and futile pas- sions and trivial preoccupations will drop away and interest us no more. Give Christ the key to your soul—that is the first thing. He will then give you a key—the key that unlocks the secrets of a larger and more abundant life. “T only speak my own experience,” said Mark Rutherford, ‘“ I am not talking theology or philos- ON PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST 21 ophy; I know what I am saying, and can point out the times and places when I should have fallen if I had been able to rely for guidance upon nothing better than a commandment or a deduction. But the pure, calm, heroic image of Jesus confronted me and I succeeded. I had no doubt as to what He would have done, and through Him I did not doubt what I ought to do.” You cannot have a merely negative encounter with Christ. One look and something has happened. Admiration blos- soms into loyalty and loyalty into love. Then you discover that if you want to have Him as your friend, you have got to be a better man. Dr. T. R. Glover, the “ Public Orator ” at Cam- bridge, tells a story of an agnostic friend of his who set out to save a drunkard in order to prove that a man’s habits could be transformed without the aid of religion. He admitted that it was a filthy job. The man was so weak that he was utterly unable to pass a public house (a saloon) unless some one had hold of his arm, and the only way of saving him was to give him continuous comradeship, take him for walks, sit up with him at night, and stand by him all the time. If his guardian went up to London for a day he immedi- ately went out and got drunk. Still the experiment went forward, and the optimistic unbeliever de- clared that he would stick to his friend and save him without any Christian assistance. One day Dr. Glover met him and said: ‘‘ What about your 22 STANDING UP TO LIFE drunken friend? ” “ Ah,” was the reply, “I was getting on fairly well with the job when a lot of rough people in red jerseys arrived with an atro- cious brass band. Somehow, these repulsive fel- lows got hold of him. I don’t know exactly what happened, but they seem to have made him kneel down and pray. Anyhow, he can walk past a ‘pub’ by himself now.” Exactly. The Salvation Army may have its faults, but it does put first things first. IT ON BEING LESS THAN ONE'S BEST “What do ye more than others?” —MAtTTHEW 5: 47. “Tf any man will... take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also, and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” —MATTHEW 5: 40-41. “There are many people who are morally sprawling, and with no more compaciness and stiffness than a jellyfish. . . . Are we sprawi- ers and floppers and drifters? or conscience- controlled, self-upholding and_ self-propelling beings, moving precisely and firmly on God-given purposes? . . . Youand I say that we wish to be useful Christians, active and faithful builders of the city of God, through home and industry and citizenship and the Church. Un- questionably we wish it; but do we will 1t?” —Dr. Henry SLOANE COFFIN, “What does the Christian character or bal- anced life mean? Faith without credulity; conviction without bigotry; charity without condescension; courage without pugnacity; self-respect without vanity; humility without obsequiousness; love of humanity without senti- mentality; and meekness with power,” —C. E. Hucues. II ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST ¥>)ERHAPS our greatest danger in life is =] DB, ki in easy satisfactions, low expectations, j an spiritual lethargy and moral inertia. <@ Kes Our tendency is to drift—and when we drift we drift into danger. Ships never drift into harbor—men have to slave and suffer and sweat to get them there. A friend of mine, when he was married, decided that he would wear evening dress at dinner every night, not because he wanted to do it, but because he had noticed how easily married people slip into careless inattention, and fail to ob- serve the minor politenesses and amenities, and he felt that the very fact of putting on a dinner jacket might save him from slackness. George Augustus Sala, the great journalist, wore a clean white waist- coat every day, winter and summer, and when he was challenged about his extravagance, he said: “ No man could commit a murder in a white waist- coat.” We all require some process of moral disci- pline to keep us up to the mark. One of the advan- tages of joining a church is that it is something to live up to. You might feel inclined to take things easily, but you cannot let down the church to which fas ee ee ee —————eEeEeEE——————————————_E= 26 STANDING UP TO LIFE you have voluntarily given your loyalty. You are compelled to investigate your own life and probe your own character with ruthless sincerity. I remember that, many years ago, when attend- ing a great religious conference in England as the representative of a daily newspaper I was asked to send up a symposium on some great question of the day—to be contributed by a dozen Church leaders. Nearly all the ministers I approached rattled off a few careless sentences expressing their views. But Dr. Clifford did not work that way— even in the most trivial duties he was never any- thing less than his best. He sat down and wrote a paragraph with grave consideration and meticulous care, and I reached out for the copy. But he still spent another ten minutes polishing up the sen- tences, erasing words and substituting others—and even then he insisted on writing out a fair copy. I think he regarded slackness as a sin somewhat difficult to forgive. Our failure to reach the highest is frequently due to some weak spot, some small infirmity of temper or disposition. A man may possess many fine and noble qualities—he may have lofty ideals and undimmed courage—and yet be held back by some ridiculous frailty of temperament. What can be done about it? The man who has a weak spot in his body doesn’t trifle with it—he seeks the advice of the greatest specialist he can find. And we shall be wise to take our spiritual weaknesses— ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST a those wretched sicknesses of the spirit that trip us up and hold us back and torment us—to the great spiritual expert, the only reliable specialist of the soul, the great Physician whose “ touch has still its ancient power.” Idle, parasitic people may be easily pleased with the mere froth of things, but surely we must be dissatisfied if we do not achieve a certain spiritual mastery over life. We go hot with shame some- times when we think of our failures and betrayals, and of how easily we have accepted the second best when we might have girded up our loins and by vigorous discipline have climbed the heights. Our piety has been so shoddy and unproductive. We thought we were so sublimely orthodox when we were only miserably intolerant. A man will spend years learning and practising the violin, he will let no day pass without going through strenuous phys- ical exercises to keep his body fit, he will devote half his life to art, and then confess that he has only touched the fringe of achievement, he will even give years to the practice of billiards—and yet he expects to become a Christian in ten min- utes! He can start being a Christian in one sec- ond, but the process of spiritual culture means long and painful discipline. A friend of mine, a young minister, once stayed the night with a great Scottish preacher, mystic and saint. The old man, with characteristic hu- mility, insisted that his young guest should occupy 28 STANDING) UP TO LIE his own large bedroom, while he himself slept in a small adjoining dressing-room. About four o’clock in the morning the young man woke up and heard someone talking—apparently with much emotion and sorrow. He listened, and found it was the famous old saint pouring out his heart to God in a very agony of supplication, confessing with bitter tears his sins and shortcomings, and begging for pardon and grace. My friend thought: ‘“ This saintly old mystic has something I have not got. Have I stumbled on his secret and discovered the source of his power? ”? When we examine our dis- cordant life and see how often we have been less than our best, we must surely become very humble. And as we humble ourselves it will be possible for God to lift us up. Humility is a beautiful and win- ning grace—until you begin to be proud of it. It is said of Carlyle that ‘‘ he preached humility with arrogance.”’ Humility is not weakness, as so many people suppose. ‘The self-satisfied man, sunk in insipidity and stagnation, is the weak man. If you are sure of yourself you do not know yourself. The strong man must of necessity be the one who knows his failures and limitations and trusts only in the limitless power of God. “* You held not to whatsoever was true’; Said my own voice talking to me. “Whatsoever was just you were slack to see; Kept not things lovely and pure in view’ ; Satd my own voice talking to me.’ ON BEING LESS THAN ONE’S BEST the Even churches do not always live up to their best. If they had been loyal to Christ and His teaching there would have been no war. When one thinks of some of the slovenly and fossilized meth- ods of Christian propaganda, the medieval machin- ery, the absence of all astuteness and enterprise, sometimes even of common sense—one is almost reduced to tears. And church members are a good deal below their possible best when they are morose and melancholic. It ought to be such a blithe, lively, exhilarating thing to be a Christian. Surely it is almost unforgivable for a Christian to be stodgy and dull and content just to shuffle along. The peril of the Church today is not in the activi- ties of its enemies, but in the perfunctory alle- giance, restricted enthusiasm and diluted faith of its followers. Soon we shall be growing old—and we must beware of the tragedy of old age, which is simply this: that losing our physical strength and alert- ness we discover that we have no spiritual re- sources to fall back upon. Those who expect to find happiness in personal comfort and financial security are doomed to disappointment. To come upon old age no kinder, or wiser, than we were in middle life, to have sacrificed the things that en- dure for the things that perish, to end life in a mean, pitiful emptiness, there is the supreme dis- aster. I remember a very rich man who said to me about his wealth: “It was good fun getting it— eT ER EEE 30 STANDING UP TO BIFE but I sacrificed too much for it. I committed in- tellectual suicide. Now I am lonely, restless, dis- satisfied.” The time will come when our only resources will be spiritual and intellectual. How rich shall we be then? Have you ever noticed that the most likable people are not the people who possess a lot of things, but the people who like a lot of things—that is people who have a sunny gift of appreciation? Old age need not be tiresome and stale and disheveled if we have a vital contact with life, if we insist on never being less than our best, if we keep the invigorating enthusiasm and penetrating curiosity of the student, if in solitude and prayer we drop all our selfishness and pre- tence and gain power to live the disciplined and dedicated life. Il ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE “T think it is really good in practise to believe in the freedom of the will for yourself and deny it for everybody else—visit the responsibility for your own choice as hard as you can on yourself, but when you are judging other people look for external causes of their behavior.’—BisHoP TEMPLE, OF MANCHESTER. “Judge not, the working of his brain And of his heart thou canst not see; What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, In God’s pure light may only be A scar brought from some well-won field— Where thou would’st only faint and yield.” —A. A. PROCTER. “Those who love not their fellow beings live unfruitful lives and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.’—SHELLEY. Iil ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE 5 BE are all inclined to interfere too much #2 in other people’s business and to dis- cuss in a censorious spirit their meth- HKVEFI ods of conducting it. We sort out Peri with such righteous assurance and _ label them with such cynical certainty. Their acci- dental failures, their sorry mishaps, their sordid disasters, their pathetic weaknesses, their stum- bling frailties—nothing escapes us; we judge, be- little and condemn. We indulge in gossip and conjecture, in plausible insinuations and easy as- sumptions. The careless, flippant levity with which we judge one another is enough to bruise the very heart of Jesus, Who understood humanity so perfectly and always saw the good in everybody. There is something baffling and incalculable about men and women. You never know enough to enable you to judge them. Lord Morley, who had the appearance and the reputation of an aus- tere and monkish ascetic was really very fond of good wine and cigars and enjoyed lunching in fashionable restaurants. Charles Hawtrey, the actor, who was supposed to be a frivolous world- 33 UD SOAR Manoa MUM le aS OS Nt 34 STANDING UP TO LIFE ling, knew the Bible as few men know it and was a devout believer in the efficacy of prayer. “ We are like islands,” says Kipling, “ and we shout to each other across the sea of misunderstanding.” I once knew a man who seemed entirely self-seeking and self-satisfied; yet he hurled himself with reck- less enthusiasm into an unpopular crusade and nearly ruined his reputation. Before you become the implacable judge or the callous inquisitor, re- member that even the moral failure may all the time be painfully striving against temptation and fighting a secret and desperate battle for spiritual freedom. There is no courage like the courage of the coward. We really cannot divide the human race into two classes, and say that one is hopelessly bad and the other superlatively good. Think of yourseli— would you fit comfortably into either of these two classes? The great mistake made at the Peace Conference, as Norman Angell has pointed out, was in dividing Europe into two distinct classes —the bad nations, that were so completely bad that they did not deserve any protection, and the good nations, that were so extraordinarily good that they could be trusted with unlimited power. Europe has suffered ever since as the result of that devastating blunder. It always irritates me when, on asking some good person to help a distressed brother, I am met with the foolish inquiry: ‘‘ Is it a deserving case?” As ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE 35 a rule, it certainly is not. The man who is down and out has been just an average sort of ass, and has helped considerably to bring his troubles on himself. But am I a deserving case? Is anybody a deserving case? The mother cares for her child, not because it is a supernaturally good child, but because the helpless mite happens to be hers, to love and live for. We have got to love all sorts of tricky and unpleasant people simply because of the eternal mystery and miracle that Jesus loved them enough to die for them. They are extremely un- attractive, but they are not all bad and they have perfectly dazzling potentialities. The reason why the salvation of the world proceeds so slowly is because, even in churches, there are snobbish and pessimistic models of virtue who do not like sinners and do not really believe they can be saved. They would be indignant if a mob of unwashed rascals invaded the sanctity of their pews, and they are rather like barbed wire entanglements around their select, exclusive churches. They remind me of the missionary’s story about a native of Nigeria who put up on the door of his house the text, “ God is love,’ and wrote underneath, “No admittance.” Sheila Kaye-Smith, the brilliant young English novelist, holds that we ought to pray “ Forgive us our righteousness.” Paul also thought very little of our righteousnesses—he alluded to them as filthy rags. How are we to love the impossible people we SS eee 36 STANDING UP TO LIFE now so thoroughly dislike? I suggest two meth- ods: We can look into their tired, frightened faces and see the lines engraved by suffering. Watch their dull, hungry eyes, always looking for some- thing they have lost, eyes in which you can trace stabbing sorrows, humiliating failures and cruel limitations. And then kneel down and pray for them. You cannot dislike the people you have prayed for. You have taken them to Jesus, intro- duced them to Him, asked Him to make them hap- pier and easier to get on with; and henceforth you have got to help Him to do it. It will be anything but easy. It is very hard to be patient with fum- bling inefficiency, and to endure stolid and exas- perating stupidity. It is even difficult, sometimes, to stand what Michael Sadleir calls “the genial obtuseness of the upright.” But the Love that can purge life of its vileness can also wash away its fear and distrust and hate. And how much there is in people to like and admire! Think of the incredible kindness of the poor! I have often thought, on returning from a holiday, what a debt of gratitude I owe to a multi- tude of railroad men, hotel servants and ship’s stewards for their courtesy and patience, cheery helpfulness and unfailing good nature. The aver- age man and woman is not having such an amazing good time. They have not got so very much out of life. They look back on thwarted ambitions and futile struggles. They look forward like puz- ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE a zled children, baffled by the mystery of life. Day by day they perform the same old round of tire- some and monotonous duties, through long and harassing years of toil and anxiety. Many of them endure the weary ache of tedium and loneliness. And yet how bravely they stick it out, accepting life as it comes, without complaint or rebellion! And how honest people are! Some years ago a friend of mine published a series of books on the instalment principle. You paid sixty cents, re- ceived at once a hundred books, and then remitted the balance month by month. You would expect, of course, that a great many people would default. The publisher thought so, too, and was careful enough to take out an insurance. But he need not have worried—the losses were infinitesimal, and when he arranged another series he dispensed with the insurance altogether. He had discovered that nearly everybody is honest. A London magistrate has even put in a good word for criminals. He says that in all his years of experience he has only known one case of the robbery of a blind man. Mr. J. A. R. Cairns, magistrate at the Thames Police Court, in London, who sees, day by day, the most sordid side of life, yet finds “those latent splendors that impelled Christ to call men the children of God.” He tells a good story of two neighbors who appeared in a police court, one in the dock, the other in the witness-box. The complainant was painfully dis- 38 STANDING UP TO LIFE figured, had lost several teeth, and had obviously been roughly handled. The injured man was asked if he wanted his neighbor sent to jail; and his reply was a very emphatic negative. This startled and astonished the defendant, who looked across the court at the man he had used so badly, and ex- pressed his bitter shame and remorse that he should ever have indulged in such a cowardly attack. The two men went home together on the best of terms. There are people, of course, with whom you can apparently do nothing, and you are tempted to let them alone. They seem to have such cold, hard, inaccessible hearts. They wear a mask of frozen indifference. Sometimes they seem to have a cash register where their hearts ought to be. They are bleak, wooden, neutral, inhospitable. What can we do about these sombre, taciturn people? We can remember that what seems like coldness may be nothing but shyness or lack of physical vitality, and that what looks like hardness may be only a natural reticence very difficult to overcome. We can remember that human nature, although ca- pricious, perverse and stubborn, is still capable of rich expansions and astounding transformations. The dry bones may yet live. If we try to see the best in people, we shall regard them as sons of God, and not as mere hands to be assessed only for their exploitable value. This will make us sensitive to human suffering, and give us a genuine passion for social justice. We ON SEEING THE BEST IN PEOPLE a0 shall begin to see that with the poor and disin- herited the good never gets a fair chance because of their unfavorable environment and degrading conditions. We shall want to secure for them larger opportunities and a more spacious life. Thus a love of our brethren will bring about the truest progress. It will make short work of arro- gant nationalism and stiff-necked divisiveness, and will promote a radiant, world-wide brotherhood. Shall I be misunderstood if I say that we ought to see the best in ourselves? We can never do anything until we think we can do it. The psycho- analyst attributes certain failures in character to an “inferiority complex.” Mark Rutherford was not far wrong when he invented a new beatitude: ‘‘ Blessed be those who heal us of our self- despisings.”’ You cannot expect a man to become boisterously healthy if you tell him he has one foot in the grave. A moral failure whose life had been redeemed said of the man who had helped him to regain his self-respect: ‘‘ The way he talks you’d think you was as good as him.” Have you never ‘seen a child, who has been congratulated on grow- ing into “ quite a little woman,” draw herself up to her full height and silently register a vow that she will (for the present at least) behave like one? George Bernard Shaw, in one of his plays, shows us that when a London flower-girl is taken away from her street corner and treated like a lady she straightway sets to work to become one. A man ee ee ee 40 STANDING UP TO LIFE who has once seen Christ and felt His healing, strengthening touch is amazed to find in himself unexpected powers of endurance and undreamed-of resources, so that, in humility and gratitude, he can say: “I did not know it was in me.” If you ever suffer.from any disquieting doubts as to whether, after all, you are really a Christian, you can easily settle the question by watching your attitude to the people around you. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” And when, instead of look- ing for the best in people, we suspect the worst in them, and criticize their defects with devouring harshness, Jesus says, rather sharply for Him: “ What is that to thee? Follow thou Me.” IV ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES “When a grocer sells you a barrel of apples you find his reputation at the top of the barrel, but when you work down a bit you discover his character.’—JoHN McNEILL. IV ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES [™\T is not surprising that we can practise &\ hypocrisy before a deluded world, eas- Yi, ily taken in by a shrill and fussy ef- 1 Ee fusiveness, but the astonishing thing is that we can humbug ourselves. We may experi- ence an occasional stab of uneasiness, but by moral dope and window-dressing we make a fair show, and go on. It is pretence that keeps us from find- ing the spiritual realities and achieving an inner integrity. We pretend that all is well with us; that we are at least as good as other people, or as good as our adverse circumstances will allow, and that we can successfully manage our own lives and keep up a decent average of self-respect. We apply a coating of piety just as a fashionable woman uses rouge or powder puff over sallowed and wrinkled skin. There is outward show with inward empti- ness. We wear a smooth and plausible mask and try to hide dull insipidity behind a shallow and mocking vivacity. But superficial piety, enamelled with icy conventions, painted to look new and real, brings no genuine satisfaction. There can be no happiness in religious life that is only skin deep. A pious gesture will not take the place of concrete conduct. We may deceive ourselves and our fel- 43 ee a Ee 44 STANDING UP. TO LIFE lows; we may even take in the Church, but we cannot for a moment bluff God. He sees through the cheap, sleek, plausible imitation. “ There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known.” So it is not much use trying to keep up appearances. There is such a thing as moral dandyism—spick and span, immaculate, shining with self-conscious virtue—and nothing is more intolerably exasper- ating and repulsive. The creature of kid-gloved piety, with a home-made halo over a sneering face, who is unmoved by the suffering of the world, who turns away from the ugly bleeding wounds of hu- manity, and is never hurt by other people’s pains, who, wrapped up comfortably in cotton-wool, sim- ply does not want to know about the festering vices and offensive habits of the disagreeable people outside—here is a spiritual disease that only God can cure. Nothing but the searching fire of Christ’s moral purity can burn our smug self- contentment into deep self-abasement, our painted pride into sincere penitence. All life is honeycombed with the silly Neiitardlae of keeping up appearances. The world boasts of its mighty achievements, its increasing knowledge, its amazing discoveries, yet all the time it is beset by paralyzing fears—fear of famine, war, revolu- tion, death. Man has developed the world, but he fails strangely to manage himself. We swagger, but we’re scared. We have seen a politician go to ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 45 some European Conference which was futile and settled nothing, return and boast that his efforts were entirely successful—but all the same there will be another conference later on. We have heard a Prime Minister, accused of saying some- thing a year previously which was the exact op- posite of what he was saying now, smilingly retort: “ That was bluff.” In war-time a crushing defeat is called “retirement according to plan” and ‘“‘ economic pressure ”’ is the pretty phrase used to describe the deliberate starvation of women and children. We show visitors the rich and beautiful things in a city, but we hide the squalor and beg- gary. We glory in the sumptuous luxury of ornate buildings, magnificent shops and swift and shining motor cars, but we say nothing about the sinister streets and dingy slums a few yards away. I often wonder what the pale, stunted, over-driven workers think when they walk down Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue? They themselves are industrious and thrifty—God knows they have to be—and they gain nothing but a precarious struggle. These other people—“ our betters! ”—are idle and ex- travagant and they have everything. Probably the most wonderful building in New York—that amazing city of towering palaces—is the Pennsylvania Station. Dignified and spacious and immaculate, with lofty roof and stately col- umns of Roman marble, the visitor who enters it for the first time is amazed by its bewilder- 46 STANDING UP TO LIFE ing vastness and almost imagines himself in a cathedral. Certainly it is the most wonderful rail- way station in the world, but when all is said and done it is only a railway station! There is no need to keep up appearances at the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art. It is the inner treasure that counts. The time will come when we can bluff no longer, and it will be a relief when the game is up, for shamming is a very fatiguing business. I remem- ber, many years ago, a weekly paper in London that was plastered all over week after week with the announcement that it had a bigger sale than any of its rivals. For months this proud boast was printed in large type on almost every page. All at once it ceased, and I asked a member of the staff why it had been dropped. ‘‘ Why,” he replied, “we've got the biggest sale now.” There is no need to keep up appearances when you have the real thing. You don’t put wallpaper over marble or throw scent on a rose. When you find the Truth it makes you free. Christ, who zs the Truth, pricks every pretty bubble and punctures every showy pretence. You cannot cheat Him with shams. What if He should have to say at the end that we were “ whited sepulchres ”’? We had bet- ter face the facts of life, deal with the ultimate realities, and find out whether, after all, we are only spiritual fakes, counterfeit Christians, stucco saints. We should have a horror and dread of making a great show and then fizzling out like a ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES 47 spent rocket. “The man who refuses to face facts,” said Marcus Dods, “ does not believe in God.” “I am seeking only to face realities,” said Woodrow Wilson, “ and to face them without soft concealment.”? Come down to bed-rock, be sincere with yourself, avoid vague and crooked thinking, choose the things that endure, don’t flounder or funk. Stand up to Life! There are, of course, people who keep up appear- ances, who are the very salt of the earth—the woman who pretends that her marriage is a shining success when her husband has appalling intervals of besotted drunkenness; the man who never utters a word of criticism about his wife although his soul is starving for love and his life is barren of com- radeship; the people who are cramped and tortured by poverty but refuse help and gaily protest that everything is all right; the dear old mother who scrapes and saves and sacrifices her comfort in order that she may pay the debts of her weak, idle, foolish boy and then boasts of what a comfort he is to her in her old age. There are the coura- geous souls who are gay while suffering a physical martyrdom, who hide their troubles and present a brave front to the world while their hearts are breaking, who can laugh when their backs are to the wall. Smiling, patient, uncomplaining, they endure their sufferings in unflinching silence. It is a magnificent bluff, a holy pretence, a piece of heroic hypocrisy that must set the angels singing! V ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR “ Laughter—one of the most precious of God’s gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very rede air of life; the divine disinfectant, the hee purge.’—Tur AutHor or “ ELIZABETH AND HER — GERMAN GARDEN.” V ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR 2s SENSE of humor is not the mere ability Secy/s) Vek to see a joke and smile at it. It is quite \Y) different from the forced gaiety of g aD pleasure seekers or the brittle, metallic laughter of the worldly, or the indiscriminate rap- tures of the flapper. It is indeed a sane and sunny attitude to life. It enables you to see things in their true perspective, and to face difficulties with serenity. You cannot get bored and fed-up if you have the blessed gift of humor. It is the oxygen of life. Emerson says it is the protection of the over- driven brain against rancor and insanity. It brings refreshment, exhilaration, hope. It reinforces the fatigued spirit. It can dramatize the trivial and take the rough edge off necessary severities. It can catch a hint of spring even when there is snow on the ground, which means that it is not without spiritual vision. There are times when a sense of humor may be our salvation. For we all come upon an occasional period—a sort of black patch in life—when every conceivable thing goes disastrously wrong. We ex- perience a weary succession of failures and acci- 51 ne 52 STANDING UP TO LIFE dents and misfortunes. The golfer who has been achieving fair success by strict attention and con- stant practice is suddenly stripped of his skill, and for a time can do nothing right. The artist or the writer comes upon an oppressive period of dullness and sterility, under the influence of which he is con- vinced that his career is over. Now the man with a morbid and unhealthy mind will sink into a devastating depression under such an infliction, but not so the man with a sense of humor. He will greet misfortune with a laugh and face the black patch with a cheer and go straight on until things take a turn—as they always do. The chief cause of unhappiness in marriage is the absence of any sense of humor in one or both of the partners. Two people who can laugh together and laugh at the same things will never fall out very seriously, because they will never be very serious about falling out. I once knew a newly-married man who, when his wife took two pieces of bread and butter, smilingly whispered “ Pig! ” She flew out of the room exclaiming that in all her life no one had ever called her a pig before, and that was the last remark she made to her unhappy husband for a whole week. If everybody had a sense of humor we should be able to rejoice in a new and brighter world. It would help to save us from war, for a withering breath of ridicule is, perhaps, the best remedy for swashbuckling militarism. It might rid the Church ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR a8 of ritualism with its fantastic costumes and ridicu- lous posturings. Does a clergyman really know what he looks like when he is dressed up in a cope? It would certainly cure us of the jarring habit of grumbling and rid us of the people whom St. John Ervine calls ‘ professional humilitarians.” Sir Hall Caine once said to me, in talking of some com- plaining letter he had received concerning one of his books, that “‘ only discontent is vocal.”. We are very frugal with our praise. In certain stores and restaurants you are asked to report any incivility on the part of the staff, but I came across a much better method in the dining car of the Congres- sional Limited. On the menu I found this notice: ‘“‘ Passengers are requested to report any unusual service or attention on the part of employees. This enables us to recognize the exceptional efficiency which we wish to encourage in our service.” A sense of humor might give people a distaste for social antics and the tawdry pageant of the ball- room. It would do much to promote health and longevity, for the man who is peeved and rattled by every trifling trouble and every passing disappoint- ment, is never very well. And the modern fuss over sex would surely be disinfected and dispersed by a healthy sense of humor. Some people have a terror of being left alone with their thoughts—which proves conclusively that they have no sense of humor. If they had this great gift they would not depend on other people to [SOU CRU Ua EASES PR Manu LM SO 54 STANDING UP TO LIFE amuse them—almost anything, even a temporary inconvenience or a stupid mistake, would be enough to set them grinning. Do you suppose that Ram- say Macdonald, England’s first Labor Premier, did not enjoy himself hilariously when he heard of his solemn expulsion from a Scotch golf club? Nothing funnier than that could happen in the most comical farce. “ Some things are of that nature as to make One’s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache.” For instance, to see a bishop blessing war banners! There is a great man living today who was con- verted by a sense of humor in a preacher. Dr. Grenfell, the hero of Labrador, when a medical student in London, noticed a huge tent crowded with people, and out of curiosity went in. A stupid person was praying at interminable length, and say- ing nothing, when D. L. Moody, who was conduct- ing the service, rose and said, “ While our friend is finishing his prayer we will sing a hymn.” “ Here is a man worth watching,” said Grenfell, “‘ a Chris- tian with a sense of humor.” And he not only watched D. L. Moody, but listened to his invigor- ating message and afterwards won his loyal and > inspiring friendship, and the converted Grenfell went to Labrador and made history there. It must be rather difficult for a man to be a ON HAVING A SENSE OF HUMOR ope Christian if he has no sense of humor, for the Christian has to meet bleak, flinty, hostile people and be kind to them, and he will not be able to do this very long unless he can clear the air with laughter. He will also encounter mawkishness and unctuousness, and what will he do then if he has no glimmer of humor? Moreover, it is deadening cus- toms, monotonous grooves and decorous conven- tions that stifle religion. Let Christ speak for Himself and you have flaming ideas and sunny audacity. Humor has a certain cleansing quality. It is like a fresh breeze blowing through the mind, scattering the fumes of greed and dispersing the dust of hate. It is also a very useful corrective of the hard, business-like puritanism which exalts diligence and thrift as the loftiest virtues and glori- fies pushfulness and material prosperity. I have known cold-blooded, close-fisted, tough-hearted, hard-hitting financiers and industrialists—stubborn soldiers in a savage conflict—and they were nearly always deadly serious persons with no twinkle in the eye and no blithe merriment in the heart. One of them did chuckle once, but it was over a smart deal that was more frightening than funny. In the light of the simple, playful, penetrating humor of the New Testament the fretful struggle for wealth looks rather foolish. As a matter of fact there is no gaiety so sparkling and spontaneous as the gaiety of the saint. Jesus had a sharp, shining sense of humor EE EES 56 STANDING UP TO LIFE which is revealed in His patience with exasper- ating people and His generous understanding of faulty human nature. Mr. A. G. Gardiner, writ- ing about a politician, says: “He is evidently a true Christian who loves to turn the other cheek to the smiter. Or-perhaps it is only that he en- joys a joke.” But suppose it is both? Suppose a man strikes you on one cheek and you turn the other one to him and say: “‘ You haven’t done your silly job very efficiently; I’ve got two cheeks and you’ve only hit one.” Don’t you suppose he would apologize for striking you at all? It would be a joke—and something more. Is it irreverent to say that it can be great fun being a Christian? Roose- velt said that fighting for the right was the finest sport in the world. We have made religion drab and dowdy—a well-known writer declares we have made it “a thing of solemn duties, magical cere- monials and terrifying eschatologies.” Yet the Christian life is love and joy and freedom, an ex- hilarating and transforming experience. It can be a very merry adventure, a radiantly jolly business. Perhaps after all it is only the real Christian who is merciful, forgiving, free of the entanglements of possessions and the pompous folly of pride, who can afford to laugh at all. VI ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE “TI often wonder why God is so fond of our being children. I think God likes us to be a little bit afraid of Life, as children in the dark, you know; I think He wants us to stretch out for somebody's hand in Life.’—LAuRENCE MEYNELL IN “ MOCKBEGGAR.” “No man has more wholly outlived life than I, And still it is good fun.’—Ropert Louis STEVENSON. “So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end. Where there’s a will there’s a way.’—GEoRGE Moore. “ His defeats were not fatal: they were the evidences of his integrity.’-—G. BERNARD SHAW on H. W. MAssINcHaAM. VI ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE >PVNOMETIMES a man is jerked with dis- #5) concerting abruptness out of his tran- \\ YG quil life, and at first the change looks ue) like unrelieved disaster. But when the crisis is faced with unflinching courage it leads to a richer, ampler life and more fruitful opportunities, and proves to be the very best thing that ever hap- pened to him. Sir William Robertson Nicoll was turned out of his little church at Kelso, in Scotland, by a diseased lung, and told that he was not to preach again. It must have been a dark day when he set out for Switzerland—an invalid who had lost his job. But the affliction that forced him out of Kelso brought him to London to be one of the greatest journalists of his age. The story of Jona- than Brierley is very similar. Ill health drove this powerful and winning preacher out of his pulpit, only to make him an author of world-wide in- fluence and reputation. Things are never quite as bad as they look, and most of the catastrophes we dread never happen, and when the blow does fall and darkness descends on us there are usually wonderful compensations waiting for us just round 39 ERT ———E—E—EeEEE——————————————————= 60 STANDING UP TO LIFE the corner. It is indeed morally invigorating to be up against something most of the time. It pre- vents ennui and world weariness and debilitating complacency. Perhaps the most subtle temptation which afflicts earnest, Christian people in these days is the tend- ency to grow weary in well-doing, to give up in despair and let things slide. During the last ten years civilization has collapsed, faith has decayed, moral standards have been lowered, the world has been torn by soul-withering strife and lacerating hates, and has become a scene of tumult and con- fusion. And the temptation is to think that things are so hopelessly wrong that it is not a bit of good trying to put them right. We are inclined to say: “ Very well, we warned you as to what would hap- pen, we made our protest and suffered for making it, we tried to free you from demoralizing entangle- ments and you only hugged your chains, now we can do nothing more than retire into sullen silence and let things rip.” That attitude may be very human, but no one can suggest that it is Christian. For paralyzing despondency may be blank atheism. We must conquer chagrin and disheartenment and chafing disappointment and resist all temptation to retreat. The superstructure we have built is ad- mittedly rotten, but ‘‘ nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure.” Lack of courage means the most helpless impotence. So if we are to build again and build better we must somehow get fresh rr ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 61 courage, and I know of no way of doing this except by a strong, dynamic faith in God. Why are some people so desperately afraid of being hopeful? After all, our fears are just as likely to mislead us as our hopes. Tenacity is a great quality for dark days, and we have at least achieved something if we can manage to hold on. We have always a little more power of resistance than we think. If we hold on long enough we shall win through—twisted and strained and nearly finished at the end, no doubt, but by God’s grace we will not whine or be faint-hearted; we will face up to the hard knocks of life without squealing; we will run up the flag to the top of the mast and keep it flying there. I remember lunching in a London club one Sun- day with a well-known minister who was in sad trouble, very unwell and thoroughly tired—and yet that morning he had preached one of the most searching and inspiring sermons I had ever heard. I laughingly remarked that he always preached best when things were at their worst. He looked at me and said, very quietly: “ We get help.” Ihave never forgotten those three words. I have some- times thought them worth printing as a motto to hang on the wall as a rebuke to our fears and a challenge to our faith. For there is the secret of everything. How do we keep going? How have we avoided moral shipwreck? How do ye escape from the enticements that dazzle us and draw us to the very edge of the precipice? Why do we not go 62 STANDING UP TO LIFE to pieces? My friend gave the only answer. We get help. ‘‘Somehow,” Bishop King, of Lincoln, used to say, ‘‘ somehow we are preserved.” Christ can cure our misery and dejection and mental dis- turbances. He alone can give us reinforced vitality and the courage to go on. He brings us a consola- tion that is creative, enriching, energizing. He © brings courage and adventure and romance into lives that are empty, dingy, imprisoned. He cures the ache and fever of our restless, anchorless hearts. And when we are depressed by failure, dis- figured by sin—when life is nothing but a rotting tangle—let us at least remember that we have in us an insatiable craving for God and a capacity for finding Him. And the most prodigal of sons may yet know the Father’s prodigal love. “ Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars; Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze, Touching the fringes of the outer stars.” Dr. John Watson (better known, perhaps, as Tan Maclaren) used to tell a story of a Liverpool merchant who, through no fault of his own, failed in business and came down with a crash from pros- perity to poverty. When Dr. Watson called to offer sympathy and assistance he found his friend in the depths of despair. ‘‘ Everything has gone,” he moaned, ‘‘I have lost everything.” ‘‘ That’s bad.” said Dr. Watson. ‘So you’ve lost your repu- ON TAKING FRESH COURAGE 63 tation.” ‘‘ No, thank God,” said the man rather indignantly, “my name and reputation are unsul- lied.” “Then your wife has left you,” suggested Dr. Watson. ‘“ My wife,” cried his friend, his eyes blazing with anger, “my wife is an angel—loyal and kind and true. She has stood by unflinch- ingly.” ‘I see,” said Dr. Watson, “then your children have turned their backs on you.” “I never seemed to know my children,” said the man, ‘until this happened. They have been so brave and tender and sympathetic—TI can’t tell you all they mean to me just now.” ‘ My dear old fellow,’ said Dr. Watson, “ you told me you had lost everything. The fact is you’ve lost nothing except a bagful of gold which doesn’t matter. Love, loyalty, comradeship—all the really impor- tant things—are yours still. Cheer up and don’t be a fool.” _ Never be afraid of being unhappy. Happiness is very wonderful, but we must have the courage to live without it. ‘‘ He was unhappy,” says Conrad, ‘in a way unknown to mediocre souls.” Refuse to be hypnotized by failure. I do not think any Christian man is ever quite certain that circum- stances will not overcome him, but he is perfectly certain that if they do they can only win a tem- porary victory. It will be a merely trivial interrup- tion. The highest courage is not the courage that faces uncertain adventures—that may be little more than a flaming insolence—but the courage re 64 STANDING UP TO LIFE that endures certain loss and limitation, inspired by faith in the ultimate triumph of spiritual realities. We are storm-beaten exiles, but the light shines through the darkness, revealing a life unchained and unclouded. VII Gn ads Yi “Can anyone be said to be ridiculous if he knows that he is ridiculous? Not very well. It is the pompous that are truly ridiculous.” —GrorcE Moore. “T do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me wont come to anything; if the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” —ABRAHAM LINCOLN. “He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is under still greater deception.” VII ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY B() (ORYNSATIABLE vanity is always rather peg KE a ridiculous and is easily fooled. Tragic f= about trifles, fretting over minor ail- : Jen ments, worrying about reputation— self- me Ree all the joy of life by its swelling self-importance. There is a well-known university professor of whom it is said that he is the only man who can strut sitting down. I have an uncomfort- able feeling that there are others. The man who takes himself too seriously is always in danger of becoming a dehumanized prig. The worst of it is that the victims of inflated conceit are seldom the people who have any right to admire themselves. The purser on a ship may be rather high and mighty, but the commander is diffident and modest. A railroad ticket-taker is apt to be a bit fussy, but you never heard of a locomotive engineer taking himself very seriously. And if anybody in church is self-important it is not the preacher, but the usher. Unfortunately the man who takes him- self too seriously seldom knows what a fool he is, for conceit is completely blinding. And we some- times encourage him, for we have a way of calling 67 ne ee 68 STANDING UP TO LIFE a man statesmanlike when he is only pompous and reserved, and we put him on committees where he does nothing but look wise, waste time and block progress. | The man who takes himself too seriously may be a slight affliction to his friends, but this is nothing to the cheerless existence he inflicts on himself. He is so literal and solemn, so smug and precise, so desperately set on getting somewhere that he can- not stay to sing or laugh or joke. Such a character is described in A Hind Let Loose, by C. E. Mon- tague. ‘All life for him was a taking of means to ends; means that to him had no worth but as ways to their ends; ends that were nothing but termini for means, means he could not smell as flowers, to ends he could not taste as fruit.” Preposterous, heavy-footed persons who take themselves too seri- ously may be found in all classes, trades and pro- fessions, but they seem to grow rather thickly amongst schoolmasters, vegetarians, archdeacons, plumbers and philatelists. Journalists would no doubt succumb to the disease but for the fact that they never know when a new proprietor is coming round the corner to throw them into the gutter— and that helps to keep them humble and unworldly. They seldom lose their heads because they are always in danger of losing their jobs. Sometimes a cure is possible. A smashing dis- appointment, a humiliating failure, a spell of weak- ness and ill-health, a swift and sudden temptation ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 69 which reveals unsuspected moral weakness and spiritual peril, the sight of old comrades stealing quietly away, bored by pretentious talk—in some such way pride may be punctured with some hope of a recovery of modesty and reticence. It will do us no harm to practise an exacting scrutiny of our motives, our unguarded thoughts, our careless acts. And when we detect in ourselves silly conceit and childish petulance we ought to go into some obscure corner and weep and pray over our folly. Silence and repose and contemplation may give the mind time to recover its sanity. The true saint is full of divine discontent and never thinks he is doing anything beyond marking time. Heis humble and self-effacing and he has no hope except in the wonderful grace of God. Con- sequently his unconscious goodness is a powerful and winsome influence that draws men to God. Nothing is more repulsive than conscious goodness. I think it is Chesterton who says that a man may be proud of his house and his money and very little harm is done, but it is quite fatal for him to be proud of his goodness. “ Only by bowing down before the higher,” said Carlyle, “‘does man feel himself exalted.” It is quite worth while to take some trouble to understand yourself. You have got to live with yourself in rather close companion- ship—you may as well get: acquainted with the strange, unruly being from whom you cannot es- cape. Face your own character in a mood of 70 STANDING UP TO LIFE searching criticism and explore all the dark cor- ners. You will have curious revelations and some rather nauseating revulsions. But you will henceforth be in little danger of arrogance and pomposity. It is a common thing today for young men and women who have been brought up in Christian homes and are living clean, useful, Christian lives, to meet with distaste and reluctance any invitation to join the Church. I think in some cases this is due to the mischievous teaching of certain Evangel- ists who have given the impression that conversion is something convulsive and catastrophic. Are we taking ourselves rather too seriously when we wait for such an overwhelming and explosive experi- ence? I have known men timid yet trustful, whose piety was perfectly natural and unaffected, who simply and quietly, by a firm act of the will, passed under the dominion of the Lord they loved, and although they could never state exactly when or where they were converted, no one who knew them ever had the slightest doubt about the fact itself. Charles T. Studd was once asked how he was con- verted, and he replied: “ I knelt down and thanked God for His forgiveness.” Lest this should seem too easy and simple it is fair to add that he went on saying “Thank you” with a completely conse- crated life. And I have wondered sometimes whether we are not taking ourselves too seriously when we expect some personal and individual assur- — ON TAKING ONESELF TOO SERIOUSLY 71 ance of salvation. Have we any right to ask for anything of the sort? Christ’s redemption is racial and embraces everybody. He loves the world and has died to save it; we are in the world, therefore He loves us and has died to save us. Can we want anything better than that? Is it not enough, in- deed, to fill us with exultant rapture? Whether I accept the salvation He offers is for me to decide and the choice is a matter of life and death. And once more I ask if I am not taking myself too seriously when I turn simple matters of taste into serious moral issues. Is it possible that a man is fussily creating artificial sins when he thinks that God is going to be frightfully angry with him if he smokes a pipe or goes to see a good play? I can imagine that God may be intensely hurt when we are unjust or unkind; I think it must rend His heart to see His children on the battlefield tearing at each other’s throats, and He must often wonder whether we really love Him when we allow our brothers to live in crowded hovels amid the dumb misery of mean streets while we enjoy privacy and comfort. But He is not a frigid, obdurate, easily offended Deity curbing youthful audacities with solemn inhibitions or suppressing happy innocent fun, or frowning on durable satisfactions. There is one place where we realize our impor- tance and lose our self-importance, and that is when we kneel before the Cross of Christ. Dr. Denney used to say that he sometimes wished he iz STANDING UP TO LIFE could have a crucifix in his pulpit so that he could point to it and say to his hearers: ‘‘ That is how God loves you.” We must have been of great im- portance to Jesus. But when we realize that we did that to Him, every rag of pretence and self- complacency falls away from us. VIII ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON “ Every man is a missionary now and for ever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or de- signs it or not. He may be a blot, radiating out- ward to the very circumference of Society his dark influence; or he may be a blessing, spread- ing benediction over the length and breadth of the world; but a blank he cannot be.” —CHALMERS. VIII ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON SHE ability to speak a word in season— rae that is, the word that warns and re- ‘ strains, helps and comforts, strengthens '4 and reinforces—is largely a question of that elusive and indefinable quality that we call personality. For one man to go about speaking a word in season to his fellows is to become a dan- gerous and intolerable nuisance, for another it means a valuable and helpful ministry. I have been reading lately a book on Personality in the Making, by Professor J. H. Coffin, who believes that personality, “ the biggest fact in the universe,” is not a gift of the gods, but a possession to be acquired by purpose and effort and developed by conscious and intentional striving. He describes three classes of people as wanting, wholly or par- tially, in the “ Aaa attributes essential to personality in its true sense ’’—persons of defective intelligence who lack the sense of individual re- sponsibility and the ability to appreciate moral values, the criminal classes which, he explains, are made up not only of ordinary criminals, but also of “the high financiers and all others who live by 75 76 STANDING UP TO LIFE exploitation,” and inconsequential persons such as sportsmen and society butterflies, who lack pur- poses and standards and whose chief aim in life is to avoid serious enterprise and to have a good time. Outside of these three classes it 1s apparently pos- sible to develop sufficient personality to be able to influence and help other people. But I do not think it is given to all good people to engage in this work. It requires personal magnetism, the most delicate tact and a genuine gift of sympathy and imagina- tion. A vague, easy affability will not do. I have known people with nothing vital or compelling about them, people who are lively but not really alive, whose blundering efforts at personal dealing would do about as much good as (to quote a friend of mine) a lesson in swimming to a middle-aged goldfish. ‘“‘ Words from the teeth out,” says an American novelist, “ never saved anybody.” Those who try to be physicians of souls must have a rich spiritual experience of their own; they must have a subtle, irresistible charm that is altogether dis- arming, they must know how to minister to tor- tured minds and famished hearts, and while they must, in some cases, act with affectionate severity, they must never use the method of the cudgel and crowbar, and they must remember that there is nothing people resent more than impertinent kind- ness. ‘ Deep calleth unto deep,” says Dean Inge, ‘and those whose hearts God has touched can find their way easily to the hearts of others.” ee RR EE ———————E———EEEeee ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON (ve I think of two men whom I have known very intimately, who were glowing examples of vivid, electric, irresistible personality, and who were able to speak the word in season with extraordinary effectiveness and success. One was the late Charles M. Alexander, the other Dan Crawford. Once when I was crossing the Atlantic with Alex- ander, we had on board a hard, silent, petrified multi-millionaire with a face like a withered apple, who kept sternly to himself and looked intensely worried and miserable. So far as I could see, no one ever dared to speak to him. One day, when I was walking round the decks with Alexander, he suddenly exclaimed: “‘ Here’s old man How unhappy he looks. I’m going to talk to him.” 1 fully expected that the rich old man would explode in his wrath and consign the evangelist to some very unpleasant place. But I had reckoned with- out Alexander’s gay challenge and sparkling, capti- vating smile. When I came round the deck again there was Alexander sitting on the arm of the mil- lionaire’s deck-chair, with his New Testament in his hand, and his eyes dancing with happiness, en- gaged in animated conversation, and the old man was listening with the keenness and interest of a boy who hears for the first time a thrilling adven- ture story. Alexander would talk about religion to the tailor who was measuring him for a suit of clothes, to haughty ladies of title or lonely servant girls, to railway guards and hotel waiters. He had 78 STANDING UP TO LIFE a magnetic charm that enabled him to speak to anybody anywhere, and no one was ever offended. As to what permanent good he achieved by his platform efforts I am not prepared to offer an opin- ion, but I know that he had a genius for personal evangelism which arrested many a drifting will and aroused many a sleeping conscience. It was the same with Dan Crawford—that bril- liant, dazzling genius who, for the best part of his life, has buried himself in “the long grass” of Africa in order to preach the gospel to his beloved blacks. He once went down to Epsom on Derby day and, dressed quite as fashionably as any dash- ing sportsman on the course, wandered amongst the smartest people and drew several of them into con- versation about religion. There was a glamor about the man that you simply could not with- stand. Several times during a voyage to New York I missed Dan Crawford, and on searching for him, discovered that he was talking, intimately and seriously, with his little, red, New Testament in his hand, to a banker, or a chorus girl, or a steward. These men knew something of the subtle maladies ‘of the soul, and they could help men to fight for a clean life in a hostile world. ‘They seemed to pos- sess inexhaustible vitality. You met them with radiant expectation and left them with a sense of elation. We may not be consummate masters of spiritual propaganda like these two remarkable men, but, as Re a ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON i a matter of fact, we simply cannot avoid influenc- ing people either for good or evil. For all words have wings and happiness and depression are both infectious. We are either helping people or harm- ing them every day. An English novelist thinks we are probably responsible for the actions of strangers who pass us in the street. “A smile might turn away a man’s thoughts from suicide.” I remember once meeting a man in New York whom I hardly knew, and whom I had not seen for at least three years. He came up to me in a hotel, and greeting me very cordially said: “ You remem- ber our last meeting in Philadelphia? I was ter- ribly depressed that night—never mind why—but you cheered me up and sent me home singing.” Now I was not too exalted by this man’s gratitude —for this reason: I had no recollection whatever of the conversation to which he referred, and I found myself asking this embarrassing question: If I can cheer a man up and not know it, how often have I unconsciously depressed and hurt people? We are all preachers and advertisers and evangel- ists, whether we like it or not. The success of a novel is not made by reviews, but by the people who persist in talking about it. The rise of the British Labor Party is certainly not due to money or strategy, or the influence of the press—it is the work of a mighty volunteer army of propagandists who, at street corners and in workshops, on rail- roads and street cars talk, talk, talk, and spread the 80 STANDING UP TO LIFE truth and make converts all the time. Woodrow Wilson is not remembered today for his executive ability, but for his flaming words. His greatest deeds were words. Sitting at his typewriter in the White House at Washington, he tapped out mes- sages that moved the world. If we only knew it, we might talk to almost any- body about religion and find them responsive. In many cases they are expectantly and eagerly wait- ing for us to introduce the subject. An English clergyman once told me that when he was leaving his church in the country to come to London, he felt that there were a few people to whom he ought to speak personally about their spiritual life and about joining the Church. He was very shy about doing it, and was terribly afraid of being repulsed—indeed he would not have attempted it at all but for the fact that he was leaving. But in every case, to his intense surprise, he met with the same response: ‘‘ Why didn’t you talk to me about this before? I’ve been hoping for so long that you would give me an opportunity for a chat like this.” Two young ladies who belonged to a well-to-do family and enjoyed a comfortable home, felt called to social service, and with the support of a few friends they opened a well-equipped club and in- stitute for factory girls. They were Church mem- bers, but held very strongly that it would be unfair to introduce any religious activities, seeing that the members might belong to all kinds of churches and 4," ON SPEAKING A WORD IN SEASON 81 none. So the usual program was organized— music, games, dancing, cookery, dressmaking, and soon. One night, after the club had been proceed- ing successfully for nearly a year, a deputation from the members came to see the two young ladies who had started and managed it. They expressed their gratitude for all the comradeship they had enjoyed, for the classes, for the amusements. And then, looking very self-conscious and ill-at-ease, they seemed unable to get any farther. “Of course,” said a member of the deputation bolder than the rest but still very shy, “ we appreciate all you’ve done for us—it’s very nice to be able to come here every night, and we’re all very happy— but—but we were wondering whether now and then you would tell us something about Jesus.” The two founders of the club were dumb with astonishment! They had been so certain that religion was the one thing these girls would never stand—and if they meant conventional and organized religion, they may have been right. But this little group of factory girls, like thousands of other questioning, protesting, spiritually homesick young people, were hungry to hear about Jesus. FN, t\;) { aE ian Ge H RY Leek fir IX ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” —II Cortnturans 4:18. “They didn’t go very far,” said the girl. “I suppose people would have said they were fools to try. Perhaps they were bound to fail. I don’t know. Somehow that doesn’t seem to me to mat- ter. They tried to do something beautiful.” “That's success enough,” said the boy. “Yes,” said the girl, “it’s the only thing worth while.” “—HLOYD (DELS, Oh the night was dark, the night was late, And the robbers came to rob him; They picked the lock of his palace gate, Seized his jewels and gems of state, Fis coffers of gold and his priceless plate— The robbers that came to rob him. But loud laughed he in the morning red, For of what had the robbers robbed him? Fo! hidden safe as he slept in bed, When the robbers came to rob him, They robbed him not of a golden shred Of the radiant dreams in his wise old head— “And theyre welcome to all things else,’ he said, When the robbers came to rob him. IX ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS $>N the most beautiful and least successful 1 KEES of his plays, Mr. A. A. Milne describes oid \skap f ral Vex the early life of one of his characters BS eu up to a certain crisis and adds: “ Then success closed in upon him.’ It imprisoned and enslaved him, robbing him of his happy dreams and condemning him to flatness and oppression. It is the cold, calculating, clutching concentration that cheats and withers. I shall never forget the pitying scorn with which a wealthy stock-broker once denounced a partner who in one week had spent two afternoons and one evening listening to a symphony orchestra. When he might have been making money! I once knew a rich man who said he played golf once a week, not because he liked it —he frankly admitted that he loathed it—but only to keep himself fit for business. I always felt that he regarded conversation as a convenient vehicle for making bargains, when it ought to be the most joyous game in the world. We are all of us too much under the tyranny of the near and the tangible. We settle down and dig ourselves in. These are the real things, we say, houses, property, 85 86 STANDING UP (TO LIFE money; something you can put in a safe, something that means security, “this present world.” We grab what we want, and then discover that it crumbles in our hands. ‘‘ The chief end of man,” says the Scottish Shorter Catechism, “is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.” No merely mechan- ical and utilitarian existence can satisfy us. The sweating labor of factories and the pursuit and preservation of wealth has left us with very little capacity for joy. It is a great day for a man when he meets a new idea, and every now and then a man makes this startling discovery—that the things you can touch and handle and pay into banks are not of the great- est importance, simply because they are temporary and perishable, and in any case will soon have to be abandoned and left behind. In a few years we shall have done with these things, but the inner life to which we give little or no attention is all we shall have to face eternity with. Therefore I main- tain that it is only the unseen things that are really worth troubling about. Life is a very trivial thing if it has nothing in it that is enduring. It is just as well that we should submit our life to an unbiassed audit and discover the transiency of physical pleasure and the futility of selfish pride. The hectic indulgence in mechanical pleasures brings no healthy exuberance of spirits, but only weariness and discontent—sometimes it leads to mutinous defiance and shuddering despair. A friend of mine —— nT ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 87 who sat watching a dance on an Atlantic liner asked: “‘ Why are the faces so sad when the move- ments are so gay?” I could understand people dancing if they were glad about something, but these people appeared to be solemnly toiling at an irksome task. Even vice, we are told, has the severest limitations and becomes excessively boring after atime. The wine is heady, but the dregs are bitter. As a matter of cold logic it cannot be very wise to give your life to what is perishing and ignore what is eternal. At the same time there is no need to turn your back upon the world in order to find God, for there is a ladder “ betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.” Christianity does not repress physical impulses, but redeems and sublimates them. The Christian 1s not to reject the world as something too alien and unclean for him to touch, he is not to despise it in a spirit of arrogant superiority, he must try to un- derstand it and face it with magnanimity, charity and courage. After all, Jesus loved the world and died to save it. Christianity is as much opposed to a fierce and cadaverous asceticism as it is to the pursuit of shabby successes and tawdry pleasures. The most worldly man I ever knew had never been inside a theatre, never smoked, and was a fiercely intolerant teetotaler, but he went greedily after what he wanted and grabbed it with brutal defiance of all competitors. | We must remember, too, that the Christian lives 88 STANDING UP TO LIFE in an unfriendly world and ought to be constantly on his guard against egotism and animalism and the peril of enslavement to the world spirit. The world today believes that suffering is much worse than sin, and that comfort is more to be desired than character. It is covetous and lustful and un- comfortably fidgetty and feverish. Very few peo- ple could sit alone in a room for any length of time without the sedative of a cigarette or the irritant of a sensational newspaper. The trouble is, as an American writer puts it, that people cannot stand themselves. We must resist the pressure of the world and cultivate a certain unconquerableness of spirit. “She went about her work,” says an American novelist, “as if that were one thing—and then there were other things; as if she were in no danger of being swallowed up in her manner of living. There was something apart that was daunt- less.” If we are to avoid the tyranny of things it is wise at intervals to turn aside from our crowded and clamorous life and quietly bring our thoughts and occupations and habits under the searching rays of the Eternal Light. It will be well for us to “live the listening life,” sensitive to Heavenly in- fluences, alert to hear the voice of God. And when a pleasure or an ambition becomes so exacting and indispensable that you cannot give it up—give it up, just to show that you are master. One thing is certain: happiness is to be found in the service of men, never in their exploitation. For ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 89 a man who has the capacity to find God to squander his life in chasing money is the bitterest of trage- dies. Whatever property he may secure, his moral estate is bankrupt. No man is ever quite so happy as when he is in love—and then he is not thinking about himself at all, but only of his loved one and how lavishly and unreservedly he can serve her. In one of his recent books, Mr. Kipling has an essay on the Victoria Cross. He says: “ The order itself is a personal decoration, and the honor and glory of it belong to the wearer; but he can only win it by forgetting himself, his own honor and glory, and by working for something beyond and outside and apart from his own self. And there seems to be no other way in which you get anything in this world worth the keeping.’ And ina volume of short stories by John Galsworthy I find this passage in “‘ The Hedonist ”: ‘‘ And suddenly there came before me two freaks of vision—Vaness’s well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him the old darkey’s father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside—the creed of pleasure . . . and the creed of love de- voted unto death! ‘Aha,’ I thought; ‘ which of the two laughs last?’ ”’ It is possible for a good mother and housewife to fall under the tyranny of things, to become the slave of household cares, to be always on tip-toe and nervously alert, wearing herself out in a 90 STANDING UP TO LIFE pathetic attempt to attain an impossible efficiency, and all the time sacrificing unnecessarily her beauty, her love of music and books, her husband’s comradeship and her moral influence over her chil- dren. Her home is run with stiff, repulsive regu- larity, and its inmates are under the tyranny of an aggravating tidiness. The children behave per- fectly—but they are not really children. A great deal of nonsense has been talked about ‘“ Blessed be drudgery.” Unrelieved and distasteful drudg- ery means stunted minds and deadened hearts. A church may boast ambitious programs, ex- pensively equipped buildings, and well-run ma- chinery and yet be spiritually lifeless. “I can never understand,” once remarked an astute American, “ how Jesus of Nazareth accomplished so much without being on a committee.” Sir W. Robertson Nicoll once told me that his favorite church was a cold, uncomfortable, repulsively ugly building in an obscure street, where the singing was barely tolerable and the service long and se- verely simple. But the preaching! Before the preacher had been on his feet five minutes you were lifted to the heights and the dusty, draughty kennel of a place was flooded with heavenly light. I knew a man who had in his office the most elabo- rate card index system I have ever seen. But it did nothing and got nowhere, for there was no business to keep a record of. On the other hand, I once heard a great musical genius give a recital in De ne ON SITTING LOOSELY TO THINGS 91 a little Welsh chapel, on a very inferior organ, which had nothing to recommend it but a row of gaudy pipes. The audience was spellbound by the heavenly music which came, not from the cheap little organ, but from the soul of the organist. I saw the regular organist sitting in a pew with a puzzled look in his eyes. He was wondering what had happened to his organ! Sometimes a man, immersed in the jangling cares and enervating pleasures of the world, sees a beck- oning light drawing him away from all material engrossments and sending him forth on a search for Truth and a quest for Life. Having seen the Light—the Light of the world—he follows the gleam, and knows the glow of a vision which changes everything. He is surprised to find him- self on a pilgrimage which leads to no worldly gain and no material advantage—but he has made the unreckoning venture of faith and has discovered that the secret of true living is not in possessions and self-gratification, but in love and service. He sees life from a new angle, and has a new method of estimating values. He begins to suspect that a bird in the bush may be worth two in the hand. The things that seemed so essential are becoming quite insignificant. When he opens his newspaper he finds the literary page much more fascinating than the financial columns. He has wider tastes and interests, vaster resources, a new zest for life. And the old scramble for wealth now looks D2 STANDING UP TO LIFE vulgar and silly. Old habits are broken, new ideas are born, he is conscious of unlocked en- ergies, and enduring satisfactions. Exalted en- thusiasms sweep through his soul like a fresh, life-giving breeze. The whole world belongs to him because he has stopped seeking it. He is now sitting very loosely to things, and is prepared to make any sacrifice in order to seize realities and lay hold of Truth; but he has already a rapturous sense of liberation and joy. All the barriers are down. The happy wayfarer has found his way home. He is starting on the process of moral and spiritual transformation which we call conversion. ENS ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP “ One friend is enough to change the world.” —THeE AutHor or “ ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN.” “ She never found fault with you, never implied Your wrong by her right; yet man at her side Grew nobler, girls purer, and through the whole town The children were gladder that pulled at her gown,” —F. B. Brownine. “To love and be loved is the greatest happi- ness in existence... . It is not that a man has occasion to fall back upon the kindness of his friends. Perhaps he may never experience the necessity of doing so; but we are governed by our imaginations, and they stand there as a solid bulwark against all the evils of life.” —SYDNEY SMITH. x ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP E> ©) ROBABLY the best definition of earthly | EZ BS bliss is “ four feet on a fender,” for ‘“ aged friendship is the greatest blessing in GO ESSD life, just as loneliness is the darkest sorrow. Loneliness can be so devastating and un- bearable that it will lead emotional people into rash and foolish marriages, and weak people into wild alcoholic indulgence. The gnawing solitariness of a crowded city is almost unendurable, and in the isolation of a new country loneliness has sometimes led to madness and suicide. To the lonely, with no opportunity of self-expression, life becomes a thing of vague hungers and raging desires, enervating repressions and morbid imaginings—something in- complete, unsatisfying, insupportable. We hear much of the loneliness of old age, but sometimes a boy is the loneliest being in the world. He suffers the most acute and intolerable loneliness simply because nobody understands him. The most un- likely people confess to this feeling of isolation. It is not exclusively the experience of the solitary— very often it is the prosperous man, with crowds of acquaintances, who suddenly discovers the desola- 95 96 STANDING UP TO LIFE tion of loneliness. And it is certainly not confined to the unmarried. For an ill-matched couple can live together in such dreary separateness that they do not even speak the same language. Such starved and tortured souls may attempt a cold, steely self-mastery; but it is rather a dreadful remedy. Nothing can save the lonely except warm human companionship or the cleansing, inspiring friendship of Jesus. ‘‘ We are most of us very lonely in this world,’ said Thackeray. ‘“‘ You who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.” I have said so much about the horrors of loneli- ness in order to show how great a thing friendship is. No one who has one good friend can be said to have failed in life, however unsuccessful he may have been in other directions. I have heard of a man who refused to move to a more attractive town, where he could have had a much more lucra- tive post, simply because in the rather dismal sub- urb in which he lived he had a friend. When there was a food-shortage in England during the War and women had to wait outside shops in long queues they were greatly pitied and much sym- pathy was expressed in the newspapers. As a mat- ter of fact most of the women thoroughly enjoyed the experience, because it brought them an unusual opportunity for comradeship. One night, coming out of church, a friend of mine stopped to speak to a dear old woman, who told him she had saved up ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP od her money and was going on a day trip to the sea in a motor coach. ‘“ You will find it hot and tir- ing,” he said, ‘‘ and you’ve a long way to go to get the coach. I will tell you what [’ll do—I’ll lend you my automobile for the day and you can travel in comfort.” She thanked him with tears in her eyes for his consideration and kindness and then said: “‘ But if you don’t mind I’d rather go in the motor coach because you always meet nice people to talk to.” Your friend must never be a mere echo of your- self. It ought to be possible to tell the truth to a friend and to receive the truth from him. Flattery —always sickening and exasperating to decent people—is simply fatal to real friendship. As a rule, the man who has the firmest friends is the man who is by no means anxious for cheap and easy popularity. The joy of true comradeship is in being able to think aloud—to say even foolish and ill-considered things without being misunderstood. Apart from this, friendship is only a frail dream. Certainly you must be able to laugh together, and to laugh at the same things. Nothing divides peo- ple so much as their idea of humor. There is no room in friendship for the intolerable insolence of pity. Instead, there is a mutual sympathy and understanding, a glowing, radiant fellowship, a glorious partnership in the bearing of burdens and the facing of difficulties. We must not use the word “ friendship ” too carelessly. If a man a 98 STANDING UP TO LIFE has two good friends, he is rich indeed. A man who thinks he has a dozen friends may well in- quire whether he has one. We ought to take care of our friendships, and I will tell you why. The bitterest thing in this world is disillusion. It is a wound that takes long to heal and often leaves ugly scars. And one shall ask him: What are these wounds in thine hands? And he shall answer: Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. When a friend fails you the world crashes. Friendship, sublimated by religion, is the only basis for a successful and durable marriage. With- out it, marriage soon ceases to be a romance and becomes merely a somewhat boring institution. The exhilarating audacity of a new adventure is lost in mutual criticism and irritation, ending in weariness, lassitude, perhaps in disaster. But what splendid satisfaction there may be in the comrade- ship of marriage—a free, generous, tolerant, under- standing friendship that never depends on the ecstasy of emotional abandon! “ Life,” said Sam- uel Butler, “is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” The wonder is, not that we make mistakes, but that we make so few. The very thought of carrying on this precarious business alone is paralyzing. Life is only made possible by friendship. Any inquiry into the forces that shape men’s lives will show the extraordinary effectiveness of personal influence. 2 ee ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP eb The selfless devotion of a mother, the steadfast loyalty of a wife, the moral reinforcement of a good man’s friendship—here are the potent forces that command the homage of the heart and awaken slumbering ideals into fruitful activity. And nothing but friendship can save a world morally fatigued after the drunkenness of War—a world haunted by fantastic fears, ravaged by gro- tesque hatreds, and torn by savage jealousies. “We are members one of another,” is not merely a vague philosophy or a beautiful religious doctrine —it is a simply inescapable economic fact, which the nations must accept or perish. Industrialism, although it has introduced much squalid suffering and appalling ugliness into life, has also brought about the solidarity of the world. The world is now one in its successes and defeats, and a catas- trophe in one country is a catastrophe for all. Above all the greed and treachery that darken the outlook today we see the solitary figure of Jesus calling the people to faith and love. Will they listen to Him, or will they once more allow govern- ments to settle petty differences by the suicidal stupidity of war? Surely we must come to see that there is nothing so weak as force, nothing so futile as repression, nothing so strong as love. Jesus alone has the secret that will save the world; and it is the secret of love. Love can bring back laughter and freedom and youth to a world torn and strangled by the indecent insanity of organ- (iting RP ATAU Dara A AL ORT LR SYA aS OIE 100 STANDING UP TO\LIGE ized slaughter. Love can bring reconciliation instead of suspicion, codperation instead of com- petitive greed. Christ, with His blessed gospel of good-will, must be Lord of all, and He will yet make cynical reactionary politicians look incred- ibly foolish. Their blind reliance on force, even when it has failed again and again, their reckless and provocative diplomacy, their devilish search for blinding and death-dealing poisons, their vin- dictive appetite for loot—the whole crazy business is directly at variance with the life and teaching of Jesus. Only world friendship can insure world peace. You can never overcome evil by more evil; but you can “ overcome evil with good.” The only effective way of destroying your enemies is by destroying their enmity. But what will religion do to friendship? It must have something to say about the relationships of life, because it is just in these perilous paths that we go astray. For one thing, it turns the friend- ship that asks into the friendship that gives. It elevates friendship into service, gives it a wider range and a purer loyalty. Christian friendship is not merely a comfortable companionship; it will become a passionate love for the whole world. Religion saves friendship from fugitiveness, and makes it tolerant and patient, firm and stable. It purifies friendship from all selfishness and egotism. And it does much more than this; it does the great- est thing of all, for it introduces us to the friend- ere ON RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP 101 ship of Jesus. Jesus differs from all other teachers and leaders, for He calls us to a warm personal friendship. In all human comradeships there are inevitable reserves. But in the friendship of Jesus there are no limitations. You can tell Him everything because He knows and understands everything. His friendship has a rich redemptive quality. Dean Inge is right when he says that “religion is not taught, it is caught.” We get the Divine contagion from friendship with Jesus. And by dwelling with His spotless purity and infinite love we are led to a Divine dissatisfaction with our own mean and feeble lives. A friend of mine says he hates to put on a new suit of clothes because it makes his face look so shabby! The man who becomes a friend of Jesus will find a lot of things looking shabby; and they will have to go. This most lovable Figure in his- tory draws all kinds of people into the circle of His friendship. The poor man is oppressed by drab monotony, but the prosperous man is often seized by boredom and satiety. What they both need is a faith on which they can live and leap forward. When Jesus captures their love and loyalty they find in His friendship a driving force, a new mo- mentum, a cleansing power. He makes friends of the most amazing people—queer, twisted, ugly, un- stable characters that promise nothing, but become completely transformed under the spell of His com- radeship. It is a good thing that He is not over- eee eee er ee ee eee 102 STANDING UP TO LIFE particular about the friends He makes, or where should we be? But if He is to take our broken lives and make them beautiful by His friendship, He will do it on one condition: “ Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” AL ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES “Tt is in vain for you to expect, it is impudent — for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own — behalf if you refuse to exercise this joe temper with respect to others.” —BIsHopP Hoapuay. XI ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES S)KHY are our memories so capricious, un- | af ruly and unmanageable? The mystery “a VEY of memory seems to be almost un- ‘4% fathomable. There are things we ought to forget and they continually haunt us; there are other things it is a crime to forget, and unless we make a note of them they elude us altogether. Failure to answer letters and keep engagements cannot be easily dismissed as mere inadventence, but must be condemned as rude neglect of which any Christian man should be ashamed. We talk about forgiving and forgetting, but it is a good deal easier to forgive than to forget. I suppose it is possible to train the memory. Dr. Parker thought so, for he once told me that he never kept an en- gagement book, but registered dates and hours in his mind with perfect safety. I wonder whether he found it as easy to exclude from his memory the things he wanted to forget? The difficult problem is how to forget our own silly mistakes and teasing irritations, and the un- avoidable stains that have soiled our minds, and yet remember the beautiful dreams, and the rich ex- 105 106 STANDING UP TO LIFE periences. Our memories are clogged with refuse when they might be stored with beauty. Unhap- pily the scum rises to the top. If we are ever to achieve any durable happiness we must forget our losses and defeats and blunders and refuse to be beaten down by.them. There is nothing more pitifully weak than to be always regretting our mistakes. As a wise man attends to the health and cleanliness of the body, so should he aim at the control of the mind by clear, brave thinking, con- stant prayer, and every kind of bracing mental discipline. We let bygones be bygones when people are dead, and are quite willing to indulge in “‘ tomb- stone panegyric.” But when we meet a man who has injured us it requires some grace to wipe out the past, for we are creatures of gusty passions and wayward emotions. “If he would only repent and behave himself,” we say, “ we could forgive and forget.’ Yet it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. It is perhaps easier to forget our own sins than the offences of others, and yet just when the evil things seem to have fallen into a sort of veiled obscurity they have an ugly way of making a sudden and startling reappearance. Memory is a merciless instrument of justice. The past, with its dead dreams and lonely secrets, comes back tapping at the windows of the mind with a dreary, imperious reiteration. How can we get rid of blistering feuds and een EEE ON LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES 107 smouldering grudges? How can we cleanse our minds of petulant ill humor and peevish resent- ments? How can we make sure that when we are righteously indignant against social wrongs we are free from merely sour combativeness? How can we avoid dark suspicions, unaccountable hostilities and malicious imaginings? We shall not do it by a careless and cynical acquiescence in an imperfect and sin-ridden world. We shall not improve mat- ters by being what the world calls broad-minded— which only means ignoring the old inhibitions. When we are inclined to be hard on people younger than ourselves we shall do well to remember our own weaknesses and follies. I often think that old people rather overdo their wrath and indignation over the frivolities and rebellions of the young, simply because they forget that when they were young they were also imps of mischief—reckless, headstrong and intractable with all the confusing turmoil of adolescence. But for the real cure for tarnished records and unforgiving harshness we shall have to come to Christ who alone can scatter the spectres of the mind. There is a beautiful story told of Percy Ains- worth—a saintly Methodist minister who died very young, but left memories that are fragrant to this day. His young brother was going home, in Man- chester, England, very late one night when, to his astonishment, he saw Percy Ainsworth, who always went to bed early, standing before a building in a 108 STANDING UP. TO [ifigg dark and squalid street, sponging the wall. He stopped amazed, and cried: “‘ Percy, what on earth are you doing? ’”’ And Ainsworth explained that earlier in the evening, going home from a service, he had seen written on this wall some foul and filthy words. He went home and tried to forget them. He attempted to read a book, he went to bed and sought sleep, but all in vain. Those vile words were there—people were reading them as they passed by, even the minds of women and boys would be poisoned by them. So at last he got up, found a sponge and walked through the city to the old building in the grimy street and washed out the unclean words. There are people in the world like that. They go about cleansing life of its foulnesses—sometimes with their tears. It was from Jesus that they learned this delicate ministry. But the stains that He had to wash away were so vile and corroding that He could only do it with His blood. And now at the touch of His scarred hands the soiled life sparkles with cleanliness, and bygones are bygones. ALT ON PUTTING THE BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” — SHAKESPEARE. “And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answered, ‘I Myself am Heaven and Hels —Omar KHAYYAM. “Man is ever ready to think that lis failure comes from without rather than from within.” —GrorcE Moore XIT ON PUTTING THE BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE é repulsive character of the people by whom we are surrounded. The man who cannot find anyone intelligent enough to talk to is seldom a very clever person himself. And the woman who complains that no one has ever loved or un- derstood her should seriously inquire whether she has ever loved or tried to understand anybody. I suggest that restlessness, impatience, fretfulness and unhappiness are in the great majority of cases due to causes within ourselves and often under our own control. I wonder how often depression and infirmity of temper are due to over-eating, lack of exercise and poisoned nerves? It is a fact that people who seldom walk, never eat fruit or drink water and sleep with closed windows have actually been known to blame God for their ill-health. A man may be a sentimentalist about other people, but he should be a realist about himself. The habit of putting the blame in the wrong i111 112 STANDING UP TO LIFE place is a common vice with the victims of unsuc- cessful marriages. But it is a rare thing for a dis- astrous marriage to be wholly due to the failure of one of the partners. Nearly always there are faults on both sides which a Christian spirit com- bined with shrewd sense might, without undue strain, deal with successfully. There is probably no relationship in the world quite so precarious as marriage, and it is foolish to expect plain sailing and easy progress all the way. A friend of Tol- stoy’s, writing about the domestic controversy that harassed his later years, says: ‘‘ The cardinal cause of the dispute was the impossibility of two human beings pursuing the same spiritual development precisely contemporaneously.”’ A short while ago I read a magazine article by a woman who, in a rather remarkable confession, described the process by which she saved her mar- ried life when it was perilously near the rocks. She was rather deeply estranged from her husband and naturally she attributed to him the whole of the blame. One day, however, she experienced a curious awakening and began to ask herself certain pointed questions: ‘‘ What would he miss if I went away? If his secretary left him he would be panic- stricken; if he lost one or two of his men friends he would be broken-hearted. But if I went away— would he know it? He would miss no comradeship, for I am not giving him any. He would probably prefer to get his meals at his club, for I feed my ON PUTTING BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE 113 pet dog more carefully than I feed him. I have taken no interest in his work and shown him no warmth of affection. He provides for me gener- ously, he is faithful to me, he is a decent fellow, although occasionally impatient and exasperating, but then I might have married a drunkard or a dope fiend. Have I been a cold, selfish parasite instead of a loving, dependable partner?” Now, if husbands and wives would take themselves in hand like that and ask searching questions and face the facts, they would often discover that they have been putting the whole of the blame where it simply does not belong, and they would cease to hurt and misunderstand one another, and be able to restore harmonious relations. It is the fashion just now to put all the blame for the war on the international financiers, the militar- ists, the politicians and the armament makers, and I am certainly not going to defend any of them. But are we free from responsibility? The average man is not greatly interested in international affairs even now, but prior to 1914 did he ever give them a serious thought? We used to read about secret agreements, the balance of power, naval suprem- acy, the piling up of armaments, but what did we care? Everything was cheap, business was good, the streets were full of opulent crowds, we lived in a fools’ paradise, and we were greatly surprised when the crash came, and greed, and fear, and hate sent the world reeling and tottering, and plunged ee ————EeEeEeEEEEEE————————EE__— 114 STANDING UP TO LIFE it into the folly and barbarity and cheap vindic- tiveness of war. Perhaps the most glaring example of unfairness is when we blame God for this easily preventable holocaust. God tried the daring, dan- gerous but exhilarating experiment of making us free—and inevitably we are free not only to be good, but to play the fool whenever we like. When we deplore the barren records and slow methods of governments and violently denounce them for their neglect of urgent and overdue reforms it is more than likely that we are putting the blame in the wrong place. ,What about our own feeble and drifting inertia? Governments are peculiarly sen- sitive to public opinion and would not be able to shirk their duties unless we allowed them to do so. The head of a government is very much like the driver of an omnibus—he is, of course, a capable man and knows how to drive, but he is rigidly lim- ited to certain routes, his speed is strictly con- trolled, and he starts when the bell rings. It is customary today to blame the churches for most of the things they do and for all the things they fail to achieve. Young people, especially, complain that the services are bleak and conven- tional, and the preaching colorless and _ boring. They want a stimulant and they get a narcotic— they ask for bread and they are given syrup; they need intellectual guidance and they hear a mere dribble of innocuous commonplaces. There is, no doubt, truth in all this, but what I object to is that ee ON PUTTING BLAME SOMEWHERE ELSE 115 a man will attend one slovenly service and hear one illiterate preacher and then dismiss religion as derelict and bankrupt. It is useless to tell such people that religion is the most romantic and ad- venturous thing in the world, and that nothing else is able to explain the meaning of our existence or satisfy the fundamental and universal craving of the human heart. But I might perhaps suggest that all such critics should sit down one night and read the New Testament right through—treating it exactly as they would treat any other book. If anybody is scared by such a task let him read the four Gospels at a sitting and be thrilled by their amazing story. At all events he will find in Jesus Someone he can admire without any reservation. Fair is the sunshine, Fairer still the moonlight, And all the twinkling, starry host; Jesus shines fatrer, Jesus shines purer, Than all the angels heaven can boast. I wish the young men who find the churches stuffy and lifeless would capture them instead of criticizing them. I want to say this to youthful critics of both sexes: If the churches are as bad as you think you ought not to be satisfied to look on as passive spectators. Take hold of them and change them. The way is open to you. But, be- lieve me, when you blame the churches you are SARS EAU NTS ZAR RAE tL DATS Oe eee 116 STANDING UP) TO Lite putting the blame in the wrong place. What have you done to make them stronger and more efficient? Have you ever dared anything, ever risked any- thing for the Church? You have done nothing, so far, except sneer and sulk. Now go in and take possession of the churches—no one can stop you— and start, under the leadership of Jesus, a great crusade to save the world. Whether you succeed or not, you will experience the most durable satis- faction of your life. ALII ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY “ Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labor be? Let us alone. “Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave?” —TENNYSON IN “ THE LotTus-EATERS.” “Tf I drink oblivion for a single day So shorten I the stature of my soul.” —MEREDITH. “She was a Christian Scientist who accepted doctors, she was a pacifist who accepted war, she was a humanitarian who accepted executions, she was a democrat who accepted the total inferiority of all habits, cultures, races, religions and pros- perities not her own.’—FRANCIS HACKETT. XIII ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY iaty a, Wo gS a rule a difficulty is only a difficulty so ey Ne 9) ) I Weay CaN ) squarely and deal with it drastically J ESE 8 and it dis rs. One day you are an appea Vay: called to a task which you think you will loathe. You indulge in a good deal of ingenious maneuver- ing in order to dodge it, and naturally you become increasingly apprehensive. If you are wise, you sit down and do it, and discover to your surprise and relief that you have thoroughly enjoyed the job. When I was organizing a great Mission to Central London, I arranged for a group of workers to visit sixteen thousand homes. It suddenly occurred to me that in common fairness I could scarcely ask them to do anything I was not prepared to do my- self, so I allotted myself a mean and evil-smelling street off Gray’s Inn Road. The dread of working that street worried me for a week, and I would thankfully have dodged it if I could. Then I de- cided that for my own peace of mind the best plan would be to go and do the work and get it out of the way. It turned out to be one of the happiest evenings 119 120 STANDING UP TO LIFE of my life. Never have I received a warmer wel- come anywhere than in those stuffy houses and ill- lighted tenements. The men were mostly out, but their ill-dressed, harassed, homely-looking wives, prematurely aged by drudgery, were pathetically touched that anyone should care enough about them to call in and bring an invitation to a service. And yet I had wanted to dodge my duty! I am ashamed to confess that this was not the only occasion on which I have had to kick myself into doing something that promised to be unpleasant. But my experience has taught me two things—the misery of trying to dodge difficult duties and the ease and happiness with which they can be per- formed when resolutely faced. The dodging of moral problems lands us some- times in mean evasions and contemptible sophis- tries and in ludicrous and humiliating situations. During the war bishops and clergymen abolished the sixth commandment. But they were rather shocked when greedy profiteers smashed the eighth commandment, flappers ignored the fifth and adult- erers broke the seventh! ‘ Ministers of God,” says Mr. Glenn Frank, the editor of the Century magazine, “‘ cannot turn themselves into hysterical press agents of generals in war time and expect men to take them seriously as authentic representa- tives of Jesus of Nazareth the day after the armistice.”” You may embrace a lady while a band is playing dance music, but do it when the band has ye ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 121 stopped and you may be thrown into the street. If a church member is discovered gambling at Monte Carlo, I imagine that someone is likely to remon- strate with him rather severely. But if he gambles successfully on the Stock Exchange no one will think the worse of him, but will rather admire him as a clever, lucky fellow. If we go in for increased armaments they are, of course, only for the protec- tion of our coasts, but suppose another nation adds to its armies and navies—then it is pointing straight at the heart of our country. A church will deal drastically with a drunkard, but smile on a sweater—it would be greatly upset by a bitter quarrel between two of its members, but it will not try to stop two nations when they have entered on an orgy of scientific slaughter. We think of these baffling contradictions and dilemmas—and we dodge them, and go on avoiding stark realities. I once heard Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, when he was Prime Minister of England, say that a great political party had “ died of tactics.” The smart, cunning political opportunist, the spell- binder who dazzles the crowd, seems for a time to be a sort of superman, indispensable to his coun- try and his party. He dodges difficulty and defeat time after time, but it is a hazardous game, and one day he isa little too smart and honest men come into their own again. ‘‘ Machiavelli,” says Dean Inge, “is a treacherous guide. There is a kind of higher stupidity about cunning statecraft which a a a) 122 STANDING UP TO LIFE ends in the undoing of those who practise it.” When you dodge a difficulty you have not disposed of it—it is still there waiting for you, and you are bound to meet it again sooner or later. The most disturbing menace will shrivel if faced bravely. Dodge it—or rather try to dodge it—and it will grow not only bigger but more unavoidable. Have we never tried to dodge our own moral infirmities by damning the faults of other people? What a weak and futile subterfuge it is! The spendthrift is blind to his own extravagances while he denounces the miser, and the callous and exact- ing employer dodges his own harshness by an elo- quent exposure of idleness and inefficiency. And it is possible for a man to dodge his own soul. He tries to put it off with a pretence of airy unconcern, to drug it with feverish pleasures, to silence it with vague protests of unbelief. But it cannot be kept up long. The soul cries out for God and nothing else will satisfy it. I believe the real reason why some people refuse to go to church is that they are afraid of hearing something disturbing and dis- quieting. They might hear the truth and have to face it. They might meet the God they have slighted and ignored. It may be wise sometimes to dodge temptation, but it is better to repel the invasion of dangerous allurements. Mere avoidance and evasion will not help us. We must beware of an easy and cowardly indifference to the facts of life. We must not dodge reer re ————————EeEE ON TRYING TO DODGE DIFFICULTY 123 the ugly diseases of our modern society, for if everyone did that they would never be cured. The more odious and sickening they are, the more need there is to face them with gravity and courage, and attempt the distasteful task of rooting them out of society. I think it was Bishop Gore who said that mankind had swallowed dogmas with a voracious appetite, and generation after generation it had looked at the brotherhood of man and had said, “No; not that! ” The churches are full of people who, to quote Samuel Butler, would be as horrified to hear the Christian religion doubted as they would be to see it practised. We shall not be able much longer to dodge the problem of fierce, heart- less competition, and the damnation of the sweated. I shall never forget a picture that | saw some years ago in an art gallery in Paris. It represented a magnificent ball-room, a scene of dazzling luxury and splendor, but the dancers had stopped sud- denly, panic-stricken, as they gazed with fear and horror at the soiled, rough, clenched fist of a work- man smashing through the splintered boards of the shining floor. What do the victims of industrial- ism think when they look into the vacuous, arro- gant faces of the privileged and pampered women —dressed with a minimum of material and a maxi- mum of expense—who dwell in another world—a world of exotic luxury, artificial stimulus and voluptuous dancing? In the height of the London season—when hotels, restaurants and ball-rooms ae eee ee gr EN 124 STANDING UP TO LIF were overcrowded—a woman selling matches in Bond Street, the very headquarters of fashion and luxury, suddenly collapsed and it was discovered that she had died of starvation. So much of every- thing for some people—so little for others. These and all other torturing perplexities must be looked straight in the face and dealt with on our knees before the Master, Christ, that fearless, open-eyed realist who never dodged a difficulty, who did not even evade the Cross, but by His infinite renunci- ation emancipated and redeemed the world. AIV ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS “Tt will never rain roses. . . . If we want more roses we must plant more trees.” —GerorcE Exrot. “It seemed to Catherine as if she had suddenly opened the door out of a dark passage and gone into a great light room. She saw for the first time quite plainly; and what she saw in that strange new clearness, that merciless, yet some- how curiously comforting clearness, was that love has to learn to let go, that love if it is real always does let go, makes no claims, sets free, is content to love without being loved—and that nothing was worth while, nothing at all in the tiny moment called life, except being good. Simply being good. And though people might argue as to what precisely being good meant, they knew in their hearts just as she knew in her heart; and though the young might laugh at this conviction as so much sodden sentiment, they would, each one of them who was worth any- thing, end by thinking exactly that. . . . Life was a flicker; the briefest thing, blown out before one was able to turn round. There was no time in it, no time in this infinitely precious instant, for anything except just goodness.’— THE AutTHor oF “ ErizasETH AND Hrr GERMAN GARDEN.” “It 1s the sinners who elect the saints, for what saint would ever admit that he was one? ’”— H. W. MassIncHAM, XIV _ ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS wPORHE stained-glass-window type of piety mr is not in great demand today. The G world, in its dejection and helplessness, S gy calls for the faith that fights, the good- as a glow on it, the religion that is dur- able and serviceable. Christ does not expect us to be extraordinarily clever, but He does ask us to be faithful. He looks for no spectacular display, but He asks us quietly and loyally to follow Him. He knows that what we are will talk so much louder than what we say. The saints we need today are the intense, urgent, serviceable saints, not the people ‘who mean well, but mean well feebly,” who spend their time in a morbid scrutiny of their own achievements, but the active, efficient, self- forgetting saints, who mean business, who are going to get things done, who are the servants of every- body, who squander their lives with glorious ex- travagance in the service of humanity. Carlyle said that the only hell that was really dreaded in his day was the hell of not making money. I be- lieve the time is coming when we shall dread most of all the hell of being no use to the world. 127 128 STANDING UP TO LIFE Some of the most serviceable saints I have ever known have been poor women who kept a home sweet, loved little children into fineness of char- acter, and endured drudgery patiently in order that the breadwinner should venture forth to his daily task untouched by care. They are unhonored and undistinguished, these humble heroines of the home, but their sons and daughters remember them in hours of struggle and temptation, and are kept clean and loyal by their inspiring example. It is the same in the churches. We talk of our “ lead- ers,” and I do not underestimate the value of their exhilarating ministry. They awaken our best en- thusiasms and nerve us for braver service. But the indispensable people are the obscure, unpre- tentious, unknown workers; the quiet, devoted Sunday-school teachers, working at the lesson late at night after shutting up the store; the steadfast, faithful lay preachers, tramping many a weary mile to preach the Gospel in a remote village; the little seamstress who works for a bare existence, but who brings five dollars to the minister for the missionary society; the tired mother, on her feet from morning to night, whose simple goodness and undimmed cheerfulness make us ashamed of our petty complainings and our fretful, exacting selfishness. ‘These are the ser- viceable saints who, in spite of dragging limita- tions and heavy handicaps, go forward to do their tiresome tasks with undaunted courage and un- ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS We, faltering patience. It is this homely, commonplace goodness that tells in the end and helps to redeem the world. I think one outstanding characteristic of the serviceable saint is a certain combination of sanity and daring, of calm certitude and restless adven- ture. He sees things in their right proportions, and he is not inclined to be wildly hysterical. He knows that the self-centered life is a perverted, senseless, irrational existence that fails to satisfy the heart of man. He has discovered the feverish fatigue, the infinite weariness of the pleasure chase, and he knows that to live under the lordship and leadership of Jesus Christ is the wisest, most rea- sonable thing a man can do. He looks at life squarely, hopefully, and quite fearlessly. Instead of trying to make himself happy and other peo- ple good, he is rather inclined to help other people to be happy and to make himself good. He has plenty of grit and tenacity and self- restraint. For the serviceable saint must possess real open-eyed common-sense, or he will not be serviceable long. Even his enthusiasm must be harnessed and disciplined. ‘“‘ You ha’ need o’ the Bible, you will ha’ to study for that,” said a Scotchman to a young candidate for the min- istry; “you ha’ need o’ grace, you will ha’ to pray for that; you ha’ need o’ common-sense, but if you ha’ no got that, you will ha’ to go back where you came from.”’ As Theodore Roose- 130 STANDING UP TO LIFE velt once pointed out, the good man who has no common-sense ‘ will find himself at the mercy of those who, without possessing his desire to do right, know only too well how to make the wrong effective.” Nowhere is the serviceable saint more useful than in the realm of business, for he refuses to recognize any separating barrier between Chris- tianity and commerce. When he surrenders his life to Jesus Christ, he does not withhold anything from the rule of his Master. He brings to Christ not only his worship, but his ingenuity; not only the adoration of his heart, but the inventiveness of his mind. He serves his Lord not only with the singing of psalms, but with his business in- itiative and resource. He consecrates his imagi- nation to Divine service, and he does not even withhold his money. There are so-called saints who live in watertight compartments—in one a sleek and unctuous piety for Sunday, and in an- other a savage, selfish, and degrading lust for gold that tramples on human hearts six days in the week. There was a man in America who refused to live like this—he remembered even the weekdays to keep them holy. He had an enormous business, but it was not built up at the expense of sweated labor. When he died, his workmen wept. For this man was at all times much more anxious about the welfare of his employees than about the increase of ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 131 his profits. He left his men a million dollars, but, better still, he gave them three million dollars be- yond their wages in his lifetime. Once he noticed some men engaged in what seemed an unhealthy occupation; he immediately ordered a change of method, more comfortable to them, but very costly to him. He used to tell his branch managers not to push business too hard in competition with weaker opponents, especially in places where there were old-established houses of good character. He was a healthy saint, spiritually sensitive, morally sound. The right sort of saint is never a feeble person, smilingly tolerant of tyranny, timidly remote from the conflict with evil, patient with social wrong, easily compliant with bitter injustice. He can blaze into a fierce and righteous indignation. There is a passage in one of E. V. Lucas’s books which describes this kind of man: “¢There is no journalist whom I follow so closely. He has a fearless mind and a hatred of injustice. Do you like him?’ “ «Well, he compels attention,’ I said, ‘ but he is a little too near white heat for me.’ “¢Tf he were cooler,’ said Miss Gold, ‘ he would be tolerant—like you—and then he would be no use. There is so much comfortable tolerance, so little anger. I hope he will go on being angry.’ ” The purposeful, efficient saint prays in the words of Chesterton’s stirring hymn: roy STANDING UP TO LIFE “From lies of tongue and pen, From all the easy speeches That comfort cruel men * x 2K x Delwer us, good Lord!” It cannot be denied that a saint may sometimes be a rather exasperating person to live with. I know a somewhat conservative Congregational minister who, whenever he wants to rebuke me for showing enthusiasm over anything, remarks that he himself likes to keep his feet on the ground. Now a saint may wish to have his wings in the air. A well-known writer expresses his preference for “kindly, unemphatic people.” A saint will be kindly, but he is seldom unemphatic. He goes about stabbing neutrality and disturbing indiffer- ence. He wants to change the world—titerally he wants to turn it upside down. And he is in rather a hurry about it. He has principles and convic- tions—awkward things to have if you want to lead a quiet life and be popular—and he expresses them forcefully, sometimes with fierce intolerance. In this he is not altogether unlike his Master. Jesus did not say that a man who was unkind to little children was unattractive and mistaken. He said it would be better for such a man to hang a stone round his neck and pitch him into the sea. A real saint will take risks and is never panicky in face of danger. That very serviceable saint, Silvester Horne, once suggested to me a certain program | ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 133 which I thought rather dangerous. ‘‘ Dangerous,” he exclaimed, “ my dear fellow, whenever a thing looks dangerous you may be sure it is a big thing worth doing.” When you come to think of it it is a very dangerous thing to tell a man that his sins can be forgiven. The sort of saint I have in mind will not be enslaved by any tradition. He refuses to run in blinkers with a conscripted intelligence and a standardized mind. He is not gullible and he is not to be browbeaten by any majority, how- ever powerful. He does not love controversy, but he will not avoid it. To him religion is a stimu- lating adventure, a spiritual dynamic, not a mere routine or ritual, certainly not a dull and uninspir- ing obligation. And yet the serviceable saint has a very winning and gracious humility. He does not surprise the world with an occasional act of spectacular benevo- lence, and then wait for the applause. He does the Divine drudgery and bears the other man’s burden, impelled by the dynamic of a great affection. Asa matter of fact, no man who has ever really tried to follow Jesus Christ is very proud of himself. He knows that his only safety is in keeping very close to his Leader. It would be difficult sometimes to hold on but for the resource of prayer. It scatters our misgivings and brings to the most impoverished and defeated life a tumultuous vitality. ‘‘ When a crisis or an emergency comes,” said a very shrewd business man to me, the other day, “I refer it to 134 STANDING UP TO LIFE the Lord.” It is possible to pray our distractions and disquietudes out of the way. Not so long since a friend of mine was being shown over a great American university. In one of the halls he noticed a beautiful stained-glass win- dow, and in the.center of it, to his intense surprise, there was the picture of a very homely old lady. “Who is that?” he said to the official who was showing him the buildings. ‘‘ Why, that’s Florence Nightingale,” was the reply. ‘‘ We wanted to put the picture of a saint in that window—a real work- ing saint, you know—and we thought we couldn’t do better than get a portrait of the splendid old woman.” The authorities of that university had put the halo on the right head. They knew that there is no true saintliness without sympathy, service, and sacrifice. I once knew a very serviceable saint—and she was the happiest woman I have ever met. She had the strangest idea of how to achieve happiness—if she ever thought about happiness at all. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, clever, refined, athletic, well educated, with an adoring family and a luxurious country home. Yet, when I knew her, she was living in a foul and repulsive London slum, working as a ‘Sister of the People.” She had turned her back on security and comfort and delib- erately chosen the dirt and distress, the squalor and shame of mean streets and sunless courts. And she was happy! “Sister,” I said to her one day, nrc ON SERVICEABLE SAINTS 135 “how can you do it?” Well, she argued, Jesus loved these poor people—certainly nobody else seemed to care anything about them—and even Jesus could not help them very much unless those who loved Him would go for Him, as’ His repre- sentatives, and live with His poor children and try to sweeten and brighten their lives. And so that was how it happened! And as she told me her eyes were dancing with happiness. Her goodness seemed to sterilize the foulness of the neighborhood —her very happiness cleared the air. She was nurse, doctor, poor man’s lawyer, evangelist; she was the terror of grasping and tyrannical land- lords; once she spent long hours, when she was tired out, sitting in a hospital by the bedside of a prostitute who was afraid to die unless Sister held her hand. She would collect money to buy tobacco for the old men in the poorhouse or to send tuber- cular children to the sea—and I noticed that she never thanked the comfortable people who gave her money. Why should she? She was letting them in on a good thing, allowing them the privi- lege of sharing in her happiness. I left her one day as she went, singing and smiling, into a dark, sin- ister, evil-smelling tenement house, and a man who passed her as he came out, exclaimed: “¢ Wonder- ful how she keeps up her spirits with nothing to help her.” Nothing to help her! How she would have laughed! As if Jesus ever deserted those who enter on perilous adventures for His sake. ee ee eR 136 STANDING UP TO LIFE The world will be saved when every Christian is really a Christian. Vital Christianity in action is the most disturbing and revolutionary force in the world. It is a matter of life and death. And yet it is the people who go all the way with Jesus who enjoy the highest happiness and the deepest satis- factions. No man enjoyed the exhilaration of life more than Hugh Price Hughes, yet he told me once that he had endured sleepless and anxious nights when he realized that there were enough fallen women on the London streets to fill a large theatre several times over. But then he was a shrewd working saint, who immediately went out to serve and save these unhappy wanderers. The man who hears the cry of human need and the call of his crucified Master, and slinks away into cowardly comfort, will be miserable as well as ineffective. The Christian who quietly shoulders his cross will find that he is not alone. There is with him a strong, dependable, understanding Comrade Who bears the heavier end—and He is like unto the Son of God. XV ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY “True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shin’d upon.” a | E —BUuTLER. XV ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY A OYALTY, like duty, appears to some S 1 yy people a very cold and uninspiring Ul 7 *s¢ word. And yet it is a fact that the people we like best are the dependable people. They may not dazzle or attract like the impulsive, selfish, brilliant butterflies, but they are the folk we really love. You can lean up against them when you are in a tight place. They have that granite loyalty that can bear with our littleness and never laugh at it, endure our faults and never gloat over them, and that marvelous gift of sym- pathy that can see some speck of goodness in our mixed and twisted characters. They seem always to defend the integrity of the human soul. The world would be a dark, cold place without these good, simple folk who take but little notice of the irritating riddles of human relationships, but quietly practise a patient loyalty and a radiant kindness. They play the game when no gallery is applauding and no umpire is watching. They do not indulge in flowery heroics, but they can be counted on all the time. They are kind without being priggish or self-conscious about it. They 139 | 140 STANDING UP TO LIFE don’t cry like babies because they can’t have every- thing just right. They keep the flag flying when things are at their worst. Their friendship is durable, understanding, loyal. The war has led to such moral confusion and hectic self-indulgence that today no one is shocked at anything and we are in grave danger of losing the simple loyalties of life. I venture to suggest that we had better watch them with vigilance and try to recover them where they have slipped away. We need, for instance, greater loyalty to the home if we are to maintain any home life at all. For it is rapidly and surely disappearing. Let us admit that the middle-class home has often been stuffy and dull and oppressive, and that it is some- times very hard for parents to understand the feverish restlessness, the passionate rebellion of the young. In a novel of Galsworthy’s one of the characters says: ‘“ Ah! why on earth are we born young? Now, if only we were born old, and grew younger year by year, we should understand how things happen, and drop all our cursed intoler- ance.” Certainly many ghastly blunders would be avoided if we were wise and cool in youth; but a serene and stabilized life would be secured at a fearful sacrifice of color and romance and adven- ture. No, the only way is for the old to try to understand the young, and for the young to show loyalty and sympathy toward the old. And that, I fear, the young are not even attempting to do ee NEES RE RENTER ———————— ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY ‘141 today. They snatch at independence rather too greedily, and are intolerably touchy over any inter- ference. They have abandoned the conventions, and substituted smartness for sentiment, and the wild fever of the dance hall and the card-room for the simple loyalties of the home. They might re- member that they owe something to their parents, seeing that they grew up at their expense. Petulant, neurotic women complain of the grey monotony of the home routine, and sneer at what they call slavery to duty. Yet it is just possible that slavery to duty may turn out to be the truest freedom. After all, intelligent people don’t want to rush about in a continual hustle of jazzing im- becility. The desire to escape from monotony sounds all right, but where are you going to escape to? Most likely to some other monotony, equally oppressive and much worse because unredeemed by any gracious motive. I know people who have thrown off all restraint but they have found no authentic happiness. We need to get back to the old, sane idea of the nobility of labor. A good cook is of much more use to the world than an expert bridge player. It may be almost as fine a thing to bring up a good family as to bring down a bad Government. A good home is a rather wonderful institution, and nothing should be allowed to break it up. I often feel that the women who neglect their homes for cheap and tawdry amusements are rather tricking themselves—they think they are 142 STANDING UP TO LIFE happier than they are. The forced gaieties of the ball-room are not to be compared with the laughter of a little child. There is also this to be said: that most of those who chatter the modern jargon about liberty have not got the least idea as to what liberty really means. We need greater loyalty to the Church. I sug- gest that there is, today, one special reason why we should stick to the Church for all we are worth. It is this: only the Church can bring peace to this vexed and stricken world, because only the Church knows the secret of how to change the hearts of men. There are, I know, a great many clever peo- ple going about criticizing the Church. They cheerfully agree that it is nearly dead. As a matter of fact, it is very much alive—I only wish I could say that it is alive and kicking! It is a fact worth remembering that the bitterest critics of the churches never by any chance enter one. I would venture to say this to young people who are drifting away from the Church: if the church you go to doesn’t satisfy you, if the services seem barren and rather boring—still be loyal to it, because it is so much more blessed to give than to receive. Give all you have to it—your youth and vitality, your courage and resources, even your laughter and leaping spirits—and your loyalty will bring you radiant reward. It will bring you happiness be- cause it has taken you out of yourself—beyond and above yourse!{—out into a great adventure of faith. ok LT A A DL ON THE VALUE OF LOYALTY 143 Just as you are bound to Jesus by a certain tenacity of soul that we call loyalty, so be loyal to His Church. If that goes, you lose the only means of rescuing the world from its poisonous hates, its devastating materialism, its bitter despair. The people who make secret treaties, and the people who make armaments, and the people who only make money, may get together one day and make another war. Then we shall need a loyal, live Church, filled with young life, which will refuse to be subservient to the State, but which, at any sacri- fice, will be loyal to the teaching of Jesus. We need young people in the Church because they can save it from its greatest danger—an easy-going, complacent neutrality. The Legislature of Mississippi once put on its official records this strange and striking note: ‘Whereas we have read with great pleasure the following remark of the devoted mother of our es- teemed Governor, the Hon. Earl Brewer, who, when asked if the day her son was inaugurated Governor of the State of Mississippi was not the happiest day of her life, replied, ‘I was just as happy when my boy joined the Church,’ and there- fore be it Resolved that the above expression be inscribed on our journal as an example to the mothers of our State, and to show our appreciation of this splendid sentiment.” A very strange record —probably absolutely unique. But the mother who was as happy the day her boy joined the 144 STANDING UP TO LIFE Church as on the day he became ruler of a Com- monwealth knew what she was talking about. She knew that the finest manhood is built on the Chris- tian faith, that Christless politics must inevitably lead to corrupt government. We need a more robust loyalty in the Church today—a loyalty that will loosen the purse-strings and give up leisure and comfort for the sake of social and institutional service. If the young peo- ple find a church feeble, as they may, let them, with consecrated audacity, take possession of it and make it strong. Let them stop asking what the Church is doing for the young people, and show what the young people can do for the Church. It is no good criticizing ministers in the press and at the dinner-table—go and see the minister and have it out with him. If you only knew it, many min- isters are breaking their hearts because the young people hold aloof from them. If you don’t like a sermon, go and tell the preacher why you don’t like it. He will be delighted to discuss it with you. I once lived for a year in the country, and I walked eight miles every Sunday in order to attend a little Baptist chapel, the minister of which was a schol- arly young man in his first pastorate. One night a week we went for a long tramp, during which we discussed with perfect frankness the sermons of the previous Sunday. He told me how much he wished his people would say something about his sermons—even if they disagreed with them or dis- ONM HEY ALUE OF LOYALTY 145 liked them. But they failed to show the slightest interest, and he could never. find out what they were thinking. I remember another minister who said to me, in sheer despair: ‘“‘ My people give me nothing but my salary.” Many a depressed and disquieted minister would leap for joy if he had the stimulating comradeship and frank loyalty of his young men and women. And we must be loyal to Jesus. For loyalty to. Jesus has a great dynamic quality. It compels a man to dedicate his life to the Highest, drives him into service for the lowest. Loyalty to Jesus con- strains us to work for a better social order in the world He loves and died to save. Undivided alle- giance to Jesus may turn out to be a very disturb- ing business. For He will ask us to be kind to people we don’t like. He will not let us boss any- body. He will expect us to love the poor and the unclean and the disinherited; and His teaching about riches is rather disconcerting—He cuts clean across the passion for possession. Moreover, we shall usually find ourselves on the unpopular side, and that may mean loneliness and isolation. Yet loyalty to Jesus brings an indestructible peace, an intoxicating joy, a quiet, steady faith that honestly looks facts in the face and finds life worth while, an anchorage of joy and satisfaction in the midst of many baffling futilities, ragged rebellions, and irritating limitations. We must be loyal even when we cannot see our way very far—even when we find 146 STANDING UP TO LIFE it difficult to believe. Because loyalty to Christ leads to a transforming vision of Christ—those who do His will see the meaning of things—and one day we are able to go on from dim conjecture to glorious certainty. XVI ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS “ . . I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh! let my weakness have an end! Give unio me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice. BB] ° — WORDSWORTH. “Tdeals are funny things. They wont work unless you do.” “Take most of my countrymen, I am a heathen with religious intervals.’—H. W. MAssINGHAM, XVI ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS oe, HAVE sometimes thought that instead © of organizing missions for outsiders— fie» for those whom we politely term the 29% lost, it might be more profitable to hold special Hee tnpe with the object of making Chris- tians Christians. Because you have only to sit down and read the four Gospels to discover that you are not really a Christian. You are a Christian —with reservations. You do not even propose to carry out the commands of Jesus. Someone has said that there has been only one Christian, and He was crucified, and there is little doubt that 1f any- one had attempted to practice the teaching of Jesus during the war he would have been promptly im- prisoned or shot. Moreover, all conversions are more or less partial. One man is moved only on the ethical side, and he remains hard and bad- tempered. In another case—and this is more com- mon—conversion touches only the emotions, and ethically there is but little change, for emotionalism has dull and barren reactions. Our Christian life is a sort of switchback—an unstable thing of ups and downs, dreary failures and questionable suc- 149 150 STANDING UP TO LIFE cesses. We are feeble and faint-hearted, inefficient and spiritually limp, and can only just manage to keep our heads above water. All this is probably due to the fact that our conversion was partial and incomplete. The word “ conversion ” only appears twice in the four Gospels, and on both occasions it is used concerning those who were presumably already converted. It was to Peter that Christ said, “ When thou art converted—” and He was addressing His disciples when He said, “ Except ye be converted—.” We are driven to the conclu- sion that however good a man may be, he still needs to go on being converted and that conversion is not something convulsive that happens once, but a slow process of growth and progress. The reason why, as Christians, we are so de- jected and ineffective is that we don’t go far enough. We regard our faults with easy-going equanimity. Our allegiance is perfunctory. Be- cause we have no root we wither away. We have just enough religion to keep us away from certain doubtful occupations that once gave us pleasure, but we have not gone far enough to revel in the radiant, intoxicating happiness that comes to those who have unreservedly surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ. We juggle with conscience and are ready to trim our sails to the wind. We walk in tricky and treacherous paths and are easily caught by enervating entanglements. We are not danger- ously ill, we are not gloriously well—we are listless 22]. ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 151 convalescents. Our Christian life is pedestrian and laborious. We have faith, but not a deep, raptur- ous, dynamic faith that must inevitably translate itself into service and sacrifice. A great preacher—one of the truest Christians I have ever known—once told me that there was one terrible text on which he had never dared to preach: “Jf any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of His.’ Surely no sincere person can read these words without experiencing deep con- trition and self-abasement, for, as regards most of us, we must face the disconcerting fact that we have not the Spirit of Christ. The difference be- tween what we are and what we might be is some- thing like the difference between a pier and a bridge. You never get very far on a pier—it stretches out a few hundred feet into the sea, and when you reach the end of it you have to come back. But a bridge takes you somewhere—a bridge will carry you from Canada into the United States—and you need not return. And Christians would become better Christians if, instead of merely making spasmodic excursions into religion, indulging in bursts of emotion, spurts of piety, they quietly, steadily, firmly walked across the bridge from one kind of life to another which is entirely different. The Christian life should be not an occa- sional promenade, but a determined pilgrimage. It cannot be lived in an aimless, desultory go-as- you-please fashion. It must grow and expand if it Abe STANDING UP TO LIFE is to exist at all. I heard one of the greatest preachers in America tell a story of a little girl who fell out of bed. When her mother asked her how she did it she replied: “I guess I went to sleep too near the place where I got in.” An illumi- nating illustration of what is the matter with some of us. " What would happen if all Christians were Chris- tians? There would be no more war. There would be no more appeals for funds from Foreign Mis- sionary Boards and other Christian organizations, because gifts would be showered on such institu- tions in excess of their needs. Churches would never again be short of workers—they would have waiting lists of those who were impatiently seeking opportunities of service. City churches would con- sider it their duty to know all about the brothels in their neighborhood, and if some poor girl suddenly thought of her mother or of God and wanted to make her escape into a cleaner, purer life she would go round to the nearest church and find it open to receive and welcome her. No prisoner would ever come out of the penitentiary without being met by a representative of a Christian church. We should be nervously apprehensive about having too much money and we should not sleep well while our brothers and sisters were huddled in overcrowded and unsanitary tenements. The world would begin to be impressed by the power of Christianity, and when we impress other people by our piety we shall —— a) ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 153 have made very real progress. I remember years ago a Sister of a great London Mission telling me about a factory girl who, when reminded that it was the anniversary of her conversion, said, “ Well, Sister, I can’t say I see much difference, but mother says she sees a difference.”’ We might be great evangelists without uttering a single word. When Christians are Christians they will change the whole social system. After a conversation with that brave adventurous soul, Charles Silvester Horne, an American journalist came out into the street and in tones of wonder and amazement, exclaimed: “ That man carries Christianity to ex- cess.” He only meant that Silvester Horne loved Christ so much that he could never be content with an inoffensive, individualistic pietism, but must lay down his life in a desperate fight against poverty and injustice. Clemenceau complained with some bitterness that: “ When I talk to Mr. Wilson it is as though I were speaking to Jesus Christ.” But Woodrow Wilson, the adventurous idealist, will be remembered with affectionate homage when Cle- menceau, the pagan war-maker, is completely for- gotten. Christianity is the only cure for social disorders. Nothing but practical religion can solve the problems that distress and harass us. The leaven is spreading and materialism is already doomed. There is a very interesting passage in the life of Lord Salisbury which has never received the attention it deserves—a passage which shows how 154 SLANDING UP TOViIEs fully he understood the revolutionary effects of Christianity. The author of the biography, Lady Gwendolen Cecil, says of her father: ‘‘ He quoted Professor Clifford’s accusation against Christianity that it had destroyed two civilizations and had only just failed in destroying a third—and he quoted. it with agreement. What had been would be. . . . We had been warned that Christianity could know no neutrality and history had verified the warning. It was incapable of co-existing per- manently with a civilization which it did not inspire and any such as came into contact with it withered. How much more must this be so with one that had been formed under its auspices and had subse- quently rejected it. Such a society must inevi- tably perish.” Some years ago, at a church anniversary in Lon- don, I met Dr. Clifford, and he asked me to intro- duce him to the preacher—as if he needed an introduction to anybody! After the service I made up a party of five or six distinguished preachers who wanted to talk to Dr. Clifford, and we ad- journed to the Russell Hotel for tea. Suddenly Dr. Clifford got up and in spite of many protests an- nounced that he must go. I went to the door with him and ventured to ask why he had to leave us so soon. He then told me that in connection with the church of which he was minister he had a home for domestic servants where they could go when out of a situation. Some mistresses, he explained, were Ee ON MAKING CHRISTIANS CHRISTIANS 155 very hard and if a servant came home late, or if some trouble arose, they would put a girl’s boxes in the hall and tell her to clear out. Under such perilous circumstances she could find a refuge and welcome in Dr. Clifford’s little home. ‘‘ And,” he added, “ every Friday evening I call in and spend an hour talking to them—they seem to like it.” So the most famous and most trusted public man in the English Free Churches, the gallant hero of a hundred fights, went off on his tiresome journey by omnibus and subway, rather than disappoint half- a-dozen domestic servants who were out of a job. I think John Clifford was a Christian. THE END An ita ie Pata cal ites bad » ath A Ae) ay My Art ray ‘t ipl, ie ive yi 4 Hiv hy Hh A, Fe ey ANSE ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES perenne erence ES SEL SESS JAMES I. VANCE, D.D., LL.D. God’s Open Sermons that Take Us Out of Doors. $1.50 “Throughout all those brief sermons runs the thought: *Man needs a sense of far horizons to save his soul.’ Dr. Vance emphasizes the fact that much of the life of Christ was spent out-of-doors. He was an open-air preacher and His greatest sermons were delivered out-of- doors, one on a mountain top, one beside a well. Alto- gether helpful and inspiring book.”—Boston Transcript. REV. PETER WALKER (Editor) Introduction by Thomas £, Masson Sermons for the Times By Present-Day Preachers. $1.50 A thoroughly representative display of contemporary pulpit effort. Sermons by David James Burrell, Samuel Parkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Newell Dwight Hillis, Charles E. Jefferson, Ieander S. Keyser, Francis J. McConnell, William Pierson Merrill, William A. Quayle, William B. Riley, Frederick S. Shannon, John Timothy Stone, and Cornelius Woelfkin. ‘The best work of Amer- ican preachers only. J. T. VAN BURKALOW, Ph.D. The Lost Prophecy $2.00 A book for the present hour, claiming the attention of all those interested in critical and textual study of Holy Scripture. The “Lost Prophecy” is that referred to in Matthew’s Gospel (11: 23) “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets that He [Jesus] should be called a Nazarene.” W. OL. WATKINSON, D.D. Author of “The Shepherd of the Sea,” ete. The Conditions of Conversion $1.50 ‘’The discourses, in many respects, are models for any young minister to-day. The English is fauitless, the illus- trations apt and abundant, and the thought of the message drives home to the heart. The subjects are very practical, and such as need to be heard from every pulpit.”— Baptist and Reflector. THOMAS TIPLADY Author of “The Cross at the Front,” ete. The Influence of the Bible On History, Literature and Oratory. $1.00 “Pull of suggestion. Every reader who will thought- fully peruse the pages will be sent back to the Bible with a new hope, and will read the Word with fresh vigour. 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Vance Thompson, the newspaper correspondent of international fame, writes the Introduc- tion to the Autobiography of his father, WILLIAM G. SHEPHERD Author of ‘‘Confessions of a War Correspondent,” etc. Great Preachers as Seen by a Journalist $1.50 Character-sketches from the hand of an _ experienced interviewer of a number of prominent preachers: David J. Burrell, S. Parkes Cadman, Russell H. Conwell, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Charles L. Jefferson, Bishop Francis ff McConnell, John Timothy Stone, John Roach Straton, Christian Reisner, the late Bishop Charles D. Williams, and G. Campbell Morgan. ELIJAH R. KENNEDY The Real Daniel Webster Foreword by Judge Frederick Evan Crane, New York. Illustrated. $2.00 Not only are Webster’s great achievements and the manifold richness of his intellectual endowments brought out in conspicuous fashion by Mr. Kennedy, but also the utter falsity of the many calumnies with which his enemies slandered Webster’s name. LUCY SEAMAN BAINBRIDGE Yesterdays “Memories Gleaned from Bygone Years.” Illustrated. $1.25 In a chatty, intimate way, Mrs. Bainbridge recalls some of the incidents of her life, now long removed by the passing of the years, yet kept close and green in the garden of memory. STRIKING ADDRESSES JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D. God Our Contemporary A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. Among the pulpit-giants of to-day Dr, Jowett has been given a high place. Every preacher will want at once this latest product of his fertile mind. It consists of a series of full length sermons which are intended to show that only in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ can we find the resources to meet the needs of human life. SIDNEY BERRY, M.A. e oS Revealing Light $1.50, A volume of addresses by the successor to Dr. Jowett at Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham, the underlying aim of which is to show what the Christian revelation means in relation to the great historic facts of the Faith and © the response which those facts must awaken in the hearts of men to-day. Every address is an example of the best preaching of this famous “‘preacher to young men.” FREDERICK C. SPURR Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, London. The Master Key A Study in World-Problems $1.35. A fearless, clearly-reasoned restatement of the terms of the Christian Gospel and its relation to the travail through which the world is passing. Mr. Spurr is a man in the vanguard of religious thought, yet just as emphatically as any thinker of the old school, he insists on one Physician able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, Unused Powers $1.25. To “Acres of Diamonds,” “The Angel’s Lily,” “Why Lincoln Laughed,” “How to Live the Christ Life,” and many other stirring volumes, Dr. Conwell has just added another made up of some of his choicest addresses. Dr. Conwell speaks, as he has always spoken, out of the ex: perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who having long faced the stark realities of life, has been exalted thereby. GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. Minister of the First Congregational Church, Detroit, Michigen. The Undiscovered Country $1.50. A group of addresses marked by distinction of style and originality of approach. The title discourse furnishes a central theme to which those following stand in rela- tion. Dr. Atkins’ work, throughout, is marked by clarity ef presentation, polished diction and forceful phrasing, TIMELY ESSAYS AND STUDIES | NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS Author of “Great Books as Life-Teachers.” Great Men as Prophets of a New Era $1.50. Dr. Hillis’ latest book strikes a popular chord. It fairly pulses with life and human sympathy. He has a large grasp of things and relations, a broad culture, a retentive memory and splendid imagination, and there ate few writers to-day with so large an audience assured in advance. The subjects include: Dante; Savonarola; William the Silent; Oliver Cromwell; John Wesley; John Milton; Garibaldi; John Ruskin, etc. THOS. R. MITCHELL, M.A., B.D. The Drama of Life A Series of Reflections on Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages.” Introduction by Nellie L. McClung. $1.25. A fresh, stimulating discussion of old themes. Mr. Mitchell handles his subject with unusual directness, bringing to its discussion clarity of thought and lucidity of expression which has already won the enthusiastic endorsement of Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Chas. W. Gordon, D.D., (Ralph Connor) Archdeacon Cody and Prof. Francis G. Peabody. D. MACDOUGALL KING, M.B. Author of “The Battle with Tuberculosis.” Nerves and Personal Power Some Principles of Psychology as Applied to Conduct and Health. With Introduction by Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King. $2.00 Premier King says: “My brother has, I think helped to reinforce Christian teaching by showing wherein recent medical and scientific researches are revealing the founda- tions of Christian faith and belief in directions hitherto unexplored and unknown.—The world needs the assurance this book can scarcely fail to bring.” REP. R. E. SMITH Waco, Texas. Christianity and the Race Problem $1.25. A sane, careful study of the Race problem in the South, written by a born Southerner, the son of a slave-owner and Confederate soldier. Mr. Smith has lived all his life among negroes, and feels that he is capable of seeing both sides of the problem he undertakes to discuss. Nt A i ‘fy a UY ? i | K Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library ; Rate, | Me, Fy talent ry fs 4