fiE Law of Service 
 
 r 
 
Ji,L,,'o! 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 lY 
 
 Ppofessor \\^nvy von Dyke, D.O., IiLi.D. 
 
 BR 50 .K44 1894 
 
 Kelley, James Prentice, 1849 
 
 The law of service 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE 
 
 A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN 
 ALTRUISM 
 
 BY 
 V 
 
 JAMES P. KELLEY 
 
 ^ 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 West Twenty-third Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 i;^e ^nukerbotkct ^rcss 
 1894 
 
Copyright, 1894 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES P. KELLEY 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 
 
 Ube Itnichcrboct^cr press, t\cw HJorfc 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
TO MY GOOD FRIEND, THE READER. 
 
 Kindly do not assume, if I urge liberal giving of money, 
 that I think money will do everything, or can take the 
 place of that which is more precious. Do not assume, if 
 I speak from the standpoint of liberal orthodoxy, that I 
 consider that, in its present form, a finality. Do not 
 assume, if I refrain from expounding your favorite views 
 and anticipating your criticisms, that I have never heard 
 or thought of them. In this little work, the product of a 
 busy man's leisure, I have not aimed at completeness. I 
 have had neither time nor disposition to qualify and 
 amplify, and to minimize the effect of the rule by dwelling 
 on the exception. 
 
 In Christianity, as I understand it, I do so positively 
 and strongly believe as to think that if we take it seriously 
 it will work itself clear. Of course there will be blunder- 
 ing and waste ; but better so, a thousand times better, 
 than if we are too selfish or too critical or too canny to 
 make the experiment. 
 
 Confidently looking forward to the "New Era" of 
 Christian Altruism, I should be glad to contribute some- 
 what to the dissemination of altruistic views. 
 
 J. P. K. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. Introductory i 
 
 II. The Main Thesis 4 
 
 III. Duty of the Individual ... 8 
 
 IV. Theoretical Teaching of the Church 13 
 
 V. Practical Teaching of the Church . 20 
 
 VI. Our Position Defined . . . -27 
 
 VII. The Felicity of Service . . .30 
 
 VIII. Religious Experience . . . .34 
 
 IX. Theology 38 
 
 X. The Church : Instruction . . 42 
 XL The Church : Inspiration and Aggres- 
 sion 48 
 
 XII. Clergy and Laity . . . -55 
 
 XIII. Home Training 61 
 
 XIV. Social Life ...... 68 
 
 XV. Human Brotherhood . . . -75 
 
 XVI. Our Dumb Neighbors . . . .81 
 
 XVII. Citizenship 88 
 
 XVIII. Business and Industry . . . .94 
 
 XIX. Art 104 
 
 XX. Literature . . . . . .111 
 
 XXL Education 124 
 
 XXIL The Difference 139 
 
 V 
 
THE LAW OF SERVICE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 T^HIS is a radical book, setting forth uncur- 
 * rent views. It is written by one who be- 
 lieves that the unique Reformer from whose 
 birth we reckon our centuries was and is the 
 Saviour of the world ; that our only rational hope 
 is in the truth he taught, applied to human 
 affairs. It is written because the central truth 
 of Christianity is but dimly perceived as yet, 
 but feebly taught, but languidly and childishly 
 applied to life and institutions. It is written, 
 moreover, because of the heart-breaking misery 
 of man and beast, so widespread, so unjust, so 
 enormous in the aggregate that only by somehow 
 ignoring it can a sensitive person endure life 
 with equanimity; unpitied misery and unrelieved, 
 which cries to heaven against the barbarity of 
 
 I 
 
XLbc Xaw of Service 
 
 what we are pleased to call Christian civiliza- 
 tion ; misery that can be remedied only by 
 strenuous and thoughtful exercise of the humane 
 spirit of Christianity. Finally it is written 
 because the author, however severe in judgment 
 of their conduct, yet believes that good men's 
 hearts are better than their heads, and that a 
 crying need of the time, with all its mental 
 energy and activity, is clear thinking about the 
 simple matters here discussed. 
 
 It were easy to praise the disciples of the 
 Great Reformer for their achievements thus 
 far and their activities to-day, for distinguished 
 heroism and obscure sainthood ; but these pages 
 are not for any whose Christianity is so invirile 
 that it must be propitiated before it can be 
 criticised. They are for those with faith 
 enough and honesty enough to welcome the 
 truth, however bluntly spoken and however 
 searching. They are for those, too, who stand 
 more or less aloof from Christianity as they see 
 it misrepresented, but are open-minded and 
 reasonable, ready to accept what commends 
 itself to their moral judgment. 
 
 The object of the chapters which follow is in 
 a simple and straightforward way to get at the 
 central teaching of Christ concerning conduct ; 
 to make, in the light of that teaching, some 
 brief examination and criticism of things as 
 they are ; to show by the same light something 
 of how they ought to be ; and to consider 
 
ITntrobuctori? 
 
 various important applications and illustrations 
 of the law which gives the volume its title — all 
 this with more concern for sound thinking, sub- 
 stantial truth, and practical use than for logical 
 sequence of topics and formal unity of treat- 
 ment. The doctrine of the book is important if 
 true. 
 
ig?^^^:;;^^^pi;;; 
 
 ■■C!ii*'M|i^S^^^5»^^ 
 
 II. 
 
 THE MAIN THESIS. 
 
 I \A/H^ATEVER else may or may not be taught 
 * — ' ^ in the New Testament, the twofold Law 
 of Love is there given as the great command- 
 ment of the old dispensation, and enforced by 
 the obedience of Christ as of like rank in the 
 new ; as authoritative for him and for all his. 
 The obligation to love God is stated explicitly 
 enough. The command to love our neigh- 
 bor, like to the other in its binding force, 
 has for its interpretation the lifelong sacrifice 
 by which Christ gave for the world's welfare all 
 that he had to give. His whole business on 
 earth was to express that perfect love for God's 
 creatures which is the obverse of his perfect 
 love for God. ' As if to guard the duty of benefi- 
 cence against misapprehension or neglect, he 
 not only taught human kindness as in the par- 
 able of the Good Samaritan, but in a passage of 
 prophecy which might well be in the ritual of 
 every church he made the dread decisions of 
 the judgment to turn not on doctrine but on 
 
 4 
 
tTbe /Iftaln Zbcsie 
 
 conduct, not on the moral law in general but on 
 the law of beneficence in particular. This is 
 the style of his teaching who went about doing 
 good. Well might Paul sing the psalm of 
 " Charity," and John declare that God is 
 Love. 
 
 If the Law of Love has such implications and 
 such tremendous sanctions, there seems to be 
 no escape from the proposition that every man 
 ought to do his absolute utmost for the well- I 
 being of his fellow-creatures. ~J ■ 
 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. We 
 have been taught who is our neighbor. Our 
 duty to him is not based upon vicinity, associa- 
 tion, artificial relations, but upon the Law of 
 Love. His need of help is his all-sufficient 
 appeal. To every sentient creature I stand 
 related in such wise that I ought to give him 
 my interest, my sympathy, my help if possible. 
 My obligation is measured by powers and op- ! 
 portunities, by comparison of needs, by the ex- t 
 pediencies and economies of a generous, impar- 
 tial stewardship. The question is, not how 
 much of time, strength, money, and spiritual 
 force I must divert from the pursuit of my own 
 private ends to an outside work of beneficence ; 
 but how I shall so order my life and husband 
 my resources as to do all that is in my power 
 for the common goodJ Once for all, let us re- 
 pudiate the heresy, Tar more dangerous and per- 
 nicious than any alleged vagaries of " higher 
 
^bc Xavv of Service 
 
 criticism " or " larger hope," that the individual 
 may to any least degree live for himself, in 
 competition with others. Waiving the question 
 whether under the new dispensation we are 
 taught to love others better than ourselves, let 
 us accept the old commandment. I must love 
 my neighbor A. as myself ; I must love B., C, 
 and I), as myself. Every man is my neighbor 
 — there is no drawing the line. Every sentient 
 creature is my neighbor, and makes its legiti- 
 mate appeal. Granted the claims of myself 
 upon myself ; I am but one among countless 
 millions, each with his divinely sanctioned 
 claim — millions not only of this age but of all 
 the ages to come ; for I am a maker of desti- 
 nies. Relatively, my private claim is a vanish- 
 ing point. Again, God claims my undivided 
 service. It will doubtless be admitted that 
 there is no limit here, save the limit of my 
 ability. But he that spared not his own son 
 but delivered him up for us all, will be content 
 with nothing short of our utmost devotion to 
 the common good. In comparison with his 
 claim for all, what is my claim for myself ? We 
 do not question here the inestimable importance 
 of the individual atom ; we but compare the 
 atom witli the mass. The whole question of 
 conflicting or competing claims, however, is 
 taken out of court by the simple consideration 
 that in doing his utmost for others one does ex- 
 actly the utmost for himself. The glorious 
 
Zbc /IRaln Zbceis 
 
 paradox, He that loseth his life shall find it, is 
 an axiom of Christianity. 
 
 In the Republic of God there is no question 
 of conflicting rights ; Right is supreme. No 
 question of conflicting claims ; God is one. No 
 question of conflicting interests ; the interest of 
 all is the interest of each. The gospel of com- 
 petition is not the gospel of Christ. The Law 
 of Love is a Law of Utmost Service, and the Law 
 of Service is the working rule of life. 
 
III. 
 
 DUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 NjONE but a perfect intelligence could so 
 ' ^ grasp the conditions and reason upon the 
 facts of a given life as to point out in detail the 
 way of its greatest possible usefulness. We may 
 not hope to attain the ideal in the economy of 
 service. If we would be loyal servants we 
 must, according to our intelligence and capacity, 
 apply the principles of business, the art of bring- 
 ing things to pass, to our one all-inclusive busi- 
 ness of service. The mediaeval saint, in theory, 
 gave up all. He denied himself, abased him- 
 self, afflicted himself, isolated himself. The 
 modern prelate inhabits an episcopal palace, 
 and is conversant with the luxuries and festivi- 
 ties of Vanity Fair. The early disciple wor- 
 shipped in an upper chamber, or sought refuge 
 in caves of the earth ; the modern pewholder 
 listens to the service in a temple almost too fine 
 for a jjoor man to enter. John the Baptist 
 wore a leathern girdle about his loins, and his 
 meat was locusts and wild honey ; the modern 
 
 8 
 
2)ut^ of tbe irnMvi&ual 
 
 reformer fares sumptuously every day, and may j 
 consume the labor of a hundred men to keep 
 up the splendor of his private establishment. 
 We may not justly say that a man's usefulness 
 is proportioned to his poverty, his self-neglect, 
 his ignorance, his misery. Not even because 
 the chief of all servants had not where to lay 
 his head and died a martyr may we affirm that 
 the mediaeval way was wholly right and the 
 modern wholly wrong. Such conclusions are 
 easily reached, but they are worthless. 
 
 Could the monk do the most good in squalor 
 and loneliness ? Can the rich philanthropist, 
 absorbing into himself the strength of a hundred 
 men, get a better sum-total of results by his own 
 efforts than by directly utilizing their power 
 along with his in productive and helpful activi- 
 ties ? These are the important questions, and 
 they may not be dismissed with a one-sided 
 generalization. Questions generically the same 
 must press upon every thoughtful and earnest 
 lover of mankind, demanding for their right 
 answer not only sincerity, spirituality, and de- 
 votion, but a clear head and an active brain. 
 
 How shall I order my life ? I must first under- 
 stand and accept the Law of Utmost Service. 
 Then to every question of giving or withhold- 
 ing, of ambition or renunciation, ease or hard- 
 ship, work or play, war or peace, contemplation 
 or action, of beauty or ugliness, poetry or prose, 
 knowledge or ignorance, of art, literature. 
 
to tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 society, politics, commerce — to every question I 
 must bring that law. If by withholding I may 
 do more good than by giving, no sentiment must 
 prevent my saying no. If by giving I may serve 
 more effectively, I must give at whatever cost. 
 If my greatest usefulness, if the greatest ulti- 
 mate advancement of well-being demands that 
 the four quarters cf the globe be laid under con- 
 tribution for my culture, my comfort, my amuse- 
 ment even, I must needs enforce the claim at 
 whatever cost to the productive power of man- 
 kind. A man may believe that the issues of life 
 are too serious to admit of his enjoying its 
 luxuries, or even its comforts ; that literature is 
 demoralizing, art is frivolous, and beauty a 
 snare ; that to gratify the natural appetites and 
 desires is a profanation. The mediaeval ideal is 
 the ideal for him. Let him give up all — he can 
 do no other. Another man may say, " What 
 fools these mortals be ! " He may believe that 
 the kingdom of heaven is to come largely 
 through " the influence of Jesus upon the intel- 
 lect " of mankind ; through the application to 
 the problems of life of the enlarged common 
 , sense, the trained reason, the clear intelligence 
 I of the scholar. He may believe himself a 
 chosen instrument to inform the intellect 
 through literary production or scholarly research. 
 He may feel divinely called to a work which 
 cannot be done without books, travel, society, 
 aesthetic culture, immunity from ugly annoy- 
 
2)ut^ of tbc flnDiviDual n 
 
 ances, wholesome conditions of living, all those 
 costly accessories which seem essential to his 
 highest intellectual activity. He must needs be 
 trained and cared for like a race-horse or a 
 prima donna. For such an one there is no 
 choice. Cost what they will, the conditions of 
 his highest usefulness must be provided. 
 Another believes in civilization and material 
 progress as best opening the way for dissemina- 
 tion of truth and promotion of the spiritual wel- 
 fare of men. In his view, progress in civiliza- 
 tion requires that culture which comes from the 
 concentration of wealth, and material advance- 
 ment is best secured by the vast organization of 
 business which goes with individual control of 
 enormous means. He feels himself a born cap- 
 tain of industry, a born aristocrat ; and he verily 
 believes that by the methods of monopoly on the 
 one hand and social exclusiveness on the other, 
 he may best do his duty to the masses. Such an 
 one, also, has no choice. If his theory is right, 
 wealth and magnificence are his duty. Another 
 believes in "plain living and, high thinking." 
 To him private magnificence is vulgar, social 
 display foolish and empty, luxury enervating. 
 He bethinks him of the poverty of Socrates, the 
 blithe homeliness of Emerson. He is convinced 
 that with temperance and serenity he may do the 
 best that is in him at small cost and with small 
 ceremony. It is his happy privilege, then, to 
 live and to give like a philosopher. 
 
12 tlbe ILaw ot Service 
 
 That the writer's attitude towards these vari- 
 ous theories is by no means one of indifference, 
 the sequel will show. Just now we are con- 
 cerned with the principle to which every decision 
 should be referred. Our mission in the world, 
 then, is to do the utmost possible good. In de- 
 ciding for or against any given course of action, 
 we must take into account all its bearings, direct 
 and indirect, near and remote, upon the gen- 
 eral welfare and work out the problem as best 
 we may. Personal preference, in itself alone 
 considered, has as much to do with the decision 
 as with determining the orbit of a satellite of 
 Mars. " Even Christ pleased not himself." 
 
^^M 
 
 .^jrat^|^»™B| 
 
 IB 
 
 ngd^l^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^H 
 
 IV. 
 
 THEORETICAL TEACHING OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 1 T may be said that an ideal of complete devo- 
 ^ tion to the salvation of men is nothing new ; 
 that such an ideal has been held up from Christ's 
 day to this ; that every intelligent Christian accepts 
 it and tries to square his life by it. Certainly we are 
 not announcing a new discovery. Exactly what 
 is claimed for the thesis here advanced is that it 
 belongs to the old and open truth, and is the 
 plain teaching of Christ. All through the Chris- 
 tian centuries, doubtless, complete devotion has 
 been preached ; but we must be excused from 
 accepting as our standard a devotion which is 
 merely the equivalent of religiousness, and is 
 consistent with bigotry, with cruelty, with defi- 
 ance of the wholesome laws of nature and rea- 
 son. The completer the devotion of Philip the 
 Second, the worse for the Christian who dared 
 think for himself. Devotion to what ? To the 
 name of Christ, or to his work ? An ideal of 
 complete devotion, moreover, is doubtless ac- 
 cepted by intelligent Christians to-day. Never- 
 
 13 
 
14 ^bc Xaw ot Service 
 
 theless, before we can grant that no more need 
 be said, we must find out what that ideal means 
 to those who accept it, and what their accept- 
 ance of it means for them and for the world. 
 Language serves so effectually not only to 
 " conceal thought " but to conceal the want of 
 it or the perversion of it that we have no right 
 to be satisfied with a phrase. We must go be- 
 hind phrases to facts. We inquire first, then, 
 into the popular teaching of Christianity. The 
 writer's observation and impressions will have 
 weight with the reader if confirmed by his own. 
 Exceptions and qualifications must often be left 
 to the reader's intelligence ; it is enough if what 
 we affirm is substantially true. 
 
 Public prayer, though it may not be didactic 
 in purpose, is an effective means of teaching, 
 and should reflect the views of the teacher. In- 
 deed if he is very much in earnest, prayer may 
 express his real beliefs more truly than any 
 formal statements he is capable of making. 
 \\'hcre a ritual is not used it is interesting to 
 notice the preponderance of the pronouns of the 
 first person plural. To one accustomed to 
 think of Christianity as generous and public- 
 spirited, it is not only interesting, but painfully 
 so, this assumption of the minister to represent 
 and express the corporate egotism of the church. 
 Often and often he seems to have forgotten the 
 largeness of the world and to be quite unmoved 
 by the powerful appeal of its need. The thought 
 
^beoretical XLcacbim ot tbe Cburcb 15 
 
 of fairness in letting the public services of the 
 church express the breadth of its doctrine seems 
 as foreign to his mind as any scruple of good 
 taste about this reiterated " We." Quite har- 
 monious with the narrow thought and sympathy 
 thus advertised is the conspicuous infrequency 
 in many pulpits of allusion to civil rulers and 
 lawmakers, or even to " our " country and com- 
 monwealth. The pronoun is not vindicated by 
 relating it to any large substantive. The prayer- 
 book, with its noble and fitting recognition of 
 the State, is a refreshment by contrast. The 
 language of public prayer abounds in religious 
 sentiment, even where it does not too broadly 
 suggest the sentimental. It might abound in 
 poetry, without being therefore Christian or 
 philanthropic. Poetry is good, but it is not 
 Christianity. Religious sentiment is good, but 
 neither is it Christianity. 
 
 But does the sermon, as might perhaps be ex- 
 pected, take a broader and more generous view 
 of things ? The preaching of to-day is hardly 
 doctrinal ; it would doubtless claim to be prac- 
 tical. It is, in fact, far too largely, perfunctory 
 and sentimental. In need of spiritual enlarge- 
 ment through the truth, we are given the old, 
 familiar " sermonizing." Introduction, " which 
 may be skipt "; body of the discourse, " words, 
 words, words," in the air ; conclusion, " lame 
 and impotent " or respectably commonplace, it 
 matters little. Craving the speech of a living 
 
i6 Zbc Xaw of Service 
 
 man, we have been given the function of a 
 functionary ; of something other than a man, 
 be it more or less. If the preacher, imitating 
 the popular lecture in its decadence, merely 
 strings together a series of anecdotes and illus- 
 trations, he may be more entertaining, but less 
 respectable. If he be fervid, the chances are 
 large that his fervor is that of the narrow- 
 minded prayer, or else dwells on the one topic 
 of conversion, neglecting the question what we 
 are to be converted to, what we are to do in the 
 world while awaiting our reward in heaven. 
 The exhorter's converts, but scantily furnished 
 in doctrine, soon fail in emotion. They fall 
 into conventional ways, and expect things to go 
 on pretty much as they have done. Expressly 
 or by implication, the preacher recognizes some 
 high standard of attainment. What that stand- 
 ard is, or, if it be perfection, perfection in what, 
 it might puzzle the average layman to tell. Is 
 it perfect goodness ? But in what does perfect 
 goodness consist ? Perfect morality, perhaps, 
 and perfect religiousness combined. Perfect 
 morality is understood to imply certain absten- 
 tions. The scope of its obligation, just what 
 acts are immoral and what, if any, are indiffer- 
 ent or non-moral, our layman may not know ; 
 and he gets all too little help from his public 
 teacher. The result is that many actions which 
 may be of vital importance in tlicir relation to 
 character and welfare are treated as if they were 
 
^beoretical (Teacbiitcj ot tbc Cbiircb 17 
 
 non-moral or indifferent. Persons of middle 
 age can recall how preachers of the old school 
 used to demolish the citadel of the "Moralist," 
 as of a dangerous enemy to the faith. Doubt- 
 less in many cases they were fighting a real 
 antagonist. Some of their less virile and logical 
 successors deal so little with the general conduct 
 of life as to suggest the fear of being taken for 
 moralists themselves. It is clear to the student 
 of history and the observer of human life that 
 great religious zeal may co-exist not only with 
 neglect of fraternal duty, but with cruel injus- 
 tice. Religiousness needs to be mixed with a 
 large ingredient of usefulness to keep it whole- 
 some. The scripture statement about " pure 
 religion and undefiled " deserves a great deal 
 more attention than the clergy give it. A high 
 degree of religious emotion, again, is so remote 
 from the ordinary experience of many well-dis- 
 posed church-goers, if not from their ordinary 
 capacity, that its phraseology is to them a kind 
 of unknown tongue. With a " genius for re- 
 ligion " one may luxuriate in religious experi- 
 ence as such. So with a genius for poetry one 
 may spend his days and nights with the great 
 singers. But as most of us must pluck the 
 rarest flowers of poesy in the rare moments of 
 quickened imagination, so we must live our re- 
 ligion in humble ways, and rise to its conscious 
 exaltations according as our life has developed 
 the capacity, and monotonous hard work ad- 
 
i8 Q:bc Uaw Of Service 
 
 mils of favorable occasions. Genuine filial love 
 is not ordinarily rapture. To be filled with the 
 Spirit, we may believe, is not always to be con- 
 sciously inspired. To begin with trying to be 
 rapturous, and let the theory and practice of 
 righteousness wait, would seem to be a disastrous 
 mistake. 
 
 What has been said of official prayer and of 
 preaching applies, perhaps more forcibly, to 
 the less public exercises of the church. The 
 feebleness and inconsequence of the average 
 prayer-meeting need only be mentioned. The 
 inefficiency of the secular school is bad 
 enough ; but that of the Sunday-school is 
 monumental. Of the little which is effectually 
 taught there it is to be feared that only a little 
 fraction is the doctrine of usefulness in the 
 world. 
 
 The results of the various church " services " 
 are probably more than merely conservative, but 
 only by a small annual percentage. The fact of 
 chief significance for our purpose is that the 
 church and those who assemble with it are not 
 definitely and effectively taught the duty of 
 entire self-giving, of utmost service to men. 
 Some effort to urge that duty and the views of 
 life which it logically involves has raised the 
 suspicion that people do not understand what 
 such teaching means. So far from being 
 familiar with the Law of Service by having 
 
tTbcorcticnl ^cacblno of tbe Cburcb 19 
 
 thought it out, they do not seem to give it 
 serious consideration when presented. Our 
 Christian thinking is not well accustomed to 
 radical views of duty. It is not adjusted to 
 the simplicity of the truth, nor prepared to 
 accept its implications. 
 
V. 
 
 PRACTICAL TEACHING OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 T^HE agitation in church circles over recent 
 * phases of the old controversy between 
 conservatives and liberals has been significant 
 in bringing out bold affirmation of the old 
 severe doctrines, and showing how widespread 
 among religious leaders is a theoretical ad- 
 herence to them. Modifications these doctrines 
 have undergone, in phraseology or in substance ; 
 but it is seen that the teaching of the New Testa- 
 ment is very serious and uncompromising, and 
 its denunciation of doom for the wicked, coupled 
 with the solemn charge to bring all nations to 
 repentance, is recognized in the common creed 
 of the evangelical churches. Now the work of 
 missions is crippled to-day, not merely nor 
 chiefly by doctrinal controversy and want of 
 harmony in counsel, but because the churches, 
 professedly believing in the work and certainly 
 able to support it, will not back the workers. 
 Many of these churches worship in costly build- 
 ings and support their ministers in affluence. 
 
 20 
 
iPractical tleacbina ot tbe Cburcb 21 
 
 Their members spend on horses and carriages, 
 on servants, on houses and grounds, on foreign 
 travel, on social functions and the luxuries of 
 the table, on cigars and in too many cases on 
 intoxicating drinks, and in general on needless 
 personal indulgences, enormous sums of money 
 which are needed for missionary enterprise and 
 might be carrying light into the darkness of 
 heathendom. One hears little against the claims 
 of missions. Indeed there is some jealousy lest 
 the peril of the heathen be minimized, and men 
 who cherished some " larger hope " have found 
 it an obstacle in their way to the missionary 
 field. Nevertheless the contribution of money 
 and men is so contemptibly small — in all sober- 
 ness be it said — as to be a most effective satire 
 on the doctrine. The well-to-do orthodox say 
 in effect : " The heathen are going to perdition, 
 body and soul, but it will cost too much to save 
 them — let them go." 
 
 The cry of the poor at home is making itself 
 heard. These church members know that the 
 poorer quarters of the great cities grovel in filth, 
 moan with pain, reek with moral corruption, 
 threaten civil orderwiththe ever-muttering "vol- 
 cano under the city." The problems to which 
 this state of things gives rise are by no means 
 solved, and the eradication of poverty and vice 
 is hard, slow work at the best ; but certain 
 means of help and alleviation have been found. 
 The fresh-air fund, the college settlement, tene- 
 
22 Zbc Xaw ot Service 
 
 ment reform, charity organization, church work 
 for the masses in various forms, — such in- 
 strumentalities and activities as these make it 
 possible to do something effective for the 
 welfare of the poor. That this doing is wickedly 
 neglected by church members their luxurious 
 living and the poverty of the charities conclu- 
 sively show. " Let the rich man have his 
 yacht," says a famous metropolitan preacher 
 whose orthodoxy, we believe, stands high, " Let 
 the rich man have his yacht, provided," etc. 
 Let us have a parenthesis of common-sense ! 
 The rich man could get on very well without 
 his yacht, and God's poor are going to perdi- 
 tion for want of just the succor that its cost 
 might send them. Let us think how it would 
 sound to say : " Let Jesus Christ have his 
 yacht, his tally-ho coach, his palace in town, his 
 magnificent country seat, provided he will give 
 on a like scale for benevolent objects." Christ 
 had to give all ; we compliment the rich man if 
 he gives a handsome percentage ! 
 
 Hawthorne says of his "new Adam and Eve," 
 as they wonderingly examine a modern city, 
 deserted by every living thing at the sound of 
 the last trumpet : 
 
 " But how will they explain the magnificence 
 of one habitation as compared with the squalid 
 misery of another ? Through what medium can 
 the idea of servitude enter their minds ? When 
 will they comprehend the great and miserable 
 
IPractical ZTeacbfng of tbe Cburcb 23 
 
 fact — the evidences of which appeal to their 
 senses everywhere — that one portion of earth's 
 lost inhabitants was rolling in luxury while the 
 multitude was toiling for scanty food ? A 
 wretched change, indeed, must be wrought in 
 their own hearts ere they can conceive the 
 primal decree of love to have been so completely 
 abrogated that a brother should ever want what 
 his brother had." 
 
 Genius must needs see into this iniquity of 
 things. Common sense is enough, provided we 
 use it. 
 
 Not long since a preacher of exceptional 
 ability and breadth illustrated the triumph of 
 piety over distress by a most harrowing picture 
 of life in an almshouse. It is doubtful whether 
 the body of the discourse moved one of his 
 many well-fed hearers to any thought of self- 
 denial for sweet charity's sake. The illustra- 
 tion, powerful in its appeal to benevolent im- 
 pulses and its lesson of duty, was made 
 subordinate to the development of an old and 
 well worn theme. The incident was impressive 
 as an example of how the church is dealing with 
 the people under its influence. They are not 
 fools, nor wholly thoughtless. They have not 
 only Moses and the prophets, but the gospel. In 
 many cases the eloquence of an angel would 
 hardly move them to direct endeavor for per- 
 sonal sainthood. Many of them have perhaps 
 unconsciously but decisively broken with pietism, 
 
24 trbc Xaw ot Sctvice 
 
 and taken up Avith respectable and unrebuked 
 self-seeking. They have not the religious tem- 
 perament, and religiousness is not in the air. 
 Consciousness of easy intellectual superiority to 
 much with which religion is associated, together 
 with the weakened hold of dogma — a natural 
 incident of this period of criticism and readjust- 
 ment — makes them proof against ordinary ap- 
 peals. Yet they are not malignant ; they are 
 self-indulgent because in their little world it is 
 conventional to be so, and customary to take 
 the disjointed state of the times as a matter of 
 course. If they are above the Sir Leicester Ded- 
 lock type of conservatism, they are not above 
 the easy irresponsibility of priest and Levite. 
 While venturing the suggestion that under present 
 conditions the spiritual natures of such people 
 may best be reached by enforcing the Law of 
 Love as a Law of Service, we are chiefly con- 
 cerned to point out here that the church is not 
 winning them either to spirituality or to self- 
 denial. Itself negligent of philanthropy, it does 
 not and cannot enlist them in the active service 
 of mankind. 
 
 The glowing imagery of Isaiah, his prophecies 
 of deliverance and joy, have not their fulfib 
 ment in the distress of the myriad poor, the 
 injustice and oppression of the rich, the disfig- 
 urement of tlie world with sordidness and vice. 
 The commission to disciple all nations was 
 given many ages ago. To-day but a minority 
 
Ipiractical ^cacbina of tbe Cburcb 
 
 in so-called Christian lands are reckoned as 
 disciples, and the foreign work is carried on by 
 a handful of missionaries supported by a pit- 
 tance of money. The gospel of peace is pro- 
 claimed in the churches, but the nations are 
 burdened with the maintenance of armies, and 
 inventive genius toils at new engineries of de- 
 struction. The poet of pessimism who should 
 tune his harp to bewail the badness of things 
 would be embarrassed with wealth of material. 
 
 The church takes this as a matter of course. 
 The thought that it need not, the resolve that it 
 shall not be, seems to have found no lodgment 
 in the mind of the church as a whole. All the 
 activities of the religious world, vast as they are, 
 go on like a melancholy, unhopeful effort to save 
 a few brands from the burning, to disciple a 
 few of the elect for a future paradise, here in the 
 midst of an incorrigibly crooked and perverse 
 generation. The church, however cheerful in 
 its godliness, is giving a sad answer to the ques- 
 tion, " Are there few that be saved ? " If it in- 
 dulges an optimistic hope that somehow the 
 Almighty will take care of the unfortunate, and 
 cherishes a reassuring theory that somehow evil 
 is not so very evil after all, and a little more or 
 less of it does not matter, it seems to a layman 
 to do so in defiance of its creeds, and strangely 
 ignoring the solemnity of its scriptures. 
 
 The opportunity of the church to-day is mag- 
 nificent, its motives to action most potent and 
 
26 ^be Xaw of Service 
 
 inspiring, its responsibility appalling. By its 
 disproportionate dwelling upon trite themes 
 pertaining to personal experience and personal 
 religious culture, its failure to expound and 
 emphasize the duty of giving self and substance, 
 and its own self-indulgent neglect of the things^ 
 that need to be done in the world, the church is 
 doing much towards the practical teaching of an 
 egotistical and sentimental laissez faire. 
 
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 VI. 
 
 OUR POSITION DEFINED. 
 
 WE have shown that the teaching of Christ in- 
 volves the Law of Utmost Service. We 
 have criticised the Church of Christ for so largely 
 ignoring this law, both in theory and in practice. 
 In this criticism, and in some exposition of 
 what the law means and implies, we can hardly 
 have failed to indicate that the full acceptance 
 of it would involve great and radical changes. 
 
 It would be plausible to say in objection that, 
 however great the force of the considerations 
 presented as to certain things to be done in the 
 world, it will not do to narrow our conception 
 of the ideal man to that of a most efficient work- 
 man under temporary and abnormal conditions. 
 So far from disputing this, we affirm that the 
 broadest ideal of manhood should be sought for 
 in theory and constantly set before us in prac- 
 tice. We maintain, further, that any narrowing 
 of the conception of manhood will on the whole 
 give us less effective workmen, even for the work 
 incident to temporary and abnormal conditions. 
 
 27 
 
 v^ 
 
28 tlbc Xaw of Service 
 
 Again, in deciding the complex and difficult 
 questions which daily life presents under the 
 Law of Service, we shall be and ought to be 
 materially influenced by our views as to the ideal 
 man in his relations, for example, to the beauti- 
 ful. To illustrate specifically, our attitude of 
 mind with reference to music in itself considered 
 will rightly have to do with our actions con- 
 cerning public worship, education, social usages, 
 and personal careers. Without going deep into 
 the theory of ethics, and philosophizing on the 
 relation of virtue to happiness, we may say once 
 for all that in our conception the ideal man is 
 perfect not only in devotion, but in strength, 
 beauty, and joy — 7^ie?7S sana in corpore sano. 
 Tliis does not mean that any good thing is in- 
 dependent of righteousness ; much less that any 
 good thing can be in conflict with it. Righteous- 
 ness, Tightness, right, is one. The sphere of the 
 good is nowhere outside of the sphere of the 
 right. Whatsoever things are good, whatsoever 
 things are lovely, are organic parts of the All of 
 Righteousness. The forms of beauty are the 
 forms of law. Joy is health, and health is con- 
 formity to law. Ugliness and joylessness are in 
 conflict with the Law of Service. No hint of 
 beauty and of innocent delight in all the uni- 
 verse, no elemental stirring of passion, no instinct 
 for fulness of living, no uplift of the imagina- 
 tion, but is an utterance of the Almighty, which 
 we neglect at our i)eril. Following where truth 
 
®ur iposition H)efine& 29 
 
 leads, let us shun the falsehood of asceticism, as 
 well as the impiety of license. All we need in- 
 sist on — and for that our whole discourse is a 
 plea — is mental and moral perspective, the ap- 
 prehension of things as they are, and in their 
 right relations each to all. 
 
 Just thinking, which must be independent and 
 unconventional, dealing with things at first hand, 
 will still bring us back to the Law of Service, 
 and re-affirm its obligation all the more con- 
 vincingly because it has honestly weighed all 
 evidence, and fairly considered all claims. The 
 unity of the moral law will still be vindicated, 
 grounded as it is in the unity of God. The 
 hierarchy of truths, subsisting in the oneness of 
 the truth, will stand as against the anarchy of 
 conflicting doctrines. In a word, subordination 
 of the lesser to the greater good, of individual- 
 ism to the common weal, will be the teaching of 
 the most enlightened reason. Our law will stand 
 unshaken ; its implications concerning the con- 
 duct of life, to the least detail, will admit of no 
 exception or evasion. 
 
 The chapters which follow, dealing with the 
 bearings and applications of the doctrine we 
 have formulated, may serve both to develop its 
 contents more fully, and to strengthen the read- 
 er's conviction of its soundness. Whether that 
 law is often mentioned or not, every subject will 
 be considered with constant reference to the 
 Law of Service. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE FELICITY OF SERVICE. 
 
 CAR from concealing the fact, we have been 
 ^ disposed to give it emphasis, that the view 
 here advocated is radical, far-reaching, and in 
 some measure austere. On the other hand we 
 must guard against misconception by affirming 
 most heartily that under the Law of Service life 
 is wholesome and attractive. 
 
 Felicity is found in health and in the normal 
 exercise of the powers. If the Christian ideal 
 be of contemplation, it does not mean health for 
 man as God made him. If it be of spiritual 
 striving, it means a fire which shall burn up the 
 body, and perhaps involve the mind in its ruin. 
 If it be of asceticism, it means neglect of much 
 that belongs to the^^;/7/i- homo as such ; it means 
 sainthood, not symmetry, a joy of devotion 
 doubtless, but not that jubilancy with which the 
 poetry of the ( )ld Testament invests the world, 
 or that sweet human happiness upon which he 
 smiled who made wine for the wedding feast, 
 and bade us " consider the lilies." 
 
 30 
 
^be jfelicit^ ot Service 31 
 
 If the Christian ideal be of utmost service, it 
 means complete manhood and womanhood ; it 
 means that harmony and balance of the powers 
 without which the greatest efficiency in good 
 works is impossible. The question is not of 
 material progress, which in our day nothing 
 short of anarchy could stop. The accumulation 
 of capital is already enormous, and the requi- 
 sites for wholesome living would be easy to get 
 for all men were all men just and diligent. 
 Moreover, from the economic standpoint, it is 
 clear enough that the maintenance of those con- 
 ditions of peace and justice on which material 
 welfare depends, will require the conservative 
 force of righteousness, not to speak of the re- 
 form of institutions through aggressive Chris- 
 tianity. The question is of moral progress, of 
 spiritual life, of the kingdom of heaven, whose 
 constitution is in the Law of Love, whose work- 
 ing rule is the Law of Service. This being 
 true, the manhood which will be of most use in 
 the world is of no maimed or morbid type ; no 
 product of excessive specialization or excessive 
 labor. Certainly it is not something less or 
 worse than manhood. It is not something 
 greater or better, for nothing greater or better is 
 possible to man than the perfection of himself. 
 Being what we are by natural constitution, the 
 Law of Service bids us by self-development and 
 self-correction, under the favoring guidance of 
 our Maker, to approximate the perfection of our 
 
32 Cbe 3La\v ot Service 
 
 li 11 mail nature, that so we may not only exem- 
 plify it for the imitation of other men, but do 
 most efficiently whatever is the divinely ordered 
 task of a man. What more attractive than the 
 life of health, of growth towards perfectness, of 
 workmanlike endeavor ? Again, the Law of 
 Service gives life a meaning. It answers, or 
 makes us forget to ask, that weary question of 
 the day, " Is life worth living ? " What has been 
 said will hold true if we have to admit that the 
 joy of health in its perfection is for none of us, 
 and that for many life must be in some sense 
 " one long disease." If we accept this law we 
 may hope not to be overmuch concerned about 
 ourselves — a prime condition of felicity — be- 
 cause the altruistic excludes the egoistic impulse. 
 Contentment and good cheer under the ills of 
 life has been the experience of countless helpful 
 souls who have somehow accepted their Maker's 
 assurance that their life was not lived in vain ; 
 that he would not mock them, nor put them to 
 permanent intellectual confusion. Pluck is no 
 uncommon gift ; heroism is displayed in the in- 
 cidents of every passing day. Given a meaning 
 of life, the generous spirit may even exult in en- 
 during hardness " as a good soldier." Pleasure 
 is not always attainable, as its votaries know too 
 well, nor desirable, as they often learn when 
 they pay its price ; but the joy of service may 
 dwell even with pain and want. With this goes 
 hope of larger service and more unmingled hap- 
 
Zbc 3f elicit^ of Service 33 
 
 piness to come ; but the energetic working spirit 
 does not aspire to an immortality of idleness, 
 nor brood discontentedly over its hope of future 
 deliverance. Were ignorance of the next world 
 ten times what it is, yet life is rich in present 
 opportunity ; were there no promise of immor- 
 tality, yet a spirit touched to fine issues would 
 find its own life great. Sublime, however cir- 
 cumscribed, is that aspiration of George Eliot : 
 
 *' O may I join the choir invisible . 
 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world ! " 
 
 But promise of immortality there is, not only 
 in our sacred books, but in our invincible faith 
 and the consent of enlightened reason ; and 
 with all the vast aggregate of evil in this present 
 world there is the immeasurable well-being of 
 conscious life, harmonious with the order of the 
 universe. If the ugly, the painful, and the 
 cruel are conspicuous, it is on a background of 
 beauty and happy innocence. One wounded 
 sparrow moves our compassion, yet the fields 
 are filled with cheerful song. Brave earth, blue 
 heaven, and the light of stars are a perennial 
 revelation of God, which meets perennial re- 
 sponse of gladness. To the natural felicities of 
 our being, the life of service adds the keen zest 
 of battle with evil, the supreme felicity of love 
 uttering itself in action. It is*the life of present 
 achievement and of reasonable hope. 
 
VIII. 
 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 
 
 IT is rather a commonplace that happiness is 
 * not to be got by direct pursuit. It comes 
 with self-forgetfulness, not with over-developed 
 self-consciousness. The poet, to whom we have 
 rightly ascribed some sort and measure of in- 
 spiration, does not sit down and try to work 
 himself into an ecstasy ; neither does he expect 
 to receive " the vision and the faculty divine " 
 by miraculous gift. 
 
 " Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 
 
 And shuns the hands would seize upon her ; 
 Follow thy life, and she will sue 
 To pour for thee the cup of honor." 
 
 Wholesome inward experiences commonly at- 
 tend on wholesome outward activities, through 
 which, in turn, they are expressed and revealed. 
 Perception of the truth and action according to 
 it, right thinking and right conduct — these are 
 
 He that will do 
 34 
 
 the conditions of right feeling. 
 
IReligtous ]£jperience 35 
 
 the will shall know of the doctrine ; and he shall 
 know of the experience also. 
 
 Insanity is one extreme development of re- 
 ligious egoism ; the unreasoning excesses of 
 fanaticism are another — if, indeed, they are not 
 a form of insanity ; the selfish luxury of emotion 
 is another, and perhaps the most common and 
 the meanest. Some excitation of feeling, some 
 occasional glow of sentiment, and a life of idle- 
 ness, or frivolity, or self-seeking, or ruthless ex- 
 travagance ! There be those, it is to be feared, 
 who exploit their emotionalism for personal ad- 
 vantage. Consciously hypocritical Chadbands 
 are few ; but the Chadband traits are too com- 
 mon, together with the silly women who admire 
 them. Greatly to be pitied are those sincere 
 people who try to lift themselves in a basket to 
 the higher levels of spiritual life. Far more to 
 be pitied is the world in its need, waiting for a 
 self-indulgent, thoughtless church to get itself 
 into such a state as to be moved to begin, in 
 earnest, that work of service which has been its 
 plain duty all the while. It is not here claimed 
 that prayer, aspiration, spiritual wrestling should 
 be neglected or spiritual consciousness avoided 
 — God forbid ! It is claimed that the Christian 
 law of beneficence should be obeyed, and that in 
 this obedience, and no otherwise, are the con- 
 ditions of spiritual health supplied. It is not 
 claimed that the church is too spiritual, but that 
 it has too much to say about religion, as com- 
 
36 XLbc %ti\v ot Service 
 
 pared with what it has to say and chooses to do 
 about work. The man who fell among thieves 
 cared little for the religion of the priest and the 
 Levite when they passed by on the other side ; 
 and the common sense of mankind — a precious 
 gift of Heaven, be it remembered — affirms that 
 the religious experience of such priests and 
 Levites is little worth caring about. 
 
 Out and out obedience to the Law of Service 
 would bring in an experience which, though not 
 new to some individuals, would be new to the 
 church at large. This experience deserves, and 
 will have, the honest respect of the world, which 
 despises the Chadbands, but does not despise 
 the Brookses, or the Moodys, or the Booths. 
 
 It may be said here that one aspect of Chris- 
 tianity which is made prominent at the North- 
 field conferences should neither be ignored nor 
 be dealt with in a half-hearted, indefinite, unin- 
 telligible way. It is doubtful whether the great 
 majority of those who profess Trinitarian belief 
 have any clear and positive views about the 
 doctrine of the Holy Spirit, as related to per- 
 sonal experience and conduct ; and it would 
 seem as if its exposition were avoided by many 
 of our more intelligent public teachers of reli- 
 gion. It is with something else that this book 
 has to do ; but due emphasis on one truth does 
 not imply neglect of any other. 
 
 All true disciples will not have the same de- 
 gree of spiritual consciousness, any more than all 
 
will have equal development of musical taste or 
 poetic imagination ; neither will individual ex- 
 periences be like Quaker garments, all of the 
 same style ; but such spirituality as there is will 
 be genuine, not factitious, wholesome, not mor- 
 bid, where the Law of Service is obeyed. It 
 will not tend to express itself in fantastic for- 
 malities, nor in any manner of unloveliness. 
 The beauty of the Lord will be upon those who 
 do his will. 
 

 
 IX. 
 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 'T'HE claims of theology are not to be dis- 
 * regarded. Science and religion unite in 
 testifying to its fundamental importance, and 
 thinkers are seeing more clearly than ever that 
 all knowledge is somehow knowledge of God. 
 To the rule that the best things are liable to the 
 worst abuses, theology is no exception. A saying 
 of Christ which we have used before reveals the 
 check and remedy for the notorious abuses of 
 dogma : " If any man willeth to do his will, he 
 shall know of the teaching, whether it is of 
 God." 
 
 Logic, which has counted for much in the de- 
 velopment of theological beliefs, is a good ser- 
 vant, but a bad master. Given right premises, 
 logical processes bring us surely to the truth. If 
 the premises are wrong, the better our logic, the 
 worse may be its conclusions. A logical system 
 of dogma may give us a cult which at the heart 
 of it is no better than devil-worship. As a cor- 
 rective for the vagaries of scholastic theolo- 
 
 38 
 
gians, the Law of Service will serve well. 
 Obedience to it calls for the exercise of robust 
 common sense. To serve efficiently, one must 
 perforce be practical. The problems of service 
 demand cool reason, and its practice forms the 
 habit of plain reasonableness. A man permeated 
 with the spirit and acquainted with the work 
 of active beneficence is not therefore completely- 
 equipped for the investigations of the divinity 
 school ; but a religious public made up of such 
 individuals will furnish an atmosphere of right 
 thinking, and will demand in its teachers no 
 mere worship of the syllogism, but a style of 
 reasoning whose conclusions will tally with self- 
 evident truth, and will stand the test of use. 
 
 Again, the doctrines of a church which obeys 
 the Law of Service will be humane. The 
 atrocities of religious persecution went naturally 
 with the theology of the cloister ; and the cruel- 
 ties which still disgrace our civilization are a 
 significant commentary on the thinking behind 
 the conduct of the Christian world — thinking 
 much of which has been both cause and effect of 
 indifference to the appeal of helpless pain. It 
 may be that " an undevout astronomer is mad " ; 
 yet truth can be discovered in astronomy with- 
 out devoutness. The development of the bi- 
 nomial formula does not depend on a right state 
 of the affections. In the science of theology, 
 however, it is otherwise. Its subject-matter is so 
 related to character that the moral bias and ani- 
 
40 ^be Xaw of Service 
 
 mus of the student will powerfully affect his 
 conclusions. It will not do to construct a deity 
 by a priori reasoning and deduce a system of 
 doctrine concerning him from the mere assump- 
 tions of that reasoning ; and accordingly we 
 find theologians appealing to the law and the 
 testimony. The sum and substance of revela- 
 tion is in Christ, the Word, who came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister ; not to break 
 the bruised reed, but to heal the broken-hearted, 
 to preach deliverance. The Law of Service is 
 an interpretation of Christ. The theology of 
 those who fully accept this interpretation may 
 be faulty in other respects, but it will at least be 
 kind, not cruel. It need not forget that love is 
 a consuming fire, but it must needs remember 
 that the consuming fire is Love. 
 
 Again, as we maintain that our Law gives the 
 divine idea of man, since the sum of manhood 
 is in its activities, so we insist that it points 
 out the true way to man's idea of God. Our 
 conception of God is anthropomorphic. We can- 
 not escape this ; if Christ be the true word and 
 revelation of God, we need not regret it. The 
 nearer we approximate to a right view and reali- 
 zation of manhood, the better able we shall be 
 to approximate to the truth concerning God. 
 
 If it be feared that interest in theology will 
 languish in the presence of an absorbing inter- 
 est in applied Christianity, the answer is that, if 
 so, so it is best. If the captain of a Cunarder 
 
is too much occupied with the cares and calcula- 
 tions of the voyage to employ himself in mathe- 
 matical research, the passengers will judge him 
 right in preferring seamanship to scholarship. 
 Neither, however, will they fear that abstract 
 investigation will be neglected, so long as the 
 problems of actual life continually lead up to 
 it, and the human mind is by its very nature 
 subject to the fascinating allurements of science. 
 The theology that efficiently navigates the ship 
 cannot be altogether wrong ; that which drives 
 it on the rocks or leaves it to rot at its moorings 
 is ipso facto a. failure. The knowledge of God 
 has nothing to lose and much to gain from the 
 doing of his will, 
 
X. 
 
 THE CHURCH: INSTRUCTION. 
 
 INCIDENTS to the work of the church must 
 * be subordinated to essentials. Social enjoy- 
 ment is incidental, yet important. When the 
 social life of the church resembles the society- 
 or club-life of the unchristian world, whether in 
 exclusiveness, in frivolity, or in wastefulness, it 
 is time to call a halt. Music is an incident of 
 religious work, often unwisely neglected. Other 
 things equal, the better music the better wor- 
 ship and work. When it becomes a perform- 
 ance rather than an act of worship, a costly 
 importation rather than a spontaneous utter- 
 ance, it is no longer a means of grace but a 
 hinderance to grace. While good works out- 
 side lack support, so long operatic display is 
 out of place in church. Religious enjoyment, 
 even, is also incidental. A church is no mere 
 club to promote enjoyment of any kind. Nor, 
 as we understand it, is it essential, though it 
 be natural and useful, that the church work 
 directly to promote the private exercises of de- 
 
 42 
 
tTbc Cburcb: flnstruction 43 
 
 votion among its members. The church is to 
 disciple all nations, to reform all societies, to i 
 enlighten all moral darkness, to alleviate all dis- \ 
 tress. Let it do that work, and there will be no 
 escape froni a deepening personal communion \ 
 with God. To try to be religious while neglect- 
 ing urgent duty is to begin at the wrong end. 
 
 Instruction in righteousness, we shall agree, 
 is an essential. The Bible is the great text- 
 book, not merely a book in which to find texts. 
 Preaching, then, should be largely expository, 
 not dealing merely with detached passages. It 
 must view that remarkable library of history 
 and literature as such, and its parts as related to 
 each other, and to the scope and purpose of the 
 whole ; each of the parts, in turn, calling for 
 like comprehensive treatment and analysis. Not 
 every minister can be a critical scholar, but 
 most ministers should be able to keep in touch 
 with current scholarship, as well as command 
 the sifted product of older studies. The Bible 
 instruction of the Christian year, and from year to 
 year, should be planned for completeness of out- 
 line, and for judicious guidance of private study. 
 While reverent and careful, it should be broad, 
 honest, and fearless. But this is not all. As 
 related to service, all knowledge and all truth 
 are the preacher's province. He not only may 
 but must claim the widest liberty in respect to 
 matter and treatment. The old jest, that the 
 preacher must not meddle with politics or reli- 
 
44 ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 gion, must lose its point. Prudence and good 
 sense are never out of date ; but to shrink from 
 discussing practical questions, exactly because 
 they are practical and are provocative of 
 thought and partisanship, belongs to that feeble, 
 unmanly type of Christianity which has too 
 often and too justly brought religion into con- 
 tempt. The minister should be as true a man 
 as the old Roman, and " meddle " with whatever 
 is vital to human welfare, whether in the narrower 
 community or in the broader. A thousand 
 times better to make mistakes sometimes than 
 slothfully to shirk the duty of thought, or cow- 
 ardly to shirk the duty of speech. He who 
 would instruct and reform men must expect 
 them to be more than intolerant partisans or 
 jealous self-seekers ; if he would save their souls, 
 he must reckon them worth saving. We need 
 more self-respect and respect for men ; more 
 sturdy self-forgetfulness and generous impulse 
 to fight against wrong. " Be Kent unmannerly, 
 when Lear is mad ! " Be every true man bold, 
 like honest Kent, when old King Demos has lost 
 his wits, and would be flattered with lies or 
 obeyed in craven silence. 
 
 An acute critic has lately pointed out that 
 Macbeth can go on adding crime to crime, be- 
 cause he turns the truth he so vividly perceives 
 into material for poetry rather than motive for 
 righteousness. With a powerful imagination 
 and a poet's temperament, he relieves the ten- 
 
^be Cburcb : irnstruction 45 
 
 sion of his feelings in noble strains of eloquence, 
 and so is calmed and fitted for his horrid work ; 
 while his wife, to whom " words are things," 
 fears madness from his meditation, and breaks 
 into his rhythmic monologue with " What do 
 you mean ! " The same writer reminds us of 
 the dread that haunted the preacher Robertson 
 lest himself should not go with his words ; and 
 every man with the speaker's temperament may 
 understand what Lady Macbeth could not. 
 Nothing is easier, oftentimes, to the speaker, 
 nothing more agreeable to the well-fed hearer, 
 than to embody some truth of Christianity in 
 sonorous words, just and beautiful enough, but 
 deadening to the conscience because unrelated 
 to conduct. Some quickening of the imagina- 
 tion and glow of feeling, as moral as the purr of 
 a kitten, may pass for devotional fervor. Sooth- 
 ing as sleep, it even " knits up the ravelled sleave 
 of care," and serves well for *' balm of hurt 
 minds " ; but my lady goes back to her unfeel- 
 ing and wasteful " society," and her lord returns 
 to wallow in the mire of the exchanges. Better 
 poetry can be bought at the bookseller's — far 
 better, in that it professes to be no more and no 
 other than it is. Figuratively, if not literally, 
 our congregations have been preached to sleep 
 by thrifty sermonizers, who would have all men 
 speak well of them. Let fearless, hard-headed 
 men awaken them with doctrine, reproof, in- 
 struction in righteousness. 
 
46 Cbe Xaw of Service 
 
 Witli the prayer-meeting as such, or as a love- 
 feast, we have nothing to do here. In practice 
 it is largely devoted to informal preaching, cleri- 
 cal or lay. This should be instructive, if not 
 didactic. Imagine an organization of intelligent 
 people, united for the noblest purposes and 
 under the strongest conceivable motives, whose 
 weekly conference should be neglected by many 
 of the ablest members and largely given to the 
 repetition of certain feeble platitudes or good 
 old formulas minus their life and efficacy ! Yet 
 this description does small injustice to the aver- 
 age prayer-meeting. The best talent should 
 give its best, for instruction in the truth, which 
 no minister can monopolize, and for counsel in 
 the work, which belongs to all. The church in 
 conference should forget itself and warm to its 
 work, as every assembly with an absorbing pur- 
 pose does. 
 
 The Sunday-school, if not a model of what a 
 school for instruction should not be, comes al- 
 together too near it. Its proper text-book is 
 left at home — possibly a good arrangement, if 
 teacher or pupil knew the lesson. A feeble sub- 
 stitute for it is wide open in all hands. Happy 
 if the teacher does not read ready-made ques- 
 tions to the class, and the class read ready-made 
 answers to the teacher. With such a mockery 
 of instruction, it matters the less that con- 
 ventional "exercises" reduce to a minimum 
 the face-to-face encounter of teacher and class. 
 
Cbe Cburcb : Unstruction 47 
 
 Without considering here the merit of the work 
 done by those excellent doctors of divinity who 
 deal out the Scripture piecemeal with fragments 
 of commentary, we remark that local initiative 
 is not encouraged, but anticipated and in effect 
 superseded. The churches whose theory is the 
 extreme of local independence, are governed in 
 this so vital matter by distant committees having 
 the substance of authority without its official 
 dignity and responsibility. 
 
 It may be profitable to say that a church in- 
 telligently devoted to service will of course insist 
 on efficient teaching in its school. Paid super- 
 intendency, and even paid instruction, where 
 practicable, is worth considering. He who sells 
 his services is not therefore more bound to do 
 his duty, but his duty is then specific and deter- 
 minate ; he feels bound to render a quid pro quo. 
 It goes without saying that piety is no sufficient 
 evidence of fitness to teach, and it ought to go 
 without saying that the more closely any work 
 of instruction is related to what is most vital 
 and most sacred, the more disastrous is ineffi- 
 ciency in that work. In more than one depart- 
 ment of church activity we should do well to 
 lay to heart what Mr. Brownell says of the French- 
 man : " He feels . . . that emotional seri- 
 ousness will not transform intellectual levity." 
 
XI. 
 
 THE CHURCH : INSPIRATION AND AGGRES- 
 SION. 
 
 A S instruction belongs to the essential work 
 '**' of the church, so does inspiration. It is 
 essential that men be stirred, quickened, in- 
 vigorated. It belongs to our view of the whole 
 matter to say that they are to be inspired not 
 merely to activity, but in and through it ; and 
 that we mean activity not merely of the emo- 
 tions, but of the whole man. The church must 
 shake off its paralysis of intellectual indolence, 
 and let its torpor of mind be dispelled by a tonic 
 breeze of thought and discussion. There is 
 active thinking in these days among some 
 few scholars and live men in the evangelical 
 churches. The controversy to which this leads 
 is deeply interesting to some of the rank and 
 file ; others, here and there, are attracted by its 
 speculative or sentimental aspects ; the great 
 mass give it as much thought, perhaps, as the 
 average woman gives to politics. Again, to the 
 honor of the age be it said, the problems of 
 
 48 
 
^be Cburcb : irnspiratlon anD Bg^ression 49 
 
 social justice and effective charity are getting 
 the attention of thinkers. Professors, novelists, 
 editors, clergymen, doubtless even statesmen, 
 are actively interested, and in some ways the 
 people at large show that they are not unmoved. 
 In every age some helpful sympathy has favored 
 the unfortunate, and in this, we may believe, 
 there is more than ever ; but if any man would 
 learn how little thought is given these problems 
 by average church-goers, let him present to a 
 company of them some broader aspect of social 
 duty, some larger application of Christ's teach- 
 ing to facts too sad, almost, for humanity to 
 bear. The blank indifference of these good 
 people will open his eyes — let us hope it will 
 not embitter him. Eloquence might move them, 
 but that will always move assemblies — while it 
 lasts. If the question be of local and present 
 activities, of definite doing and giving, every- 
 body's business is nobody's ; apathy is the rule, 
 active sympathy the exception. About such 
 matters people are willing to be preached to, in 
 a mild and general way. If the preaching be 
 elegant and finished, tickling their self-com- 
 placency, or eloquent, stirring them to a short- 
 lived luxury of feeling, so much the better ; but 
 lacking these qualities, so it be respectably 
 verbose, uttered in a " holy tone," safely conserv- 
 ative, and not too much concerned with imme- 
 diate personal applications, the philistinism of 
 the people will rally round the philistinism of 
 
50 Zbc Xaw of Service 
 
 the preacher, while the cruel old injustice goes 
 on. Many a good man preaches on, blind to 
 the larger views, too much absorbed in routine 
 to think with the thinking of the age. Many 
 another, probably, yields intellectual assent to 
 far more radical views than he plainly teaches, 
 wishing, as a friendly critic said, " to take the 
 people all along with him," and thinking of the 
 more generous truths, perhaps, that they " can- 
 not bear them now." Timidity is folly, and is 
 the mother of follies and disloyalties. If Chris- 
 tianity will not bear investigation, whether of 
 its credentials or of its logical implications, it is 
 out of date and should be obsolete. If it is too 
 good for frank discussion, it is too bad for the 
 uses of men ; if it loves not the light, it belongs 
 to the kingdom of darkness. Let no man to 
 whom truth is revealed deem himself its cus- 
 todian with discretion. Whatever may be the 
 counsels of the Almighty in the evolution of 
 revelation, he has made no country parson or 
 divinity professor, no priest or pope his plenipo- 
 tentiary, authorized to give or to withhold the 
 truth. Courage, man ! If you have received 
 the light, be assured the time has come to 
 have it shine. Away with your bushel — your 
 neighbor can bear the full blaze if you can. 
 Polish up your mirror, and send the radiance on. 
 Yet you may be mistaken ? Certainly you may ; 
 but the makers of creeds and manipulators of 
 assemblies have been mistaken, and will be 
 
tTbe Cburcb : Ifnsp.iration anD Bgcjression 51 
 
 again. The narrow-minded self-indulgent, the 
 Dedlocks, the Chadbands have been mistaken, 
 and will be evermore. Your neighbor will be 
 fearless in advocacy of his mediaevalism ; if 
 honest and thorough, be you bold in sounding 
 the note of progress. The air will best be 
 cleared, not by blanketing stagnation, but by 
 stirring all up, and letting in the sun. 
 
 What has been said of apathy and intellectual 
 torpor in the church need not discourage en- 
 deavor to work a change. It is suicide to argue 
 that because things are wrong therefore they 
 cannot be righted. Christ's remedy for the dis- 
 ease of sin with its symptoms of misery is radical 
 and constitutional. It is to be administered 
 by fearless practitioners and in heroic doses. 
 Imitations and adulterations may be perilous ; 
 quackery or superstition may hinder its normal 
 working ; but the genuine remedy may be used 
 undiluted, without stint and without misgiving. 
 The church is apathetic^ecause so long accus- 
 tomed to apathy. Occasional fervor and ha- 
 bitual coldness have been its climate. Not 
 incapacity but inertia has kept it where it is. 
 Lacking initiative and direction, it has obeyed 
 the laws of social statics. Under certain condi- 
 tions, nothing more inert than gunpowder ; but 
 the little finger of a child can awaken it to resist- 
 less energy. Superficially, mankind are sluggish 
 and conservative ; at heart, they crave expres- 
 sion in vigorous life. All the world loves a 
 
52 XLbc Xaw of Service 
 
 lover and a hero. Restless material activities 
 and the war of competition are but so many out- 
 lets for the pent-up force that finds no better. 
 Concentrating on emotion, condoning or en- 
 couraging selfish greed, too often actually frown- 
 ing upon inquiry, if the church has failed to get 
 the best out of its members, exactly this was 
 to be expected. If sporadic and unsupported 
 efforts to interest people in the better way show 
 small results, yet the leaven is working. They 
 are accustomed to be led ; when the broader 
 gospel so reaches the leaders as to break their 
 unmanly silence there will be no dearth of 
 followers. 
 
 " While I was musing, the fire burned." 
 Spiritual activity comes by applying the mind 
 to the things of the spirit. Whatever affects 
 the welfare of men and the glory of God the 
 pulpit should deal with, applying to all prob- 
 lems the central truth, testing all theories by 
 the same. Fearlessly the people should be 
 brought to face what must force them to think — 
 the facts of life in the light of Christ's teaching. 
 Criticism and inquiry are to be encouraged, not 
 frowned upon. Thought and discussion, which 
 have been feared as hostile to the truth, must 
 be welcomed as necessary to its thorough 
 acceptance. The inspiration that comes of 
 right intellectual activity is to the business of 
 service ; and through exercise of the powers in 
 service comes a quickening of the whole man. 
 
Zbc Cburcb : flnspiration an5 Basression 53 
 
 Get men intelligently in love with a good cause 
 and at work for it, and they have " hitched their 
 wagon to a star." Move on they must. 
 
 Implied in all that has been said, and imply- 
 ing it all, is the conquest of the world. The 
 disciples are to go into all the world, and win it 
 all. We have related instruction and inspira- 
 tion to aggressive service, and in it we find the 
 unity of all church activity. Under a less in- 
 sistent view of the Law of Service, as the world 
 justifies an extravagant devotion to self-culture, 
 so we might argue plausibly for making evan- 
 gelism, reform, relief, all outgoing beneficence 
 more or less incidental to the self-centred 
 work of the church. We might make some 
 excuse for brief times of ingathering followed 
 by long seasons of tranquil instruction, exhorta- 
 tion, and devotion. But if the effort to show 
 the authority and scope of this law has not 
 failed, and our view of spiritual culture has 
 justified itself, it will be seen that there is no 
 warrant for assuming that we may choose be- 
 tween the cool shade of contemplation and the 
 blazing sunshine of that field which is always 
 white for the harvest. " All quiet along the 
 Potomac" ; a splendid army wasted in routine. 
 Well drilled, no doubt, and enthusiastic ; yet 
 ineffective against the industrious soldiership 
 of an adversary weaker but more energetic. 
 Satan is always marching on, while the " sacra- 
 mental hosts " are drilling in camp. " C'est 
 
54 trbe Uaw of Service 
 
 magnifiqiie," possibly ; " mais ce n'est pas la 
 guerre." 
 
 If ours is not " the people's church," it is not 
 Christ's church. If with its costly plant, its 
 trained servants, its social prestige, its hold on 
 the imagination of mankind, its claim of a 
 divine commission — if with all these it is 
 merely a religious club, for the luxury of certain 
 personal enlargements, it is masquerading in 
 the livery of heaven, and the reckoning will 
 come. 
 
 " Tliough the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind 
 exceeding small." 
 
 The ideal church, under modern conditions, 
 is a seminary of liberal thought and spiritual 
 culture, a training school for service, a work- 
 shop of beneficent activities, a bureau of 
 supplies for human need, a headquarters of 
 far-reaching enterprise, a rallying point for 
 1 reform, a refuge from injustice. 
 
XII. 
 CLERGY AND LAITY. 
 
 'T'HE greatest efficiency cannot be attained 
 * without right relations between minister 
 and people. We choose advisedly the good 
 old word minister rather \)i\2.xv pastor. To call a 
 man a shepherd tempts him to self-conceit ; and 
 the people are too prone, at the best, to act like 
 irresponsible sheep. The exaltation of one 
 functionary, as hedged with special sanctity, 
 favors the bad distinction between sacred and 
 secular — a distinction fraught with evil conse- 
 quences in practice as it is false in theory. 
 The dignity of the ministry is of no more con- 
 sequence than that of the laity. Any work 
 that does not invest the doer of it with a 
 heavenly dignity is a vicious work. The 
 church is to foster in all its members that which 
 is above all earthly distinctions. In the wide- 
 spread movement towards democracy we see 
 the groping of the nations towards the Common- 
 wealth of God. 
 
 55 
 
56 Zbc Xaw ot Service 
 
 " The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways." 
 
 Not much longer, whatever its administrative 
 systems, ought the church to stand against the 
 new order by clinging to a social hierarchy 
 within itself which is unjust and injurious to all 
 concerned, and inconsistent with the greatest 
 usefulness. 
 
 The old and vicious way fosters vanity in 
 small minds — and none of our minds are too 
 large. It fosters ministerial clannishness and a 
 dictatorial habit, while at the same time it 
 tempts ministers to a subservient lowering of 
 standards and humoring of prejudices, by which 
 to maintain an ascendancy insecure because 
 unnatural. It tends to the evolution of an 
 unmanly functionary, posing as the monstrosity 
 the weaker brethren take him for — something 
 more and less than a man. On the other hand 
 it makes it easy for the laity to leave religion, 
 and with it Christianity, to the clergy. It con- 
 fuses and debases their thinking on the most 
 vital of all matters. 
 
 The minister, as a man, belongs absolutely on 
 a level with the people. Like the obscurest of 
 them, he is entitled to precisely so much wor- 
 ship as is due to our common manhood and his 
 personal qualities. Like every other man, he 
 is entitled to courtesy, to justice, to brotherly 
 love and help. Just as much personal ambition 
 as any Christian may cherish, he may cherish. 
 
Clerks anb Xaitij 57 
 
 Private ends he may seek as legitimately as any 
 man. If the Christian man of business demands 
 no more than freedom and a fair field, neither 
 should the Christian minister expect more. As 
 it is necessary that the productive labor of the 
 community support an insurance agent, so should 
 it support a minister, who in his sphere con- 
 tributes like the other to the safety and welfare 
 of society. It would belittle the manhood of 
 the former to be a pensioner and a parasite ; 
 so would it belittle the manhood of the latter. 
 Ability with industry will earn a living in any 1 
 profession, the clerical included ; incompetency I 
 is out of place in any calling, the clerical not 
 excepted. The minister, like the layman, is en- 1 
 titled to the benefits of self-respect. This he \ 
 for himself and every true friend for him should 
 guard with jealous care ; therefore the one 
 should scorn to receive, and the other to give, 
 an unearned, spurious homage. 
 
 It is to be feared that such views, so expressed, 
 may fail to get the attention they deserve, be- 
 cause they seem rudely opposed to that good 
 spirit of reverence whose decadence has been 
 widely deplored, as well as to respect for " the 
 cloth " in particular. As for the general senti- 
 ment and habit of reverence, we must remem- 
 ber that forms and observances, however good 
 in themselves, will not suffice to maintain it. 
 The unsparing criticism of our times rightly 
 insists on evidence of merit before it allows the 
 
58 Cbe Xaw of Service 
 
 claim for reverence. It is too serious to be con- 
 tent with polite or pious fictions. If it be held 
 in particular that the clerical office should com- 
 mand the deference of the laity, we only insist 
 that as in the army or navy, so in the church, 
 the forms of rank be treated purely as such, and 
 the man be not confounded with the officer. 
 Right progress is away from formalities to reali- 
 ties. Let us think well of all men if we can, 
 and do them honor, not excepting the ministry ; 
 but let us shun confusion of thought, whose end 
 is falsehood. 
 
 If we have found out what a minister is by 
 calling to remembrance what a man is, it will 
 not be hard to get at his right relations to the 
 people in church work. As prophet, it is his 
 duty to speak the truth in love, but unflinch- 
 ingly. As evangelist, he is to win for Christ the 
 loyal devotion of men. As philanthropist, deem- 
 ing no human concern foreign to him, he must 
 make himself felt at every point for the better- 
 ment of human conditions. In all these capaci- 
 ties he needs the co-operation of the people. 
 All these functions imply frankness and helpful- 
 ness in his relations to the people ; then must 
 the people be frank and helpful in their dealings 
 with him. A conventional isolation is nowhere 
 wholesome ; and in no sphere of life, perhaps, 
 is it so dangerous as in the ministry. If the 
 minister be a true prophet, he will be all too 
 lonely from the necessity of the case. 
 
Clergy ant) Xait^ 59 
 
 It is possible to be critical without being 
 frank, and to be both without being helpful. An 
 intelligent laity must have convictions. Criti- 
 cism of public speech and official conduct is 
 inevitable and not to be deplored. It need not 
 always be public, nor always addressed to the 
 person most concerned ; but if just and weighty, 
 it should find its way to the place where it will 
 do the most good. To find fault behind a man's 
 back because too cowardly or too conscienceless 
 to face him, is meanness. If the critic has the 
 spirit of help, he will naturally be frank, and to 
 some purpose. A minister too sensitive or con- 
 ceited to hear manly criticism like a man is 
 too sensitive or conceited for his business ; he 
 should reform or retire. Criticism, moreover, 
 is not confined to fault-finding. Give the work- 
 man the praise, as well as the blame, which his 
 work deserves. 
 
 Helpfulness is constructive as well as critical ; 
 it takes the initiative, it feels responsibility. It 
 thinks for itself and for the common good, not 
 only in matters practical but in matters doc- 
 trinal. It carries habitually, not intermittently, 
 the spiritual burden of the church. Its means, 
 be they small or great, are always seeking invest- 
 ment ; the question being not how little it will 
 do to give, but how little it will do to keep — the 
 temptation, to improvidence, not stinginess. 
 The business of the church is the business of 
 every member, not of one salaried servant. The 
 
6() trbc Xavv of Service 
 
 responsibility is not transferable. In a gener- 
 ous spirit, but with a keen eye to results, the 
 church should require of its chief servant his 
 full measure of service ; but with far more 
 solicitude, as the principal in every trans- 
 action, it should itself carry on its own cor- 
 porate work. 
 
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 XIII. 
 HOME TRAINING. 
 
 T^HERE is good reason to believe that in 
 Christian families generally young people 
 grow up with no clear and thorough understand- 
 ing of what the Christian conduct of life means. 
 Supposing themselves to be enlightened Chris- 
 tians, they are often, as regards single-hearted 
 service, in the darkness of a baptized but un- 
 schooled heathenism. This is no wonder, when 
 amid the woe and want of mankind there is in 
 the very heart of the church avowed belief in 
 luxury, if only it be accompanied by large giving ! 
 Verily the heathen will rage, and the people 
 imagine a vain thing, until the elect have learned 
 and taught their children to read the very primer 
 of working Christianity. 
 
 When it was intimated in these pages that in 
 spiritual mechanics there is no lifting oneself by 
 one's bootstraps, more was meant than a whim- 
 sical analogy. A child can get himself nearer 
 the stars, but it is only by putting himself into 
 a certain relation with what is external to him. 
 
 6i 
 
62 ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 ■ He must climb by taking steps. If a child is to 
 attain the spiritual levels of righteousness, he 
 must be set at the works of righteousness. 
 Knowledge and incentive he will need ; but the 
 vital question will always be not what truth he 
 has learned or what motives have been brought 
 to bear, but what good actions he has done. We 
 have tried too much, we may be trying too much 
 still, to coax or drive or teach the young into 
 abstract goodness ; we must work them into con- 
 crete goodness. Grant all claims about the in- 
 stantaneous new birth ; yet what has our scrutiny 
 to do with the day and the hour ? What have 
 we to do with the invisible process, save as it 
 registers itself in a visible process ? Let us be- 
 w^are of promoting morbid or spurious experi- 
 ences, by expecting in the ordinary child what 
 belongs to riper experience and fuller conscious- 
 ness. As the forcing process is contrary to 
 reason, so it is confusing, discouraging, justly 
 distasteful to the child, fruitful of reaction and 
 alienation. To the rich young man Christ ap- 
 plied the decisive test of conduct. A modern 
 evangelist would have had him in the church 
 and kept him there, untested. The same 
 rational right-doing which may be made attrac- 
 tive and formative to childhood is the condition 
 of Heaven's favor everywhere. 
 
 We must not forget that the young human 
 animal is a being of " large discourse, looking 
 before and after," endowed with god-like reason. 
 
Ibome draining 63 
 
 If we assume that he is a " blind mouth," simply 
 craving the most obvious gratifications, we shall 
 fail to secure him the most enjoyment, as well as 
 the best development. The pleasures of sense are 
 fully attained and retained only in the self-con- 
 trol of reason, in obedience to law. They, too, 
 belong in the category of wholesome activities. 
 Give the child in feeling and in fact the largest 
 freedom, which is freedom under law. Believe 
 that human nature is constituted to find all its 
 adaptations in the wholesome order of right- 
 eousness. See depravity as negative, abnormal, 
 destructive. Have faith in the primal law of 
 righteousness, and expect response to its appeal 
 from an organism created to obey it. The music 
 of humanity is indeed " like sweet bells jangled 
 out of tune and harsh"; but the profoundest 
 law of man's nature is that of harmony with 
 God. Herein is abundant encouragement for 
 realizing that harmony in the individual by his 
 willing co-operation. 
 
 We have now the key to our position as to the 
 moral nurture of childhood under the Law of 
 Service. It is not by upholding an ideal short 
 of perfection that we are to get the inestimable 
 advantage of this primal righteousness of con- 
 stitution. For the clear note of truth is reserved 
 the jubilant response, the music of humanity. 
 The wicked falsehood of compromise does not 
 appeal to sound primitive manhood. Present to 
 your child an ideal of Christian life which 
 
64 ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 makes provision for selfish philistinism, and he 
 may believe in it ; but you can never make him 
 love it with his whole being. Away underneath 
 his thinking is his nature, which is according to 
 the creative thought, and keyed to the funda- 
 mental harmonies. 
 
 It may seem an abrupt descent from such con- 
 siderations to speak of the gregarious, the imi- 
 tative, the conventional in human nature ; but 
 we must ignore no fact if we would get at the 
 whole truth. Facts trivial in themselves may be 
 greatly significant in their relations. 
 
 In the words of an unpublished essay : " If 
 it be the fashion, you shall see fair women and 
 brave men gloat over the torture of helpless inno- 
 cence, countenance any absurdity or injustice, 
 great or small, do it in Heaven's name or the other. 
 Make it the fashion, and we sacrifice ourselves 
 for an idea as cheerfully as we hang our neighbor 
 for a belief or an unbelief. ' What fools these 
 mortals be ! ' From the cut of our clothes to 
 the salvation of our souls, we follow the mode." 
 
 The tendency thus satirized is to a thoughtful 
 observer among the most striking phenomena 
 of human life ; among the saddest, too, but also 
 among the most hopeful. 
 
 " That monster custom, who all sense doth eat, 
 Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, — 
 That to the use of actions fair and good 
 He likewise gives a frock or livery 
 That aptly is put on." 
 
1bome G:ra(nlng 65 
 
 What is true of good habit, the custom of one, 
 is likewise true of good convention, the custom 
 of many. If courtesy be assumed as a matter of 
 course, courtesy will prevail. If courage be ex- 
 pected of man or child, courageous he will be. 
 If self-sacrifice be the unwritten law of family 
 and regiment, the child will give away his cher- 
 ished toy, the private will volunteer for the forlorn 
 hope. The engineer who stands to his post in 
 peril need not be a saint, nor an extraordinary 
 hero. His conscience is buttressed by a sense 
 of what is expected of him. Fidelity is taken 
 for granted. The thrill with which we read of 
 his splendid act is our tribute to a divine gener- 
 osity common in common men. The criticism 
 of our time plays havoc with hero-worship, as it 
 exposes the faults of Luther or Lincoln ; but 
 what we lose in blind enthusiasm for individuals 
 we shall more than gain in enthusiasm for man- 
 kind, if our eyes are opened to see that worship 
 of human virtue is worship of him who is the 
 fountain of virtue, and who has made in his 
 own image every human being. Men's hearts, 
 let us believe, are better than their heads. 
 
 What is thus true of the race is especially true 
 of docile and unspoiled childhood. " Train up 
 a child in the way he should go, and ... he 
 will not depart from it." 
 
 Of home training for service we remark, then : 
 I. They who assume the parental responsi- 
 bility must accept the Law of Service, and 
 
66 Ebc Xaw of Service 
 
 square all their parental ambitions by it. They 
 must see and acknowledge that to wish more or 
 less for their children than is consistent with it 
 is to be false to their trust, cruel to men, disloyal 
 to Christ. 
 
 2. The law thus recognized must be taught in 
 the family so early, constantly, and thoroughly, 
 that it shall be accepted without question by the 
 child like any most fundamental truth — never 
 doubted nor explained away. There are some 
 things that are not to be investigated in child- 
 hood. 
 
 3. The young must be trained to doctrine, to 
 experience, to usefulness, by the discipline of 
 conduct. To do the generous, to abstain from 
 the selfish act, to shun falsehood, vice, and ex- 
 cess, not only as forbidden, but as unwholesome 
 and mean — this must be rule and practice from 
 the earliest days. The dignity and universal 
 obligation of labor must be taught not only, but 
 enforced by actual industry. The duty and 
 privilege of giving must be exercised. Prudence 
 must be taught, but as part of the economy of 
 service — a far-sighted self-denial rather than a 
 self-insurance. 
 
 4. The honorable necessity of plain living 
 must be insisted on, and its practice enforced. 
 The commonplace assumption that expensive 
 living is right because it is the custom of the 
 well-to-do, together with the unchristian fallacy 
 of supposing that any amount of giving can 
 
Ibome ^i-ainin^ 67 
 
 justify or excuse needless luxury, should be 
 utterly repudiated, along with the pernicious 
 heresy that extravagance and dilettanteism be- 
 long to the highest Christian culture. The cry 
 of the needy and the judgment words of their 
 great champion should ring in the ears of the 
 child who is tempted to waste of money and of 
 work, 
 
 5. It makes no anti-climax to say that parents 
 must use common sense. To this day the chil- 
 dren of this world are wiser in their generation 
 than the children of light. No spiritual fervor, 
 not to speak of feeble sentiment mistaken for it, 
 can take the place of a cool head. No natural 
 affection, however lovely, can do the best for a 
 child, without insight and sagacity. The sound- 
 est theory of life may utterly break down in its 
 specific application if applied by a fool. A sav- 
 ing sense of humor may do more for a Christian 
 household than strong crying and tears. 
 
XIV. 
 SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 A MOST outstanding fault of our social life 
 ** is costliness. From the many-millionaire 
 who squanders a fortune upon the festivities of 
 an evening, to the tradesman's wife who bank- 
 rupts her husband to rival her neighbors in dis- 
 play, the barbarism of waste is everywhere a 
 violation not only of good taste but of good 
 morals. The waste of money is not all. A man 
 who moves in good society must be an expert in 
 the economy of time or cheat his more serious 
 pursuits of their due. As for society women, 
 with honorable exceptions, they advertise the 
 worthlessness of their time, taken at their own ^ 
 estimate. Health, too, is wasted. Even in its 
 mildest forms, social dissipation constantly 
 breaks in upon regular habits, tempts to excess 
 or imprudence, and consumes the strength that 
 is at the best too little for legitimate work and 
 play. However it may be with seasoned men 
 and women of the world, there is always a con- 
 tingent of busy people who must be at their 
 
 68 
 
Social %itc 69 
 
 post, the weak, the nervous, and those who lack 
 self-command or wisdom to draw the line. These 
 need the benefit of social intercourse ; but so- 
 ciety is to them a temptation and a snare. The 
 very voice of refined and kindly hospitality in- 
 vites them often to what they know is killing 
 them by inches. 
 
 Society is not only wasteful but frivolous. It 
 makes amusement and display ends in them- 
 selves, and shamelessly employs a host of the 
 poor in dingy toil or unproductive menial ser- 
 vice that a parcel of gilded youth may waste 
 their substance in riotous living, or eat the bread 
 of elaborate and vacuous idleness — the natural 
 prey of the caricaturist. The young woman of 
 the period is probably more innocent than her 
 partner in the ball-room ; but he is what he is be- 
 cause society, of which she is queen, consents 
 to have him so. 
 
 In the busy world at large, mature men have 
 little to do with social intercourse as ordered by 
 any recognized code. They ought to be in so- 
 ciety, but they are not. Women more generally 
 keep up some kind of social routine ; and how 
 silly a great part of it is, we know too well. The 
 humorists and satirists cannot help seeing the 
 poverty of our social life ; the mass take it as it 
 comes, and hardly stop to think that they know 
 better. The religious, by the very conservatism 
 of their piety, are sweetly acquiescent. 
 
 Our social life is selfish. With a false idea of 
 
70 Zbc %n\v of Service 
 
 culture, it is naturally exclusive. The exclu- 
 sive people, with all their show of refinement, 
 are vulgarized by a theory which neglects what 
 is broadest and finest in manhood. Even sup- 
 posing their culture to be all it professes, it is 
 vitiated by denying its help to those who most 
 need it. That which is ethically wrong is not 
 aesthetically right ; for the laws of taste are 
 God's laws. It were absurd to claim for aris- 
 tocracy, whether of birth or of wealth, a moral 
 superiority corresponding to its elegance and 
 aloofness ; and no aristocracy is needed to set 
 forth those excellencies which are non-moral. 
 Christ was the finest of gentlemen, because he 
 was the best of men. He solved the problem of 
 culture in an environment of poverty. He gave 
 us the master key to every social problem. To 
 be unselfish, social life must somehow be inclu- 
 sive. There is a natural stratification which is 
 right, but it is not according to bank accounts 
 or pedigrees ; it does not raise royal gamblers 
 above honest gentlemen. If it is a part of the 
 mystery of things that nature works largely by 
 the rude law of the strongest, it is a part of the 
 blessedness of life that higher nature is set to 
 right the wrongs of lower, not to imitate and 
 perpetuate them. 
 
 If this criticism has seemed anywhere forget- 
 ful of the many in scoring the faults of a few, it 
 must be remembered that society is of all things 
 conventional and imitative, and the faults of the 
 
Social %itc 71 
 
 so-called higher classes are copied by the rest of 
 mankind. Rightly judging that in many things 
 the exclusive society is admirable, they follow 
 its lead not wisely but too well. Of the same 
 human nature, they are subject to temptations 
 essentially the same ; and the monopolists have 
 no monopoly of folly. That there is neverthe- 
 less much good in social intercourse, as we have 
 it, is of course true. Also it is true that genuine 
 good-will is inoperative and honest effort wasted 
 through ignorance or want of reflection. Criti- 
 cism shows the need of constructive work in 
 bettering what is good, and utilizing ineffective 
 forces. 
 
 The Christian rule of life and the Christian 
 idea of neighborhood must govern all right effort 
 toward better social usages. It is fundamental 
 to recognize the brotherhood of all men, and 
 the absolute supremacy of duty. For a selfish 
 society we have no counsel and no tolerance. 
 In the first place, then, wherever people are 
 brought together socially Christ's words about 
 the giving of dinners, as reported in the four- 
 teenth chapter of Luke, must be obeyed accord- 
 ing to their essential meaning. *' To him that 
 hath shall be given " — we need not go out of 
 our way to prove that true. It is for the pros- 
 perous to take thought of " the poor, the maimed, 
 the lame, the blind," and from time to time to 
 welcome at the table or the fireside those to 
 whom good dinners are the exception, and good 
 
72 Zbc Xaw ot Service 
 
 society, under the present frankly selfish plan, is 
 beyond reach ; those who long for home and 
 have it not ; those whom a little encouragement 
 and fraternal kindness would save from dejec- 
 tion and the evil way. To the entertainer this 
 would doubtless mean some loss. The gain 
 would far outweigh this ; but we need make no 
 nice estimates in such a matter. 
 
 It is practicable in larger assemblies to bring 
 the needy and uncheered into social contact 
 with the happy well-to-do. This will require 
 study and effort, and some abstention from the 
 pleasures of fashionable circles ; but when the 
 favored classes really w^ish to meet the poor on 
 the broad basis of fraternity and good-will, they 
 will certainly find a way. The church itself, 
 whose organic law unites all men and all classes, 
 affords a local centre, a bond of sympathy, com- 
 mon interests and enterprises, various activities 
 which combine useful work with social oppor- 
 tunity. That is an exceptionally favored soci- 
 ety in which meetings for social converse pure 
 and simple can be entirely successful. It were 
 reasonable to assume, and the assumption is not 
 unwarranted by experience, that when social 
 intercourse is more or less incidental to some 
 kind of serious pursuit, the ice will be easily 
 broken, the work relieved and brightened by 
 recreation, and the recreation dignified by the 
 work, A social club as such is apt to be a 
 selfish club ; a club with a literary, artistic, or 
 
Social Xife 73 
 
 philanthropic purpose may be socially a most 
 delightful success. 
 
 We must have the courage of our convictions 
 about the duty of frugality. Good taste and 
 self-respect should be easily superior to philis- 
 tine extravagance ; but hard or easy, in fashion 
 or out of fashion, economy is a sacred duty if 
 Christ was right in his teaching. Late hours 
 and all unwholesome indulgences, while in the 
 same general category with the squandering of 
 money and time, are more immediately injurious. 
 Mere epicurean self-interest should abolish 
 them ; the aesthetic motive is properly their 
 enemy ; Christian morality repudiates them. 
 
 From our point of view, the propriety of 
 dancing all night, with an open bar close by, is 
 not to be discussed. This is vulgar and bad, 
 whether for " the four hundred," or for the 
 million. Midnight Delmonico dinners at five 
 dollars a plate are indefensible on Christian 
 principles, even by doctors of divinity. There 
 are, however, open questions. Of dancing, as 
 of theatre-going, it would be unreasonable to 
 say that it is wrong per se. If the Law of Ser- 
 vice were frankly accepted, the friskiness of 
 youth would somehow express itself, as, doubt- 
 less would the histrionic impulse ; but there 
 would be sweeping reforms, or the professions of 
 dancing-master and actor would fall into merited 
 desuetude. Of course, all amusements would 
 be put on the defensive so far as they are waste- 
 
74 ^be Xaw ot Service 
 
 fill or issue in mental vacuity. The question 
 of allowable expense always gives a large margin 
 for debate ; but the presumption is always for 
 economy. How far society may legitimately be 
 exclusive and select is a question whose answer 
 varies with circumstances. Specialists in the 
 same field are naturally drawn together, and 
 with profit, provided the ever present danger of 
 narrowness and clannishness is guarded against. 
 In general society, a certain concentration of 
 wits and accomplishments is a condition of bril- 
 liant and pithy talk, and a certain standard of 
 breeding is necessary to put all at their best. 
 Nevertheless, the leaven of fresh and vigorous 
 thinking is precious for intellectual purposes, 
 beyond comparison with mere glitter and refine- 
 ment ; and thinking of this kind does not always 
 go with repose of manner or polite accomplish- 
 ments. Here, again, the dangerous tendency is 
 towards the old selfish way ; the corrective is 
 the catholic spirit of Christianity and of the best 
 culture. For social problems, as for all moral 
 problems, the central principle of Christ's teach- 
 ing is the best solvent 
 
XV. 
 
 HUMAN BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 /"^HRIST opened the way, not only for Jews 
 ^■^ but for gentiles, to a new and needed 
 revelation of brotherhood. Peter the Jew, even 
 after all he had known of the life and death of 
 his master, had yet to learn that he must not 
 " call any man common or unclean," and that 
 " God is no respecter of persons." The logical 
 implications of Christianity were coming gradu- 
 ally to be apprehended then, as they are to-day. 
 To the Greeks their neighbors were fSap^apoiy 
 stammei-ers, jargoners j and the Roman word 
 provincia^ though of doubtful origin, suggests 
 that harsh career of conquest by which Rome 
 made her vanquished neighbors tribute-payers 
 and slaves. At the best, Caesar's iron hand was 
 the hand the imperial city stretched out across 
 her borders, and at the worst such miscreants as 
 Verres were the missionaries of her civilization. 
 If at length the organizing genius of Rome could 
 not choose but extend her franchise, and the 
 Hebrew Paul might boast his citizenship, it was 
 
 75 
 
76 tTbe Xaw of Service 
 
 not so much the liberality of her spirit as the 
 logic of events. The practical management of 
 things must in the end obey their inner law. 
 The policy of legislation must approximate the 
 sweet reasonableness of philosophy. Human 
 constitutions must conform to the divine con- 
 stitution of man. The absurdity of Chinese 
 walls between nations or classes of men is to- 
 day so glaringly evident to any one who intelli- 
 gently accepts the Christian ethics that we may 
 regard the principle of brotherhood as estab- 
 lished and concern ourselves with its applica- 
 tions. 
 
 By such missionary work as is done, and by 
 philanthropic service like the sending shiploads 
 of flour to Russian sufferers, the principle is 
 recognized, and the humane sentiment proper 
 to Christianity somewhat exemplified. In re- 
 spect to public policy, however, and inter- 
 national relations, there is great need of bold 
 and earnest words. The public, even the pro- 
 fessedly Christian press, take too little account 
 of deliverances like this, not long since widely 
 published :* '* So long as there is anybody else 
 to tax, I don't believe in taxing ourselves." The 
 party leader who spoke these remarkable words 
 may possibly be a statesman in Washington, but 
 he proclaimed himself a demagogue in Minne- 
 apolis — a demagogue far more dangerous than 
 any haranguer of the sand lots or spoilsman of 
 
 ' The greater part of this volume was written in 1892. 
 
Ibuman J6rotberboo& 77 
 
 Tammany Hall. To " steal the livery of Heaven 
 to serve the Devil in " is worse than openly to 
 appeal to base passions or openly to rob the 
 public crib ; to wear that livery deceiving and 
 self-deceived by some fallacy of public spirit, 
 appealing to selfishness personal and national as 
 against fundamental Christian morality, is most 
 effectively to debauch the public conscience, 
 debase public sentiment, and undermine the 
 very foundations of patriotism. There has been 
 in recent years nothing more ominous in Ameri- 
 can politics than the popularity of the doctrine 
 of protection, considered in relation to the style 
 of reasoning and appeal by which it has been 
 advocated. This is neither an essay on politi- 
 cal economy nor a campaign document. The 
 author is not hoping, like the good Doctor Mul- 
 ford, to " influence the fall elections," nor con- 
 cerned here to argue the tariff question,//-^ or 
 con. The point to be emphasized for the present 
 purpose is that if a public policy, directly or 
 indirectly, imposes burdens on any nation or 
 any human being for the sake of lightening our 
 burdens and increasing our prosperity, it is 
 presumptively a wrong policy, to be rejected as 
 immoral unless it can be shown to be necessary, 
 adopted if it must be with the deepest regret, 
 abolished as soon as it may be with universal 
 applause. " America against the world " as a 
 party war cry is worthy of Milton's fallen 
 angels, with whom it was the infernal pit against 
 
78 ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 the universe. Pure love of country is opposed 
 to this /fseudo-p3itnotism, as pure home affection 
 to the clannishness of outlaws/ 
 
 In many personal relations, we have more or 
 less imperfectly abolished the law of the strong- 
 est. In " business," that law prevails. In the 
 relations of social classes it largely prevails still. 
 In regard to international relations, whether of 
 trade or of diplomacy, sordid motives and bar- 
 barous passions are unblushingly appealed to. 
 As corporations are said to have no souls, so 
 nations, as such, with unity and consciousness 
 enough for selfish passion, would seem to claim 
 some immunity from the requirements of 
 conscience, and to view human kindness as a 
 sentiment rather than a principle. We are 
 told that there is no such thing as authori- 
 tative international law ; but we must remem- 
 ber that there is a law of absolute authority 
 for all human relations, exactly as binding 
 for states as for individuals. If a householder 
 ought to love his next neighbor, and live in rela- 
 tions of mutual good-will and helpfulness with 
 him, France ought to love Germany, and live in 
 
 ' The rude and shameless pessimism that logically nar- 
 rows national selfishness into sectional selfishness is seen in 
 this passage from a recent biography of Webster : 
 
 " It is true that his course " — about the tariff — " was a 
 sectional one, but everybody's else on this question was the 
 same, and it could not be, it never has been, and never will 
 be otherwise." — Lodge's Webster, p. 171. 
 
Ibuman ;f6rotberboo& 79 
 
 such relations with her. If it is right for our 
 churches to send missionaries to the Chinese 
 people, it is wrong for our government to treat 
 the government of China otherwise than with 
 perfect courtesy and scrupulous good faith. If 
 bullying is contemptible and wicked among 
 schoolboys, it is wicked and contemptible for a 
 first-class power to bully a power of the fourth 
 class. If it is a shame to rejoice over a neigh- 
 bor's misfortune, it is a shame for the partisan 
 press to gloat over industrial depression or 
 financial peril abroad, as a consequence that 
 justifies our tariff legislation at home. 
 
 " The parliament of man, the federation of 
 the world," is no mere poet's dream. Peaceable 
 co-operation in justice and good-will is neces- 
 sary to the local beginnings of civilization, and 
 the combination of primitive communities for 
 common purposes into larger political units is a 
 matter of like necessity. The American states 
 have found peace and prosperity in a vast 
 union combining local independence and flexi- 
 bility with necessary subordination for common 
 ends. This union, so comprehensive and com- 
 plex, yet so simple in its working, is a new ex- 
 periment on so great a scale ; but it has shown 
 that with virtue and intelligence in the people 
 it is practical and workable. Arbitration and 
 reciprocity have begun to come as necessary 
 attendants of Christian civilization. The same 
 considerations that justify union on a small scale 
 
8o tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 justify and demand it on the grandest scale 
 conceivable, and point to it as the ideal for 
 mankind. The necessity for local indepen- 
 dence may be more imperative as the system ex- 
 pands, and the world-wide unity of sovereign 
 nations may be in moral purpose and policy 
 rather than in a political organism ; in a league 
 rather than a compacted, centralized state. 
 Again, as in the working of our great American 
 experiment the difficulty is seen to be not admin- 
 istrative but moral, not of methods but of men, 
 so world-wide peace and co-operation can be 
 maintained only by as wide a recognition of the 
 Christian law for men and nations. With the 
 acceptance of this, and approximately in propor- 
 tion to it, peace and harmony must come. Men 
 are learning to do things on a colossal scale. 
 The ends of the earth are brought near as scien- 
 tific enterprise diminishes distance and breaks 
 down barriers. It would seem that the logic 
 of Christianity cannot much longer be obscured, 
 and that ere long right-minded men everywhere 
 will awake to its inspiring vision and hopeful 
 prophecy of a great beneficent commonwealth 
 of nations, the Republic of God. 
 
XVI. 
 OUR DUMB NEIGHBORS. 
 
 \17E have everywhere assumed that allevia- 
 ^^ tion of pain and promotion of happiness 
 belong to that service which the law of Christ 
 commands. If this assumption is correct, we 
 have a duty of compassion towards our " earth- 
 born companion and fellow-mortal," whose inno- 
 cent delights and helpless distresses appeal to 
 every generous spirit. Even if we could ignore 
 the question of what is due to them, it remains 
 true that our treatment of the lower animals re- 
 acts powerfully on our own character. We 
 cannot be unfeeling in our treatment of any 
 living creature without hardening and debasing 
 ourselves ; we cannot deal generously with 
 brutes and be altogether mean and selfish in 
 our dealings with men. 
 
 " I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken nature's social union," 
 
 says the exquisite little poem above quoted. 
 Literature contains many a kind word for the 
 6 8i 
 
82 ^be Xavv ot Service 
 
 creatures who cannot speak for themselves. It 
 could not be otherwise, since literature is the 
 utterance of what is better and finer in the ex- 
 perience of mankind. It is probably true, how- 
 ever, that in English-speaking countries at least 
 there is far more of interest in these and affec- 
 tion for them than finds expression or recogni- 
 tion in books. It is certain that among us, in 
 spite of barbarous custom, inherited indifference, 
 and narrow-mindedness, there is a very great 
 aggregate of gentleness and respect for our 
 humbler fellow-creatures. This should be mat- 
 ter of thought as well as impulse, of duty as well 
 as pleasure. Good feeling should be sanctioned 
 and supplemented by reason. Natural justice 
 in this regard should get recognition as an in- 
 tegral part of Christian righteousness. 
 
 The evolutionist view which claims kinship 
 for lower life with higher, and makes differ- 
 ences, how^ever great, differences in degree 
 rather than in kind, is certainly worthy of re- 
 spectful attention. It cannot be laughed down 
 by prejudiced ignorance, nor suppressed by timid 
 conservatism. Its general acceptance might go 
 far, practically, to secure due consideration for 
 our kin of low degree ; and we venture to hope 
 that not many decades hence the prevalence of 
 a more scientific view concerning consciousness, 
 rudimentary reason, and rudimentary morality 
 in the lower animals, with or without discovery 
 of the " missing link," will have combined with 
 
©ur 2)umb IReigbbors 83 
 
 an ever-increasing humaneness of sentiment to 
 make cruelty to animals quite as disreputable 
 as cruelty to children is now. But, however 
 this may be, it wants only common sense, com- 
 mon feeling, and honest dealing with the facts 
 to make the claims of this subject evident and 
 profoundly affecting. Indeed the perception of 
 abuses, the impulse of sympathy, the private 
 protest, is common. It wants agitation, ex- 
 change of views, combination of forces, and 
 aggressive action to develop the latent force 
 into an onward movement that cannot be with- 
 stood, because it will have all that is best in 
 civilization behind it. 
 
 This is not the place to set forth in painful 
 and sickening detail the sufferings of laboring 
 animals from overwork, the lash of brutal mas- 
 ters, and neglect ; the meanness of petty torture 
 to which horses — and humane citizens who look 
 on — are constantly subjected on our streets ; 
 the brutalities of the race-track ; the abuse in- 
 flicted on beautiful and innocent wild creatures 
 in the name of sport. 
 
 Readers of Shakespeare's As You Like It will 
 remember the evidence that even in his cruel age 
 men were not blind to such things ; yet in our hu- 
 maner times public sentiment does not condemn 
 the reckless "sport" which is certain to inflict 
 sharp suffering and often the protracted miseries 
 of a lingering death. The pathos of a story like 
 Warner's A-Himting of the Deer^ while it softens 
 
84 ^be %a\v of Service 
 
 the heart in sympathy for the victim, hardens it 
 towards the pursuer with a resentment impatient 
 of the proprieties of speech. Cooper's Leather- 
 Stockings that wise old foster-child of nature, 
 though he lives by his rifle, yet condemns the 
 vulgar rapacity of wholesale slaughter. The 
 day will come, please God, when all cruel sport 
 will be banned and despised, along with bull- 
 fighting and bear-baiting. 
 
 Grant all that can be fairly claimed of excuse 
 for those who do as others have done, half- 
 unconscious of the wrong. Make all the allow- 
 ances that science will justify as to the lower 
 consciousness of brutes and their supposed im- 
 munity from apprehensions about the future or 
 regrets for the past. Still the facts, both as to 
 the aggregate of needless suffering and as to the 
 heartless tyranny of those who inflict or permit 
 it, are simply heart-breaking ; they are a disgrace 
 not only to a civilization that calls itself Christian, 
 and to a church that is too busy with itself to 
 regard them, but to our common humanity. 
 
 Poetry and science are widely different in 
 method, yet they have much in common. The 
 true poet, like the true scientist, is a loving and 
 reverent observer, a student of nature. What 
 Longfellow wrote of Agassiz, 
 
 " And he wandered away and away 
 With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
 Who sang to him night and day 
 The rhymes of the universe," 
 
Out 2)umb Iftefobbors 85 
 
 might have been written of Longfellow himself. 
 In science as in poetry, the imagination not only 
 stimulates to exertion and rewards it with de- 
 light, but is a necessary condition of the highest 
 achievement. If poetry is earlier in the field 
 with its swift intuition of realities, science with 
 slow step but sure, correcting and verifying, still 
 enlarging the borders of its orderly domain, 
 works evermore towards that central unity of 
 truth to which all right thoughts and imagina- 
 tions converge ; so that by-and-by the two clasp 
 hands rejoicing. Minerva, goddess of wisdom, 
 is rightly also goddess of poesy. The poets 
 have delighted to personify natural phenomena 
 and the objects of the visible world. For the 
 Hebrew prophet, mountains and hills should 
 break forth into singing, and all the trees of the 
 field should clap their hands. To the old 
 Greeks, morning was the advent of rosy-fingered 
 Dawn, and the sun was Apollo, bearer of the 
 silver bow. Their happy vision saw beautiful 
 personalities in the tree and the fountain, and 
 the ruder imagination of the inclement North 
 revelled in its terrific embodiments of power 
 and passion. The modern muse, by more knowl- 
 edge made less bold, yet 
 
 *' Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks." 
 
 Wordsworth's heart 
 
 *' with rapture thrills, 
 And dances with the daffodils." 
 
S6 Ubc Xaw of Service 
 
 Lowell recalls the time 
 
 '* When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." 
 
 The lines of Burns To a Mountain Daisy illus- 
 trate that sympathy with nature which abounds 
 in modern poetry — a sympathy by no means 
 confined to her weaker creatures and gentler 
 aspects. Much of the personification of which 
 we have spoken may seem purely imaginative ; 
 but in claiming some kinship with things organ- 
 ized by the mysterious process of life — 
 
 " But I in June am midway to believe 
 A tree among my far progenitors " — 
 
 the poets can be taken more literally. A tree is 
 a living creature, and who knows that it has not 
 some dim prophetic stirring of consciousness ? 
 A dog or a horse, intelligent and affectionate — 
 let us not dare to despise its humble station in 
 the world of conscious life. To do so is to come 
 near despising him who is the giver of life, or 
 rather who is life. Tennyson speaks for 
 modern thought when he says to the " flower 
 of the crannied wall," 
 
 " ... If I could understand 
 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 The immanence of deity is good theology and 
 good science. While theism is learning the truth 
 
^ur S)umb IWciabbor^ 87 
 
 that underlies pantheism, it is not insignificant 
 that our American expounder of the philosophy 
 of evolution feels his way towards a rational and 
 consistent apprehension of the divine personal- 
 ity. The author of Cosmic Philosophy has also 
 written The Idea of God. If all energy is energy 
 of active deity, then in a profound sense the 
 cosmos is conscious; and the poet who finds 
 sympathy even in mountains and sunsets is 
 guided by his imagination to the truth. Where 
 the divine energy does that organizing and in- 
 dividualizing work which we name life, and 
 whose supreme product in the highly developed 
 personality of man is rightly called the image of 
 God, the latent poetic sensibilities of the people 
 agree with those of the inspired singers in a 
 glad sense of kinship with living things from 
 least to greatest. Let us hope for a day not far 
 distant when men, no longer presuming to set 
 metes and bounds, shall look with reverence on 
 all the orders in the hierarchy of God-given life. 
 Then, by an irresistible public sentiment, will 
 cruelty to animals be not only condemned but 
 forbidden. Then life will no longer be em- 
 bittered and made coarse and mean by the daily 
 spectacle of needless or wantonly inflicted 
 pain. 
 

 
 
 ■M^IMf^mM 
 
 
 
 ^^^0^^^^^^}mM^0y: 
 
 
 XVII. 
 CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 T^HE colonists of Massachusetts were right in 
 ^ their theocratic ideal. If they blundered 
 in policy, or erred through passion, mistaking it 
 for holy zeal, or assumed that the ergo of their 
 narrow logic was a T/u/s saith the Lord, yet they 
 were right in trying to make their political estab- 
 lishment a veritable Kingdom of God. Their 
 views being what they were, they must with all 
 their might enforce obedience to them. All 
 honor to those stern bigots for accepting the 
 responsibility they believed in — responsibility 
 not only for themselves but for their neighbors ! 
 If a pope of Rome believes himself the vice- 
 gerent of God, he has no choice but to make 
 himself in fact, with or without the forms, sov- 
 ereign of all earthly sovereigns. No American 
 theories respecting church and state should 
 swerve the Roman church a hair from what it 
 sincerely holds to be its duty in the matter of 
 the public schools or in any collision with our 
 cherished institutions. If any man or party be- 
 
Citi^eneblp Sg 
 
 lieves that righteousness can be brought about 
 by act of Congress, the plain duty is to get a 
 suitable bill passed and its provisions enforced. 
 Sumptuary laws, prohibitions, protective tariffs, 
 and force-bills are right, provided it can be 
 shown that they will do good and not harm. 
 Paternal government is good if it will work. 
 Laissez faire is not the spirit or the method 
 of Christianity. I am my brother's keeper, and 
 I must, like the Puritans, shoulder the responsi- 
 bility. This is true for all relations, political as 
 well as personal. The danger with those who 
 would lay the track for the car of progress is of 
 insincerity, ignorance, narrowness, false reason- 
 ing ; and history shows how great the danger is, 
 how frequent and costly the failure. Neverthe- 
 less, conviction means responsibility, and re- 
 sponsibility means the duty to act. 
 
 It was written at a time when direct political 
 reform was too hopeless to talk about that " the 
 powers that be are ordained of God." It is 
 still true ; and as we are ourselves the powers 
 that be, every man sovereign as well as subject, 
 and have a fair field in which to achieve reform, 
 this is no time to shrink or scruple concerning 
 our civil functions. Pessimism is a convenient 
 cover for laziness or cowardice. Whoso is too 
 sensitive and refined for active citizenship is too 
 nice for the kingdom of heaven. If a man 
 counts his calling too holy for this, count him a 
 pharisee or a fanatic. 
 
90 tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 The plain duty of the hour is to carry the 
 moral idea into politics. With what is wrong 
 per se^ there should be absolutely no compro- 
 mise. We are soberly told of late in a reputa- 
 ble magazine that the President " must yield " 
 to the spoils system " more or less ; he cannot 
 help it." Is principle, then, out of date, or is it 
 that a man of principle cannot be president ? 
 There have been men who refused to be forced 
 into wrong-doing, who could die but would not 
 yield. When the very existence of the republic 
 is threatened by a system as mean in theory as 
 it is demoralizing in practice, and by the ras- 
 cally abuses that are its kin, what we need more 
 than the temporary success of any man, ad- 
 ministration, or party is that one president 
 should have the stubborn virtue to stand like a 
 rock against the iniquity, prepared to fail of sup- 
 port or die at his post if need be. Then the 
 moral sentiment of the people will come to a 
 head. They will canonize him who dares sacri- 
 fice himself — rather they will rally around him 
 and prove that right, after all, is might. Our 
 public virtue is able, let it but discover itself, to 
 cast out this devil of greed ; but they who should 
 lead in all moral reform must not be too busy 
 with pious generalities and personalities, too 
 much engrossed with selfish cares for this world 
 or the other, too conservative of party names or 
 party habits. He who would serve God and 
 man need not be on the wrong side of great 
 
Cftfaensbfp 91 
 
 moral questions. He may err in policy ; he 
 has no right to err in principle. Not to be the 
 steadfast enemy of political unrighteousness is 
 treason to him who ordained the state. Good 
 citizens not only hold the balance of power ; 
 directly or indirectly they hold the preponder- 
 ance, and they may dictate to senates and cabi- 
 nets if they will. 
 
 It is not in boldly resisting what is wrong, or 
 fighting hard for the right, but in their processes 
 of thought, the spirit in which they act, and the 
 means they employ, that good men go astray. 
 It is easier to take things for granted than to 
 weigh and consider ; easier to follow the crowd 
 than to pick one's own way ; easier to take 
 headstrong will for single-hearted devotion, than 
 to try one's own spirit, whether it be of God. 
 Our plea for vigorous aggressive citizenship is 
 by necessary implication a plea for catholicity, 
 culture, diligent study of public questions, dis- 
 interested purpose to be on the right side re- 
 gardless of consistency or tradition, of popular 
 clamor or the party whip. The inoffensive con- 
 servatism of the average good Christian tends 
 to make him exactly what he ought not to be, a 
 steady-going, obedient partisan. It is this kind 
 of partisanship which enables bad leaders to 
 keep the forces of good men divided and defeat 
 the virtue of the people. Parties there must 
 be, but they should stand for opposing doctrines 
 and policies, not remain divided on dead issues 
 
92 Zbc %a\v of Service 
 
 and fighting for public plunder. Take the 
 loaves and fishes out of politics, hold officials 
 accountable not to party but to law and public 
 opinion ; then the way is open for division on 
 living questions and the manly championship of 
 convictions. When they will, they who believe 
 in the higher law can abolish the spoils system, 
 explode the fallacy of subservient party loyalty, 
 and bring statesmanship to the front. No mere 
 ^a^ will accomplish this; it requires time, studi- 
 ous devotion, and hard sense : but the essential 
 condition is that good men assert themselves and 
 insist on the moral law. They hold the key to the 
 situation. When they are fully convinced that 
 Christianity must actually be applied to politics, 
 reform will come, slowly, no doubt, but surely ; 
 and beautiful upon the mountains will be the 
 feet of them that bring its good tidings. 
 
 In reaction from " spread-eagle " patriotism 
 and in contempt for " wigwam " rhetoric, we 
 must not forget or belittle the grandeur of our 
 national ideal. Truth is not the antithesis of 
 poetry ; poetry is the illumination of truth, 
 Macaulay tells us how the Puritans conceived 
 the dignity of manhood in its relations to God 
 and destiny, and they were right. If so much 
 is true of individual man, what shall express the 
 greatness of a nation, to whose momentous con- 
 cerns those of the individual are as small dust 
 in the balance ! The organ music of Webster's 
 eloquence could suggest but not express the 
 
Citiscnsbip 93 
 
 majesty of his theme. Lincohi at Gettysburg, 
 that 
 
 " stalwart man 
 Limbed like the old heroic breeds," 
 
 chose well in calm, plain words to pay immor- 
 tal honor to the martyrs of a cause that shames 
 the epic. Fittest of all, posterity may pro- 
 nounce that strain of pious gratitude which 
 warms to the impassioned tribute of a lover, as 
 the Commemoration Ode, thrilling with the 
 ardor of a tried devotion, sings the unspeakable 
 sweetness of its praise. We cannot exaggerate 
 the absolute significance of the nation. In its 
 service our law bids us add to integrity and 
 Puritan zeal the wisdom of history, the broad 
 intelligence of the scholar, and the steady, far- 
 seeing devotion of the man of affairs. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY. 
 
 IF there is " no friendship in trade," it is be- 
 * cause trade is war. Whether acknowledged, 
 ignored, or disavowed, this is the view according 
 to which perhaps the greater part of our busi- 
 ness enterprise is conducted. The doctrine has 
 good ground in history ; it is good descriptive 
 science. In the process of evokition, the period 
 of struggle for existence and survival of the 
 strongest has not come to an end. Civilization 
 has made all warfare more humane, but it is 
 warfare still. Conservatism would keep up the 
 fight ; but the Law of Service is radical. For 
 hostility and exclusiveness between nations it 
 would substitute good-will, the closest relations, 
 and the peaceful arbitrament of law ; so among 
 men and classes of men it would do away with 
 the wasteful competitive scramble for means to 
 live, and bring in an age of co-operation with 
 mutual benefit. If civilization is endless war- 
 fare, then civilization is no finality, and we must 
 fight, if need be, for something better. Rather, 
 
 94 
 
:©u6fne66 anC) tTnOustr^ 95 
 
 for it as for all that pertains to manhood, we 
 will insist upon a more generous definition. 
 
 A good deal has been written about the evils 
 of the present state of things, which need not 
 be repeated here. Poverty and suffering, with 
 the consequent moral degradation, are not all. 
 War is deadly to morality by its disturbance of 
 normal conditions, and its stimulus to avarice 
 and reckless ambition. With suffering for the 
 many, war means brilliant opportunities for the 
 few, and infinite temptation for all. Its prizes 
 go not to rounded and perfect manhood, but to 
 efficiency in violence. It is a school of certain 
 virtues, but not of virtue. The economic warfare 
 with which we have here to do is less ennobling 
 and in some ways more debasing than its more 
 tumultuous namesake. Of self-sacrifice it 
 knows nothing. Its cruelty is not that of short- 
 lived passion, but cold-blooded. The fighting 
 is not brief and decisive, nor intermittent. 
 This warfare remembers no peace, it looks for- 
 ward to none ; it knows no normal standard by 
 which to judge itself. Rather it deems itself 
 normal, and makes the case hopeless by calling 
 evil good. Such is economic warfare, pure and 
 simple. From rumsellers and railroad wreck- 
 ers to respectable men of business, there are all 
 gradations between bold championship of the sin 
 and honest protest against it ; but on the whole 
 the system in which we are all entangled is at 
 best a lame compromise, and at worst an outrage. 
 
96 XLbc ILavv of Service 
 
 The remedy, of course, is co-operation ; for 
 co-operation is simply obedience to that law of 
 the universe which no man or system can per- 
 manently withstand. The word is not used 
 here in any narrow and special sense, as if a 
 nostrum had been discovered to cure all eco- 
 nomic ills ; but in its larger meaning it is used 
 with undoubting confidence. The proposition 
 that co-operation will right industrial and com- 
 mercial wrongs is like the proposition that heat 
 will melt ice ; it is according to the nature of 
 things. In God's world, because it is God's 
 world, the Law of Love is not only of obligation 
 but will work when applied. It is the duty and 
 therefore the interest of the master to serve the 
 servant. Mill-owner owes service to loom- 
 tender, as well as loom-tender to mill-owner ; 
 buyer to seller and seller to buyer ; farmer to 
 mechanic and mechanic to farmer ; every one of 
 every class to every other of every class. The 
 eternal welfare of one and all hangs on conform- 
 ity to this principle ; and not only Scripture 
 and reason but experience shows that godli- 
 ness, which is manliness, is profitable for this life 
 as well as for any other. To utilize the gifts of 
 nature, every class, every guild, every legitimate 
 business needs the friendly aid of every other. 
 To win the greatest aggregate of benefits for all, 
 the enormous waste of working at cross pur- 
 poses must be eliminated. Of energy to be 
 harnessed, of treasure to be unearthed, of fer- 
 
:fiSu9incs5 anD Hn^ustr^ 97 
 
 tility to be made fruitful, there is enough for all. 
 In the irresistible process of modern activities, 
 men and classes are constrained to work 
 together, notwithstanding hostile rivalries. By 
 the operation of economic law, division of 
 labor and combination of forces have come to 
 stay. We have imperfect co-operation, and war 
 along with it. The morning paper tells of 
 private war with Winchester rifles in Pennsyl- 
 vania. The irrepressible conflict between 
 capital and labor under present conditions is no 
 new conflict when it takes this shape ; we only 
 see its true character more vividly brought out. 
 On the same day a great religious convention 
 meets in New York. While more than one 
 newspaper advocates arbitration — the method 
 of peace — it is significant that one calls 
 attention to this as a great opportunity for 
 Christian endeavor, and suggests that the con- 
 vention offer the services of arbitrators. " If they 
 settle the Homestead trouble, they will make 
 a ten-strike . . . for Christianity." Whatever 
 the practical merits of the proposition, the news- 
 paper man is right in his idea of what Christian- 
 ity is for, and many a zealous delegate would do 
 well to meditate on his words. It is the work of 
 Christianity not only to stay such incidental 
 bloodshed as it may, but to learn itself and teach 
 the world the essential immorality of all busi- 
 ness in which one man's gain means another's 
 loss, and of all business relations which are re- 
 
98 tTbe Xaw ot Service 
 
 lations of hostility. There is a great work yet 
 to do in ridding the public mind of the hideous 
 doctrine that social classes owe nothing to each 
 other, and the belief that unchecked competition 
 is a blessing. There is much to do in forcing 
 attention to the truth that the Christian rule of 
 life in all its uncompromising strictness does ab- 
 solutely apply to business. Then there is the 
 constructive work, already begun in some quar- 
 ters, of showing that righteousness in business 
 is profitable as well as practicable. It may be 
 claimed that out and out co-operation offers less 
 opportunity for personal advancement and dis- 
 tinction.* A similar argument might be used 
 against peace between nations. Greedy ambition 
 finds what it wants in war, and the misfortune of 
 many is the opportunity of a few. The Devil is 
 welcome to whatever force there is in this conten- 
 tion — if monopoly and despotism are good things, 
 let us have economic warfare to bring them 
 about. The millionaire gets his board and 
 clothes with plenty of hard work. If business 
 were better managed he would not go naked and 
 hungry, or be condemned to idleness. Men with 
 force in them legitimately enjoy distinction and 
 the sense of power. Personal superiority and 
 individual leadership could not be abolished by 
 the humane, rational conduct of affairs. " Peace 
 hath her victories," too. There will be enough 
 to make life interesting and strenuous — we need 
 not fear. When it begins to appear that the 
 
3Bustnc66 anO llnDustri^ 99 
 
 altruistic way of living, fairly tried, is " stale, 
 flat, and unprofitable," it will then be time to 
 look for a better way. It is high time now to 
 give Christianity the final test by applying it on 
 the largest possible scale. It may be objected 
 that we are telling an old story, and dealing in 
 generalities. Very true — everybody knows the 
 unhappy facts we have mentioned, and every- 
 body knows the Law of Love ; but everybody 
 knows, too, that the facts are widely accepted as 
 if normal, and the law treated as if it would not 
 work. There are certain old stories that must 
 be told until their lesson is learned. We do deal 
 in generalities. We have no specific with which 
 to dose the symptoms of disease — no mechanical 
 scheme for bringing in a manufactured mil- 
 lennium. There are certain general truths which 
 must be repeated until they are heartily be- 
 lieved. The evolution in detail of a civilization 
 in which the evils of the present day shall be 
 minimized, no man can now trace out. Obey 
 the Law of Service according to present light, 
 and that civilization will come ; and every least 
 act of obedience counts towards such a consum- 
 mation. Let it be written large and plain that 
 in the affairs of men CHRISTIANITY IS CO- 
 OPERATION. 
 
 There is another aspect of the subject which 
 is too little regarded at present, whether for the 
 general welfare or for the interests of business 
 and labor. The wonderful development of 
 
loo ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 machinery has tended to make working men into 
 machine-feeders rather than artisans in the bet- 
 ter sense. While mechanical devices come to act 
 more and more as if endowed with reason, it 
 would almost seem as if the workman in some 
 cases were becoming part of the machine. In- 
 ventiveness is powerfully stimulated, along with 
 organizing and administrative talent. Attractive 
 and lucrative careers are opened to the few, but 
 for many there is dull routine, with little in 
 their calling to awaken hope or warm the imagi- 
 nation. The tremendous movement and swift 
 vicissitude of modern life, especially in America, 
 are not favorable to the homely pieties, the racy 
 individuality, the traditions of good workman- 
 ship that we admire in the handicraftsmen of 
 earlier times and more primitive conditions. 
 Swift changes have not given time for suitable 
 readjustments. A balance-wheel greatly needed 
 in our system is the good old-fashioned work- 
 man's conscience. 
 
 Older and more universal than the tendency 
 to mechanical drudgery of which we have spoken 
 is the tendency of labor to become sordid and 
 servile, fenced off from generous aspiration by 
 barriers of caste which it goes far itself towards 
 justifying. All the more, then, the law and gos- 
 pel of good work need to be preached in ring- 
 ing words like Ruskin's, and the shams of an age 
 that makes haste to be rich need to be de- 
 nounced after the stalwart fashion of Carlyle. 
 
:JSu0fne60 an^ Ifnbiistrg lot 
 
 Money-lovers, as Raskin himself has told us, 
 cannot understand Christ ; but in plain workers, 
 high or low, there is a spark of manhood that 
 will kindle under the breath of his prophets. 
 The habit of good workmanship is a tonic to 
 the conscience, a sedative to turbulent passion, 
 a school of preparation for just thinking on the 
 great questions of life. It were a mistake to 
 suppose that this habit can no longer be culti- 
 vated, or that it can be made prevalent only by 
 reactionary methods, by damming the stream in- 
 stead of directing it. The machine-tenders, 
 whose work is little more than automatic, are 
 few in comparison with the whole multitude of 
 workmen. The character of the worker is still a 
 very important factor in the product of his 
 work. Upon his character still, in the main, de- 
 pends his prosperity. Where the situation is so 
 bad that the workman's hands are tied, and merit 
 cannot win advancement, there is a plague-spot, 
 for whose cleansing what is best in the humane 
 spirit of the age is becoming more and more en- 
 listed. Such barbarisms, we may trust, are 
 doomed. Both master and man, producer, 
 handler, and consumer alike, are vitally interested 
 in good work. Nothing but enlightenment and 
 moral forces will avail to get it done. Again, in- 
 stead of offering a handy, quick-working specific 
 for setting things right, we are dealing in gener- 
 alities — telling an old story. If we can generalize 
 soundly and tell the truth pointedly, it is enough. 
 
102 tXbe Xavv of Service 
 
 Tolstoi lately urged his visitor to join the 
 Ruskin Society, pledged to wearing hand-made 
 apparel, and to living without " usury." *' Great 
 wits are sure to madness near allied." What- 
 ever truth Ruskin has taught is none the less 
 true for some unloveliness in the man, nor for 
 the break-down of his mind in his later years, 
 nor for any earlier vagaries of his strenuous 
 thinking. All his life Tolstoi has been in the 
 midst of that bad, half-barbarous system of 
 splendor and squalor whose miseries have been 
 so fearfully illustrated in these days ; and if the 
 truth of Christianity has wrought mightily in 
 him we cannot wonder that it has wrought also 
 strangely. We may not flippantly reject the 
 message of great men. Give us the penetrating 
 insight of genius and the self-renunciation of 
 sainthood, rather than the smug worldly wisdom 
 of selfish mediocrity, and let us cheerfully take 
 the risks. Accepting the substantial verities of 
 Tolstoi's teaching and Ruskin's, we may yet 
 hold that this restless modern stream of energy 
 ought to be converted, not resisted. To-day it 
 bears hard on some fraction of the world's toil- 
 ers. The productive activity of the last fifty 
 years has been applied to saving time and per- 
 fecting material engineries, rather than saving 
 manhood to make good use of time, and per- 
 fecting institutions to make possible the enlarge- 
 ment of manhood. The wonderful work of 
 material progress will go on ; but we may rea- 
 
JBu0ine55 ant) irnC)U6tr^ 103 
 
 sonably hope that an increasing proportion of 
 the best gifts will be devoted to the higher work 
 of learning how to minimize rude toil, improve 
 its conditions, raise its standards, and enlarge 
 its hopes. We may believe that the intellect 
 which has made possible so vast production and 
 circulation will add economy to efficiency ; will 
 show men not only how to find means to live, 
 but how to live in a rational way, to use as well 
 as get, to rest and play as well as labor. Great 
 exploitation of natural resources does not involve 
 the necessity of brutalizing men. Cheap and 
 swift production does not necessitate poor work. 
 The inventive impulse is not at fault if creative 
 has outstripped conservative genius, if hitherto 
 we have shown more skill than wisdom. The 
 benign spirit of Service will prove that the same 
 wits which have achieved riches and power can 
 achieve prosperity. 
 
XIX. 
 
 ART. 
 
 O HALL it be art for art's sake ? Yes, and no. 
 ^ The sense of beauty is a sense of God, in 
 whom and of whom all beauty is. The art-im- 
 pulse, showing itself in all climes and ages, its 
 product ranging from rudest barbaric forms to 
 the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, modern 
 music, literature ancient and modern, is no more 
 to be ignored than the beauty of the skies ; no 
 more to be suppressed than human nature is to 
 be suppressed. Beauty is the stamp of whole- 
 someness ; innocent delight is both a cause and 
 an effect of well-being. As pain is an evil, so 
 pleasure is a good. In itself, then, the produc- 
 tion of the beautiful for the love of it is inno- 
 cent and right. On the other hand, there is a 
 higher beauty of the spirit, a moral order and 
 harmony which is of transcendent worth. The 
 music of the universe is jarred upon by the dis- 
 cord of sin, and the hoarse cry of pain drowns 
 its sweetest notes. Christ must needs suffer to 
 put the world in tune — but he was not an artist. 
 
 104 
 
Brt 105 
 
 His service, which is the service of men, can 
 never ignore the highest motive and the central 
 law. If art for art's sake means an activity that 
 is not devoted to the common welfare, it is pagan 
 and not Christian. The Law of Service, then, 
 makes no exception here. The source of beauty 
 and the source of moral law are one. 
 
 The good w^orkman loves his work, and all 
 high endeavor demands concentration. He 
 whose duty it is to paint a picture or write a 
 sonata must devote himself to that with gladness 
 and singleness of heart. Nevertheless, unless 
 he can relate his work to the common welfare, 
 it is not his duty ; he is forbidden to touch it. 
 The deification of art, being like other idolatries 
 a worship of falsehood, violates the fundamental 
 principles of art, and substitutes confusion for 
 the beautiful order of the universe. A right de- 
 votion to it not only makes for innocent and 
 wholesome delight, and trains its votary to the 
 patient, workmanlike use of his powers, but, 
 teaching his senses to perceive, his mind to un- 
 derstand, his spirit to feel the beauty and har- 
 mony of the creative thought, it gives him 
 enlargement and symmetry, refinement, affinity 
 for True and Good, as well as Beautiful, 
 
 One chief use of art, then, is in the education 
 of youth. Guided by the same exacting prin- 
 ciple which may make us seem to the artist 
 narrow-minded and puritanical, we shall claim 
 for art such recognition in the schools as should 
 
io6 trbe Xaw of Service 
 
 satisfy its best friends. Study of form and de- 
 sign, of color and the harmony of colors, train- 
 ing of hand and eye, instruction in the simple 
 and useful dicta of good taste, should be com- 
 pulsory in all elementary schools, and should 
 have an honorable place in the whole system of 
 education. Of literature as a fine art, more is 
 said elsewhere. Suffice it to remark here that 
 imagination and sense of literary form can and 
 ought to be systematically cultivated from the 
 earliest years of school training, and the memory 
 stored with those treasures of sweetness and 
 wisdom in which literature is so rich. Music 
 belongs to a rational education, not as an in- 
 cidental exercise dependent on the educator's 
 taste or whim, nor as a formal function, nor for 
 the benefit of a minority with special gifts ; but 
 as a study for all, regularly and scientifically 
 pursued. There may be some so abnormal that 
 they cannot learn the rudiments ; but, such 
 cases excepted, every child who has passed 
 through the common schools should be able to 
 read music with facility and to sing an easy air 
 at sight, and should be familiar with the ordinary 
 nomenclature and simpler principles of the 
 science. This rudimentary training in art 
 ought to be related to the great world of nature 
 by constant reference to its forms, colors, and 
 sounds, to the wonderful activities and processes 
 of its life. The elements of the natural sciences 
 may thus be studied with greater scientific profit, 
 and with far greater delight. 
 
;art 107 
 
 It is easy to object that much of this, while it 
 may look well on paper, is impracticable ; that 
 teachers are subject to human limitations, 
 school life is short, and its work is already too 
 exacting. The answer is that education, so 
 far, is hardly taken more seriously than Christi- 
 anity. Present incapacity establishes nothing 
 as to what can or cannot be done in the future, 
 and there is no presumption that what is now 
 required of the schools is ideal in kind or in 
 quantity. It may be suspected that progress is 
 needlessly slow, through lack of spirit, faulty 
 methods, and inflexibility, and that much of the 
 subject-matter could be eliminated without ma- 
 terial loss. At any rate, every reasonable claim 
 ought to be vigorously advocated, and the best 
 gifts devoted both to perfecting the theory of 
 education and to reforming its practice. 
 
 The college graduate is supposed to begin life 
 with no great learning, to be sure, but sym- 
 metrically developed, trained to the use of 
 material and means, and acquainted with estab- 
 lished principles in the great departments of 
 thought. He is thus not only disciplined for 
 work, but equipped for the criticism of life and 
 the appreciation of what it has to offer. He is 
 not a geologist or a mathematician, but he ought 
 to understand the methods of science, and the 
 conditions of demonstration. Elsewhere, though 
 modest, he feels his power ; but in respect to 
 the general subject of art, he is comparatively 
 impotent. He may have special accomplish- 
 
io8 tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 nients, or be indebted to favorable circum- 
 stances ; but as a college graduate he knows 
 next to nothing of aesthetic criticism, and is at 
 sea with respect to the principles of art, if there 
 be any. His whole general training would lead 
 him to suppose that there are such principles, 
 and to feel the need of that acquaintance with 
 them which has been denied him. A layman 
 may not venture to affirm that the professional 
 artists and teachers of art are too empirical in 
 their methods, and the art-critics are fanciers 
 and phrase-mongers rather than qualified 
 judges ; but an educated person may justly 
 complain if he has been taught nothing system- 
 atic and comprehensive on so important a sub- 
 ject. It belongs to good general culture, if art 
 is essentially empirical, to know it and to know 
 why ; if it has some scanty outfit of doctrine 
 with limitations, to know the doctrine and the 
 limits ; if it can be rationally discussed and put 
 on an intellectual level with other great subjects 
 of thought, to be conversant with its main out- 
 lines, and prepared to begin intelligently, if 
 there is occasion, its more thorough study. 
 Teaching the elements of art in the schools and 
 its principles in the colleges would go far to 
 correct the prevailing crudeness of taste, and to 
 bring in nobler manners if not purer laws, fairer 
 dwellings if not happier homes, more tuneful 
 worship if not more generous service. The 
 intelligent choice of those things which are 
 
Brt 109 
 
 according to the divine laws of grace and har- 
 mony must needs contribute somewhat to the 
 moral betterment of the world. 
 
 A right apprehension of the relation between 
 art and morals leads naturally to a public- 
 spirited view concerning the legitimate products 
 of art and their legitimate use. Heavy expendi- 
 ture for personal adornment, or in pictures, 
 statuary, and interior decoration for the luxury 
 of a few, is a species of barbarism but thinly 
 veneered by polish of manners and refinement 
 of taste ; say rather that the barbarism is brought 
 out into bolder relief by the refinement that 
 goes with it. Wasteful in a different way, but 
 to a like effect, is costly decoration for tem- 
 porary purposes, sacrificing the labor which 
 might do great and lasting good to the transient 
 gratification of an hour, the gayety of an even- 
 ing. Imposing monuments to the dead are 
 perhaps more noble than splendid palaces for 
 the living. The former are redeemed somewhat 
 by the sentiment they express, the latter by the 
 publicity of their architecture ; but both, defi- 
 cient in the moral beauty of benevolence, are 
 untrue to the broadest conception of art. " All 
 beauty lies in fitness." Private magnificence is 
 not only morally indefensible, as we have seen, 
 but it is aesthetically incorrect if in proportion 
 as the beholder deserves to be pleased it gives 
 the reverse of pleasure. It is in the open gal- 
 leries and museums, if anywhere, that the cost- 
 
no ^be 3Law ot Service 
 
 liest works of art should have their home. It 
 is where multitudes resort, if anywhere, that 
 splendid memorials should be erected, and to 
 those who have deserved well of their fellow- 
 men. It is in public buildings and public 
 works, in parks, in colleges and libraries, in 
 churches, in all institutions which express the 
 dignity of the people and are dedicated to the 
 public welfare, in these if anywhere, that the 
 master-workmen in the noblest arts may draw 
 upon the accumulated wealth of the people to 
 embody their noblest and loveliest conceptions. 
 So long as need calls anywhere for help which 
 money can bestow, it is the economy of service 
 to relieve generously rather than adorn with 
 lavish hand. The decorative impulse is to be 
 restrained and guided by the austerities of pure 
 art, not stimulated to barbaric excess. If the 
 golden age of virtue and abundance ever comes, 
 it will be time enough then to vie with nature in 
 prodigality of ornament and delight. Mean- 
 while, we may well take nature's pageantry for 
 our solace, while in the work of our own hands 
 we content ourselves with modest simplicity 
 and the beauty that goes with use. 
 
XX. 
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 T ITERATURE in the most restricted sense 
 -'— ' is of course one of the fine arts, and might 
 have been considered under the general subject 
 of art ; but the name is elastic, and literature, in 
 every sense, is so important in its relations to 
 human welfare as to claim separate treatment. 
 The general views presented in the chapter on 
 art apply to the art literary as to the others. 
 Large space might be devoted to its educational 
 use, which is there touched upon. Inasmuch 
 as ancient literatures have been traditionally a 
 chief material and means of liberal culture, and 
 the claims of modern letters in this field are 
 gaining recognition, we may dismiss the subject 
 here with the remark that, important as litera- 
 ture is in the higher education, it is probably 
 still more so in the lower. The rudiments of all 
 book learning — the use of the alphabet and the 
 simplest relations of quantity — may be rapidly 
 acquired. Extraction of the cube root and tabu- 
 lation of sentences into the likeness of prostrate 
 
 III 
 
112 tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 family trees need not be taken too seriously. 
 Many things can wait, no matter how long ; but 
 children cannot afford to wait for the blessed 
 and precious experience of intercourse with the 
 best spirits of all ages. Good company, rarest 
 and best of educational influences, should be 
 secured for every child through literature, then 
 when he so readily takes the indelible mark 
 of his surroundings. World-hardening begins 
 early ; for many a child the time is soon past 
 when his spirit might have opened to the pure 
 delights of the imagination, when his thoughts 
 might have been formed by the graces of style 
 and the persuasiveness of truth. 
 
 Whether we take literature in the restricted or 
 in the more inclusive sense, in neither case can 
 its moral and spiritual significance be justly left 
 out of the account. The great French historian 
 of English literature is profoundly impressed 
 with its ethical quality. Pure art, non-moral 
 and indifferent like pure mathematics, he finds 
 conspicuous by its absence. It is well, we may 
 gladly believe, if the race which is to dominate 
 the civilization of the future is tremendously in 
 earnest about righteousness ; and if the power- 
 ful language of Shakespeare, fast spreading over 
 the whole earth, is the vehicle of a literature 
 which refuses to view human life without refer- 
 ence to what is deepest in it. The French are 
 good specialists ; but the supreme utterance of 
 the spirit of man cannot rationally be a mere 
 
Xitcrature 113 
 
 specialty, so long as man is supremely a moral 
 being. Granted that as no moral intention can 
 redeem a bad picture, so a moral poem which is 
 not poetical deserves no quarter. On the other 
 hand, immorality is in the deepest sense bad 
 art, truth belongs to art as well as to morals, and 
 art which is non-moral too often becomes in 
 effect immoral. Of this, French literature itself 
 is witness. The moral purpose need not adver- 
 tise itself in precepts and platitudes, nor the 
 sense of responsibility cramp the free spirit of 
 invention ; but as of the artist, so of the author 
 it is true that his work must be conceived and 
 executed in righteousness, and related to the 
 well-being of the world, or it has no right to 
 exist. 
 
 The controversy between romance and real- 
 ism may be short-lived, and doubtless will not 
 revolutionize imaginative writing ; but it need 
 not be fruitless. If it leads to a greater regard 
 for truth as opposed to conventionalism and 
 extravagance, and for reason as opposed to sickly 
 sentiment, both art and morals will be greatly 
 the better. We need not insist that the novelist 
 shall confine himself to the average common- 
 place in character and events, any more than 
 that the landscape artist shall get a land sur- 
 veyor to stake out his subjects ; but we ought 
 to expect him to delineate real men and women, 
 speaking and acting as they might, could, would 
 or should speak and act, and to relate events ac- 
 
114 ^be Xaw Of Service 
 
 cording to the observed order of nature, the 
 sequence of cause and effect. We expect to 
 read of much that is exaggerated in sentiment 
 and irrational in conduct, because there is much 
 of it in the world ; but the novelist's friendli- 
 ness, or rather nature's friendliness for what is 
 wholesome and sensible need not be concealed, 
 nor the weak-headed and the young deluded 
 into supposing that morbidness is heroism, and 
 dyspeptic twaddle is eloquence. It is at least 
 gratifying, if not significant, that our chief 
 American realist is conspicuous in the maturity 
 of his powers for an earnest philanthropic spirit, 
 and that he is not the only delightful humorist 
 and master of style whose work, thoroughly 
 modern in its cool good sense, is something more 
 than amusing or entertaining. 
 
 Journalism, in the widest sense, may be re- 
 garded as the most important department of the 
 literature of our time ; although the word litera- 
 ture must be very elastic to include it all. We 
 say most important, not because of the merit of 
 the work done, nor from sympathy with aver- 
 age journalistic aims, but because public senti- 
 ment is so powerfully affected by the periodical 
 press, the thinking of the great mass of the peo- 
 ple so much at its mercy, and the average 
 morality so closely related to its teaching. With- 
 out venturing on general criticism, we take space 
 for a few words on the daily newspaper. 
 
 Business enterprises involve a large element 
 
^Literature 115 
 
 of risk, and a new departure in journalism re- 
 quires capital ; but it is not easy to see why a 
 broad-minded capitalist with a conscience — 
 surely there are such — might not wisely engage 
 in the novel enterprise of publishing a great 
 daily, first-class in every respect, which should 
 stake all on its uncompromising loyalty to the 
 highest principle. Such a publication ought not 
 to be sectarian and need not be religious, but 
 must be essentially Christian. Without parti- 
 sanship, that enemy of all righteousness, it must 
 be positive and outspoken on public questions. 
 With high ability, thorough investigation and 
 the courage of its convictions, it must never 
 shrink from acknowledging a mistake, or sacri- 
 fice candor to consistency. Accounting it the 
 first duty of journalism, though not its highest, 
 to present the facts — " all the news and the 
 truth about it " — our newspaper management 
 will try to employ reporters who have both 
 ability to discover the facts and conscience to 
 tell the truth. This combination is too rare. 
 Average journalism so deals with news that one 
 expects gross error in details, and is not sur- 
 prised at falsehood in important statements. It 
 would undoubtedly cost something to get good 
 reporting done. It would be worth the cost. 
 The expression " all the news " is indecisive, 
 and much depends on how it is interpreted. A 
 censorship which should keep the reader in 
 ignorance of important matters, whether pleas- 
 
ii6 Zbc 3Law ot Service 
 
 ant to read about or not, and screen the sub- 
 stantial realities of the world's daily life from a 
 virtuous public, would go far to justify the in- 
 evitable resort to journals more instructive if less 
 scrupulous. On the other hand, gratification of 
 prurient curiosity, the contemptible petty intru- 
 siveness of the " Jenkins " reporter, all forms of 
 concession to the reader's vulgarity or silliness, 
 should be stubbornly forbidden. The compe- 
 tent purveyor of news will have some notion of 
 the relative importance of things, and avoid that 
 absurd allotment of space which is constantly 
 seen and now and then remarked upon. There 
 are some occupations, as for instance disrepu- 
 table horse-racing, whose character and extent 
 it greatly concerns good citizens to know, but 
 whose daily details, eagerly followed through 
 column after column by fools and sharpers, are 
 of no rational and justifiable use. No parading 
 of piety or affectation of respectability can offset 
 the vulgar immorality of giving up large space 
 to such things. In respect to those popular 
 amusements which may be legitimate or may be 
 and often are abused, the newspaper with a con- 
 science cannot please all — it must act according 
 to its own light. Here as elsewhere in this diffi- 
 cult field, perfection is far to seek, but here and 
 everywhere the duty of seeking it is clear. Im- 
 personal and irresponsible journalism is a con- 
 venient cover for unscrupulous greed. From 
 leading articles to advertisements, the hand of 
 
Xiterature 117 
 
 a responsible management must be constantly 
 felt, and the question must always be not 
 merely what the people demand, but what they 
 ought to have. 
 
 The public not only want the facts, but they 
 want that combination and interpreting of the 
 facts for which most of us lack the special abil- 
 ity and training or the leisure. The clerical 
 part of this belongs to expert journalism ; the 
 higher and more difficult part calls for the 
 broadest culture, consummate ability, and the 
 rarest judicial gifts. The honored names of 
 Bryant and Curtis at once suggest themselves to 
 illustrate the lofty spirit which belongs to the 
 great editor. It is not that people's opinions are 
 to be made for them ; but that the questions 
 and issues shall be fairly presented, with the 
 arguments//'^; and con^ and the facts made ac- 
 cessible and manageable rather than used for 
 partisan purposes to " prove " whatever suits the 
 acute journalist's purpose. The people, as we 
 have seen, are prone to forget the relation of 
 public questions to moral law. It is the duty 
 of journalism not to exploit the passion and 
 prejudice of the reader, but to keep him remind- 
 ed of the supreme importance of being right 
 rather than being consistent or being in the 
 majority. 
 
 The power for good of a great newspaper, 
 ably and disinterestedly conducted on the lines 
 we have pointed out, will hardly be seriously 
 
ii8 Zhc Xavv of Service 
 
 questioned by one who cares to read these 
 pages ; but it is easy to say that the scheme is 
 quixotic and impracticable. This contention has 
 a very musty odor of antiquity. We have been 
 celebrating the quadri-centennial anniversary of 
 one of the occasions when such a contention was 
 proved false ; and the conservative pessimist was 
 an old acquaintance in 1492. Neither men nor 
 newspapers will reach the ideal at present ; but 
 we may and ought to look for high attainment 
 in both. There are men who combine dis- 
 tinguished ability and disinterested integrity. 
 There is a great deal of managing and executive 
 talent in the market ; recent American life has 
 been an enormous training-school for it. While 
 this does not always go with scrupulous morals, 
 it is careful to obey the law of supply and de- 
 mand. Let it be understood that the chief edi- 
 tor's demand, backed by the proprietor, is for 
 honest work, and honest work can be secured. 
 Convince the reporter that he is paid for genu- 
 ine investigation, discrimination in matter, care 
 and moderation in statement, condensation and 
 a decent style, and he will learn to take pride 
 where he finds profit — in good work. If the blue 
 pencil will not bring him to his senses, there will 
 be enough to take his place. Demand does 
 create supply. But the objector is impatient to 
 close the discussion with the definitive statement 
 that " it will not pay." A number of important 
 enterprises have survived the shock of this argu- 
 
literature 119 
 
 ment. It deserves mention that in these days 
 when men professedly Christian and men ac- 
 tively, though they may be quietly, beneficent, are 
 millionaires with princely incomes, and when 
 great fortunes are bequeathed for public bene- 
 fits, not every great enterprise need pay direct 
 cash dividends. Such a newspaper as we have 
 proposed might do vastly more good than any 
 pulpit in America It might accomplish more 
 for humane ends through its influence on public 
 sentiment and its educational power than socie- 
 ties whose expenditure is the interest on millions 
 of capital. Certainly there is nothing absurd or 
 wildly visionary in the idea of investment in such 
 an enterprise with the public good as prime 
 motive. Again, intelligent and well-disposed 
 people are exceedingly numerous, and are pros- 
 perous out of proportion to their numbers. If 
 the unprincipled, the philistines, and the vicious 
 classes have hitherto been allowed to dictate 
 largely the character of the daily press, and the 
 better classes, as usual slow to move, have tacitly 
 assumed that so it must needs be, it does not 
 therefore follow that they would refuse to sup- 
 port a thoroughly good newspaper. There are 
 some few great journals whose merits, neigh- 
 bored as they are by glaring faults, deserve high 
 praise. Has any one heard that these are not 
 financially profitable ? Unsatisfactory as they 
 are, they depend on the support of the best peo- 
 ple, and receive it because there is nothing bet- 
 
120 ^be Xaw of Service 
 
 ter to support. Where great ability and pro- 
 fessed independence are vitiated by actual 
 partisanship, and that not over-scrupulous, or 
 respectable old partisanship, though able, glories 
 in its limitations, there is certainly room for a 
 new departure ; and good work would not only 
 meet with a hearty welcome, but create a new 
 and growing demand. The best product of 
 journalism to-day is by no means sharply distin- 
 guished from pure literature. A better manage- 
 ment would bring the literary element still more 
 to the front, and would do much in various ways 
 for the development of the public taste, and of a 
 literature fresh and strong by its vital connection 
 with the life of the people. 
 
 As journalism should keep us in touch with 
 the times without doing the work of a drag-net 
 to dump at our firesides an unselected and un- 
 cleansed mass, so it belongs to general literature 
 to acquaint us with the life of all times, the 
 whole range of human experience, and the sub- 
 stance of all important thinking, without defiling 
 our imagination, vitiating our sympathies, or dis- 
 turbing the balance of our judgment. The field 
 is too great for omnivorous reading, even if that 
 were desirable. The mature reader for himself, 
 and the parent or educator for the young, must 
 exercise some kind of discrimination or censor- 
 ship ; and upon the method of this, momentous 
 consequences depend. The attempt to *' form 
 the mind " of youth by a restricted choice of 
 
Xlterature 121 
 
 reading warranted to be orthodox in teaching 
 and safely conventional in matter and treatment 
 may easily be unfair as well as injudicious. 
 None of us are perfect in wisdom ; and it is not 
 right, acting on the assumption that our views 
 are the only safe ones, to narrow unduly a young 
 person's field of vision, lest he be tempted to 
 think for himself. The writers of power and the 
 masters of style are not those safe, commonplace 
 persons whose deliverances can be warranted 
 harmless. The great books of the world, not ex- 
 cepting those that make up the Bible, are bold in 
 expressing the thought that is uppermost, and 
 they call a spade a spade. Such books may 
 easily be perverted to the purposes of false 
 reasoning or morbid imagination. The Devil can 
 cite scripture for his purpose. To avoid all 
 danger were to avoid the best of life. Never- 
 theless, it is imperative that there be some dis- 
 crimination for those who cannot yet choose for 
 themselves. It is safe to banish all books that 
 are weak and trashy, whether pious or impious ; 
 all books, of whatever stamp, that are morbid; all 
 books, of course, that are covertly or openly im- 
 moral. Books of controversy are not for the 
 young ; the judicial temper comes late, if hap- 
 pily it come at all. But the best way to keep out 
 the bad is to fill the thoughts with what is good. 
 Strong books and morally sound, enforcing uni- 
 versal truth, and if by example rather than pre- 
 cept, so much the better ; books of kindling 
 
122 ^be Xaw of Service 
 
 thought and large horizon; books of imagination, 
 of beauty, of nature, of sympathy with all the 
 living — these are not always wholly safe, but it 
 is wise to read them. The world is a dangerous 
 place, and character must not be left to be 
 formed by reading only. The key to the moral 
 labyrinth of this world must be given in the cen- 
 tral Law of Love, to which, from infancy, all 
 things thould be related, and all gracious influ- 
 ences invoked until it be written upon the heart. 
 Then the selective and assimilative principle 
 will not be wanting, that all things may work to- 
 gether for good. Loyal to that law, we cannot 
 go fatally astray. Inspired by it, we shall profit 
 by the literature of power, of imagination, of the 
 history of man, of all knowledge and philosophy. 
 As to the literature of the future, we are in 
 the dark. We cannot judge of it by the past, 
 because the conditions of the past cannot be 
 repeated. The childhood of the world, with its 
 glorious imagination born of ignorance and mys- 
 tery, has gone forever. Science, with weights 
 and measures and dry white light, material pro- 
 gress, with its smoke and roar and commonplace 
 splendor, even philanthropy, with its model 
 tenement houses, might seem to have banished 
 the muses. But though we may not see how the 
 eloquence and song of the future are to come, 
 let us remember that beauty and power still ex- 
 ist, the barrier of mystery remains, only a little 
 farther removed, the light that never was on sea 
 
Xiterature 123 
 
 or land still shines for the pure in heart, the 
 soul of man is greater than the accidents of 
 time. The literature of the future, if frankly 
 Christian, will be only the truer and sounder ; 
 if it has taken to itself the wisdom of science, 
 it will be all the more conversant with the 
 thoughts of God. Old Hebrew poetry may give 
 us hints of an imagination more primitive and 
 deeper than the Greek or the Elizabethan, and 
 therefore more perennial. The stuff that poetry 
 is made of is in the New Testament also, and in 
 modern life. The poetry lingers, but its golden 
 age, we may believe, is somehow yet to come. 
 
XXI. 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 TF this chapter treats of higher education, it 
 ■' is not in disparagement of the lower. The 
 common schools are significant and important 
 beyond the danger of exaggeration. While they 
 might in some fashion do their work if academic 
 culture did not exist, as a matter of fact they 
 are largely dependent upon it for their efficiency, 
 and ought to be far more in touch with it than 
 they are. So far as the common schools differ 
 in principle from systems of business appren- 
 ticeship, from utilitarian establishments pure 
 and simple, the same doctrines which apply to 
 higher institutions apply, mutatis 7?iuta7idis, to 
 them. Pressing and difficult as are the problems 
 of administration and method in elementary 
 work, a good system will surely be evolved 
 where there is broad and sound thinking with 
 sincere devotion in the leaders of culture, and 
 enlightened public spirit in the people at large. 
 Without these, systems and appliances, technical 
 training and financial support, will be compara- 
 tively of little avail. 
 
 124 
 
^EDucatlon 125 
 
 In a recent public discourse an American prel- 
 ate, fired with the vision of " the Ireland of St. 
 Patrick as that great servant of God left it — its 
 bishops, priests, monks, monasteries, schools, 
 colleges," waxed eloquent over the " Greater 
 Ireland of the West." Doubtless the mediaeval 
 church did great service in keeping alight the 
 torch of learning and handing on the unworldly 
 traditions of the cloister. " The still air of 
 delightful studies " John Milton was not the 
 first to breathe ; rather with his free spirit 
 and liberal learning he opened to a more 
 bracing atmosphere and a brighter sunlight the 
 studious retirement of many generations of 
 monks. The modern university has its roots 
 deep in the past. The good archbishop just 
 quoted, so enamored of the mediaeval, strikingly 
 illustrates the conservatism of priestly robe and 
 scholastic gown. Long ago the English church 
 gave up the celibacy of the priest, but the Eng- 
 lish universities have clung to the celibacy of 
 the scholar down to our times. Handmaid dur- 
 ing the dark ages of a religion whose ideals were 
 abnormal and its thinking therefore cramped 
 and perverted, roused into zealous activity by a 
 revival of interest in classical antiquity rather 
 than by a spirit of inquiry into the great con- 
 cerns of the present, it is no wonder if university 
 learning has been slow to understand the modern 
 spirit, and has lacked flexibility and practical 
 sense for the adequate leadership of modern 
 
126 Zbc Xaw of Service 
 
 culture. Bringing their standards and methods 
 from the past, the higher schools have been a 
 law unto themselves. Prestige of priesthood, of 
 antiquity and the mystery of learning, together 
 with remoteness from the every-day business of 
 life, has traditionally given them comparative 
 immunity from criticism. Outside of favored 
 circles there has been so much ignorance of the 
 whole matter, and the business world has found 
 so little in their product to which to apply effec- 
 tively its rigorous tests, that they have been irre- 
 sponsible ; and irresponsible management is bad 
 management. Now this mediaevalism and irre- 
 sponsibility has in recent times had to encounter 
 the rapid and arrogant development of a materi- 
 alistic civilization, with its worship of " success," 
 its worldly spirit and habits, its utilitarian de- 
 mands, and its control of " the sinews of war." 
 If higher education to-day, then, is in a chaotic 
 state, combining the faults of old and new with- 
 out doing justice to either, the reason is obvious. 
 The spirited address which Mr. Charles Fran- 
 cis Adams delivered some years ago, entitled 
 " A College Fetich," was right in so far as it 
 maintained that education should prepare us for 
 the work of life. If he had taken the Law of 
 Service for his text, this would have been merely 
 the logical deduction. It should not be neces- 
 sary to point out here that moral culture is best 
 attained in preparing for that work and per- 
 forming it ; and it needs no labored argument 
 
BDucation 127 
 
 to show that in this same preparation and per- 
 formance is a sufficient field not only for bring- 
 ing the intellect to its highest efficiency, but for 
 giving it most generous cultivation. The work 
 of life is so vast, varied, and arduous ; it calls for 
 such breadth of view, penetration, wealth of 
 knowledge and philosophic intelligence ; it con- 
 nects at so many points with what is finest, 
 deepest, most inspiring in the realm of thought, 
 and it appeals so powerfully to the imagination, 
 that no academic ideal need embrace more in 
 its field of culture, no university ambition need 
 aspire to greater achievement of research than 
 is involved in the largest performance of this 
 work. It will be seen that, here as elsewhere in 
 these pages, the work of life means not getting 
 a living merely, not getting wealth or any kind 
 of power or distinction, not merely nor chiefly 
 getting, but giving. Evidently one's theory of 
 education will be greatly affected by his defini- 
 tion of the work of life ; but if Mr. Adams or 
 any other critic holds that education should 
 make for practical efficiency, so far forth he is 
 eminently right. Perhaps enough has been said 
 by the critics, and with substantial justice, es- 
 pecially if the critics are themselves college men 
 by training and sympathy, as to the unsatisfac- 
 tory and inadequate results of college work. 
 Much has been said, and a good deal has been 
 done, about changes in the curriculum and ex- 
 tension of the elective system ; and the move- 
 
128 Zbc 3Law ot Service 
 
 ment in this direction hardly needs more pushing 
 than it gets. There are, however, certain faults 
 in the higher education as we have it, which call 
 for severe criticism. 
 
 Many incidentals there are, of greater or less 
 account ; but the essential and distinctive thing 
 about a school is the encounter of student with 
 instructor. We may narrow Garfield's much 
 quoted definition ; give us Mark Hopkins and 
 the boy, and no matter about the bench. It 
 should follow, then, that the office of instructor 
 is here of a dignity commensurate with its im- 
 portance. University research is educative, but 
 incidentally so. The most distinguished critic, 
 investigator, or constructive thinker may fail as 
 an instructor. It is no disparagement of the 
 functions of the university to point this out, and 
 to insist that instruction of youth, not the ad- 
 vancement of learning, should be the aim and 
 the sufficient ambition of those institutions, 
 always by right the great majority, which pre- 
 pare young people for life, rather than for pro- 
 fessions and specialties. As culture is incidental 
 to university work, so productiveness should be 
 incidental to the work of general education ; 
 and if the educator suffers himself to be lured 
 to the neglect of his proper business by the at- 
 tractiveness or personal profit of investigation 
 and authorship, he may gain advantage to him- 
 self, but it is at the expense of his pupils. As 
 for the specialist everything centres in his 
 
BOucation 129 
 
 specialty, and for the author everything con- 
 tributes to his books, so for the instructor all 
 should centre in the class-room, and all con- 
 tribute to his efficiency there. There should be 
 his pride, his ambition, his devotion. This may 
 seem to many a hard saying about a humble and 
 toilsome work ; but let it be noted that making 
 men and women is quite as great as making 
 discoveries, or making books, or making money. 
 It is doing at first hand that which all worthiest 
 effort directly or indirectly seeks to do. More- 
 over the work is so elevated and exacting as to 
 demand for its right performance the most 
 liberal and unremitting personal culture, and 
 so interesting in itself as that ought to be which 
 deals immediately with human nature, most in- 
 teresting of subjects, at its most plastic and 
 attractive period. If for any teacher this is not 
 enough, the world is wide — let him leave the 
 profession. Special gifts are for special uses ; 
 and as to those unfortunates who can make 
 nothing better than drudgery of this magnifi- 
 cent and delightful service, there are humbler 
 and more congenial tasks in plenty for their 
 commonplace abilities. 
 
 The notion has got abroad of late years that 
 the chief officer of an institution of learning 
 must be a man of " business," a good figure- 
 head, a man of the world to push the claims of 
 his charge and raise money for it. Certainly he 
 
 should be in the broadest sense a man of busi- 
 9 
 
130 ^be Xaw ot Service 
 
 ness, and if professionally competent he will 
 generally secure recognition in the great world ; 
 but it is indispensable that he be a scholar and 
 a man of culture. A mere business man in such 
 a position is an absurdity like an impressionist 
 painter at the head of a railroad corporation. 
 We must still distinguish, however. The presi- 
 dent of a university, while he must have execu- 
 tive ability, may or may not be a skilled 
 educator. The students under his administra- 
 tion are in pursuit of knowledge. They have 
 passed the disciplinary stage ; their general 
 culture is henceforth their own affair. The 
 head of a distinctively educational establishment, 
 on the other hand, should be an educator, and as 
 such ought to make his mark in the outside world, 
 representing and interpreting the academic idea, 
 while within the walls his criticism, inspiration, 
 or direction should reach to every department 
 and every individual. 
 
 Let the line be sharply drawn, then, between 
 college and university. Instead of trying to 
 make inferior colleges into feeble universities, 
 it might be well to convert here and there a so- 
 called university into something really worthy to 
 be called a college. An ill-endowed academy, 
 instead of inflating itself with the pretensions of 
 a " people's university," — the language has been 
 soberly used in public — would better undertake 
 to teach a few things modestly and thoroughly 
 well. The " people " need no such '' univer- 
 
jE&ucation 131 
 
 sity." What deserves that name is for no class, 
 high or low ; it is democratic in the best sense. 
 A sham is fit neither for the few nor for the 
 many. Typewriting and the like, as business 
 pursuits, will take care of themselves ; while in- 
 struction in advanced subjects is already pro- 
 vided for those who will work up to it. The 
 true educator's motto is Non multa sed multum. 
 The instruction of classes calls for competent 
 scholarship, constantly new-fed with the world's 
 best, for hard sense both in conception and in 
 execution, for every grace and force of char- 
 acter. Now and then, doubtless, an instructor 
 falls a victim to the merciless persecution of his 
 pupils. Barbarous and wicked on the student's 
 part as this persecution is, it belongs to the great 
 process of evolution. The fittest survive ; it is 
 the unfit who perish. Whoso has not the per- 
 sonal force to be master must go to the wall ; 
 his place is on the other side of it. But of those 
 who hold their positions, every college graduate 
 knows that a large proportion are conspicuously 
 lacking in one or another of the qualifications 
 that command respect. Not to speak of callow 
 tutors, chosen for their record in the marking- 
 book, who does not recall a Dryasdust, a tyrant, 
 a blusterer, an easy-going incompetent, an in- 
 carnation of mediocrity, or a cold-blooded ver- 
 tebrate in the professor's chair ? It is true that 
 instructors are and must be human ; but neither 
 they nor those who appoint them seem to ap- 
 
132 ^bc Xaw of Service 
 
 preciate the dignity, the splendid opportunity, 
 the inspiring demands of their high office. 
 
 A natural consequence of incapacity or indif- 
 ference among college instructors is the low- 
 standard of requirement for admission to college 
 classes, and especially for retention in them. 
 Another is the belittlement that goes with petty 
 marking systems, happily not everywhere so 
 petty as they used to be. Another, the anti- 
 quated but not obsolete fashion of cramping 
 preparatory work by specific requirements w^hich 
 can be, almost need to be, and generally are, 
 crammed for. Instead of knowing a language 
 to some practical purpose, — a knowledge which 
 may be fairly required and easily tested — the 
 candidate is to know certain portions of certain 
 authors ; and old examination papers are sent 
 out, which he and his teachers may be found 
 laboring over, that he may be " up," forsooth, 
 on the particular I'ind of questions he is likely to 
 get. Another outstanding fault is the frivolity 
 and extravagance, not to say worse, of academic 
 life. Instead of a preparation for service in the 
 world, it is to be feared that many a young 
 man's college career is a preparation for amus- 
 ing himself at the world's expense. Where the 
 expenditure of the average undergraduate would 
 support a self-respecting family in comfort and 
 refinement, there is not only waste of money 
 and waste of opportunity, but a positive training 
 for self-indulgence and the ungenerous way of 
 
Education 133 
 
 living. Unquestionably college is no place for 
 prigs or Uriah Heeps. The pale dyspeptic of 
 old, burner of midnight oil, who scorned de- 
 lights as well as lived laborious days, if he has 
 disappeared is not to be regretted. A masculine 
 freedom and courage and a boyish gayety are 
 proper to the student ; but dissipated " dudes," 
 lawless rowdies spared by a partial police, reck- 
 less sporting men in college colors, idlers ambi- 
 tious to shine at the whist-table or caper nimbly 
 in the tennis-court, can well be spared. The 
 word " student " is an open sesame to the good 
 graces of the public, partly because the better 
 part of the public are in sympathy with aca- 
 demic aims, and partly because philistinism sees 
 its own ideals expressed in dashing style by the 
 worse class of undergraduates. These take ad- 
 vantage of their popularity and immunity to 
 abuse the indulgence of easy-going superiors 
 and bring discredit on the college world. 
 
 Everywhere, instructors hold the key of the 
 situation. Students as a class will not take 
 their business more seriously than their teachers 
 do ; but they are as quick to recognize genuine 
 worth and good sense in those who are set over 
 them as they are to despise insincerity and to 
 ridicule pedantic feebleness. Manhood in the 
 teacher finds generous response of manhood in 
 the taught. The same overrunning energy 
 which gets vent in lawless excesses would ex- 
 pend itself usefully in the fascinating and inspir- 
 
134 tlbe Xaw of Service 
 
 ing work of the scholar, if it were competently 
 managed. Vacations are too long ; recreations, 
 so-called, are too wasteful, and too little of 
 genuine worthy achievement is expected of all 
 concerned. The cool, dry atmosphere of the 
 typical college professor's mind has its advan- 
 tages, but dust and cobwebs need not accumu- 
 late in it, nor ice be suffered to form. Preoccu- 
 pied with his own studies, contemptuous of 
 youth as callow as his own was once, and impa- 
 tient of a routine his own indifference has made 
 dull, he may easily " freeze the genial current of 
 the soul," and discourage aspiration more gener- 
 ous than he ever knew. Narrowed in sympathy 
 and alienated from vital interests by what he is 
 pleased to regard as his own intellectual breadth, 
 he may fail to teach his subject as related to 
 life, both by its proper significance and by its 
 bearing on the development of the pupil. If he 
 does not grasp the import and feel the power of 
 the central Law which makes life worth living, 
 has no clearly conceived ideal of life or a 
 dwarfed and unsymmetrical one, and is absent- 
 mindedly wrapped up in his chosen pursuits, he 
 can neither feel himself nor make his disciple 
 feel the profoundest unity of all knowledge, the 
 most vital significance of every science, the in- 
 most charm of art and letters. Enthusiasm is 
 his first duty ; not the zeal of a specialist, but 
 the devotion of a man. Failing in this, no 
 wonder he fails in so much else. 
 
B&ucatfon 135 
 
 If the Law of Service were accepted as the 
 law of culture, and all training viewed as prepa- 
 ration for service, we might fairly expect the 
 whole business to be taken far more seriously 
 than it is. Serious men adapt means to ends ; 
 hence it would follow that stupidities too trivial 
 in themselves for these pages, yet fruitful of 
 grave evils, would be censured and abolished. 
 Technical work, as of editing Greek texts, com- 
 piling manuals, and writing monographs, would 
 be done by university or other specialists, sub- 
 ject often to the invaluable criticism of practical 
 educators. The preparation, for instance, of a 
 grammar or dictionary for school use calls for 
 two distinct qualifications. One is profound 
 knowledge of the subject-matter, and this de- 
 mands the concentrated energies of the pro- 
 fessional scholar. The other is the practical 
 experience and judgment of the instructor, and 
 his cultivated sense of form and fitness, with- 
 out which a monument of scholarship may be a 
 dismal failure for school purposes. But the 
 attempt to combine the functions of author and 
 educator, while robbing the instructor's time 
 for the drudgery of book-making, opens the 
 way for slipshod and unsuitable work. It is for 
 the teacher to know what he wants, and, 
 whether indirectly by criticism and choice or 
 directly by delegating the work, to get it. He 
 must not belittle his office by acknowledging 
 that any work is greater than his of making men 
 
136 Zbc Xaw of Service 
 
 and women for use in the world, nor betray his 
 trust by making this secondary to any other. 
 He must be above the present scramble for 
 wealth, content with an adequate support, and 
 remembering that commerce has no unit of 
 value for his work, which is incommensurable 
 with the almighty dollar. He must pity, not 
 emulate, the poor ambition of Cicero for posthu- 
 mous praise, well pleased if his life may have its 
 record in the well-being of those who shall come 
 after. 
 
 We accept the advice of '' practical " critics 
 and innovators, only reserving the right of 
 definition, and will be as radical and fearless 
 as they in the endeavor to bring things to pass ; 
 but what makes us thus radical also makes us 
 conservative of the good old tradition of liberal 
 culture, with its " humanities " and its unworld- 
 liness. Informing this with a more intelligent 
 and conscious purpose of beneficence, and 
 applying business sagacity to the working out of 
 that purpose, we would rescue the schools out 
 of the hands of the philistines, and vindicate 
 their right to exist for their own legitimate ends. 
 Agassiz had " no time to make money " ; and to 
 that happy scholar doubtless this was no hard- 
 ship. They whose exalted office it is to make 
 men need not complain if they lack time or 
 strength to make anything else whatever. 
 
 No special mention has been made in this 
 chapter of the education of women. The ques- 
 
E&ucat(on 137 
 
 tion is practically settled. The quiet but irre- 
 sistible movement of the last two or three 
 decades will go on until, very possibly, more 
 women than men will be engaged in academic 
 work. For years to come, colleges for women 
 will be increasingly liable to some of the same 
 errors into which other colleges are prone to 
 fall. If there is any force in the critical sugges- 
 tions here made, they apply in the one field as 
 well as in the other. It should not be necessary 
 to prove to any intelligent reader of this book 
 that the distinction of sex has nothing to do with 
 its arguments and conclusions. The Law of 
 Service knows no sex, and the same is true of 
 the great principles of education. The awakened 
 intellect of woman, and the development among 
 men of reasonable views concerning her, give 
 promise that whatever is special in the problem 
 of her education will be intelligently studied, 
 and will not receive undue emphasis. The 
 logical and natural outcome of the movement 
 now going on will be, we may believe, such a 
 development of " co-education " that the awk- 
 ward term itself will by and by cause a smile. 
 Looking at the whole educational field, this 
 wonderful but easy and natural progress seems 
 by far the most encouraging omen it presents. 
 Speaking numerically, it is significant as affect- 
 ing, directly or indirectly, one half of the youth 
 of English-speaking countries. Conversion to 
 right views and practice concerning a matter so 
 
138 ^be Xaw ot Service 
 
 important implies a liberalizing and quickening 
 in whose benefits all education cannot fail to 
 share. The effect of this revolutionary move- 
 ment in the educational world itself can be 
 partly foreseen but cannot be computed. In its 
 bearing upon the general welfare in countless 
 ways and especially through the reconstruction 
 of the home, it promises ultimate results of the 
 sublimest moment. Here, as elsewhere, if we 
 can get the Law of Service intelligently obeyed, 
 there is no fear. 
 
 The progress of the kingdom of heaven is a 
 process of education ; it is an instruction and 
 a discipline, an inspiration to service and through 
 service. Beneficent manhood is the essential 
 thing, and all the world's runnings to and fro 
 have their significance in relation to that. It 
 is the exalted office of the educator, standing 
 among men for the doctrine that the life is 
 more than meat and the body than raiment, 
 to contribute by his daily toil to the building 
 up of universal manhood. The Almighty has 
 no better work for himself — it is good enough 
 work for the most gifted of his creatures. 
 
XXII. 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE. 
 
 T N dealing with applications of the Law of 
 * Service we have in some chapters made 
 little express reference to the law itself. Here, 
 as often in the conduct of life, the underlying 
 principle is not conspicuous at the surface. 
 Nevertheless, the enforcement of its main con- 
 tention is necessary alike to the unity and to the 
 usefulness of this book. If the convictions out 
 of which the book has grown are well founded, 
 it is much more important to win intelligent and 
 hearty assent to its central doctrine than to set 
 forth, however clearly and forcibly, any specific 
 applications. It remains, in taking leave of the 
 subject, to emphasize what we have tried to 
 teach by contrasting it again with the theory 
 and practice of the orthodox. 
 
 The prevailing theory is in effect that we 
 must " be good " ; must cultivate this, that, and 
 the other Christian grace ; must foster religious 
 sentiment and the expression of it, and secure 
 the conversion of sinners, who are to become 
 
 I3Q 
 
140 ^be Xavv of Service 
 
 like us, only more devout. This theory, if we 
 may judge by its average expression, has much 
 to do with the overcoming our own sins, but 
 comparatively little with any aggressive action 
 in the great world, especially in so-called " secu- 
 lar " matters. To do it justice, we may grant 
 that in many minds it contemplates the ultimate 
 leavening of all human institutions with the 
 spirit of Christianity ; but in justice we must 
 also say that to the average mind, apparently, 
 that consummation is in some indefinite far 
 future, hardly more vividly conceived, if less 
 than the " day of judgment." 
 theory of this book is that in obedience 
 the all-inclusive Law of Love we must do 
 One Thing — we must bend all our powers to do 
 the will of God in the service of his creatures, 
 and that without qualification or reserve. We 
 are to aim not at subjective states or experiences, 
 except as these condition our usefulness, but at 
 objective results. We are to make this world, 
 the only one with which we are acquainted, a 
 better world. Whatever we do or abstain from 
 doing, we are to have this constantly and con- 
 sciously in view, content to believe that accord- 
 ing as we thus live in singleness of heart, 
 harmonizing our conduct and aims with the will 
 of God, we shall receive according to natural 
 law — another name for that will — whatever gifts, 
 graces, and experiences it may be best for us to 
 have ; accounting self-absorption a near neigh- 
 
^be Difference 141 
 
 bor to selfishness, a fault to be shunned rather 
 than a virtue to be cultivated. According to 
 this view, we are to repudiate the distinction 
 between sacred and secular, as applied to the 
 legitimate concerns of life. In trade or politics, 
 in art or athletics, in literature and scholarship, 
 in digging ditches or dealing in stocks or keep- 
 ing hotels we are to be as devout as in preaching 
 sermons, singing psalms, or smoothing the pillow 
 of the dying. Walking softly everywhere, awed 
 by the divine presence and the vast issues of 
 lifejwe are yet to keep clear of the morbid and 
 hysterical, like the coolest man of business in 
 his of fice or the healthiest boy at his games. 
 W In the too common practice of the orthodox, 
 f men distinguish between the service of God, the 
 ' service of mankind — service of other creatures 
 being disregarded — and the service of them- 
 selves. In the service of God they are religious, 
 often with a very bad grace. They build hand- 
 some temples, uptown, go with more or less 
 emotion through forms of worship, pray and 
 meditate by themselves. In the service of man- 
 kind they give a trifle for evangelization — this is 
 religious service ; they give^n other trifle for 
 charity — this is philanthropy ;] neglecting to 
 think and to act independefifly about public 
 affairs, they follow the lead of the partisan poli- 
 ticians, and leave municipal management to 
 bosses, and sociology to cranks and college pro- 
 fessors — this all belongs to the " secular " part 
 
142 Zbc Xaw ot Service 
 
 of life. In the service of themselves they are 
 devoted and diligent, single-hearted enough if 
 not far-seeing. Not what they need, whether 
 for health or efficiency, but what they want, and 
 as much as they can get — this they must have. 
 Economy in expenditure is from worldly pru- 
 dence, not for the common weal. Giving, 
 whether of money or of personal effort, is not 
 the business of life, but a concession ; the ques- 
 tion, not how much is possible, but how little is 
 sufficient. Self-indulgence beyond any rational 
 use is not only shameless but self-complacent ; 
 not discreditable, but eminently respectable. 
 [In practice under the law we have set forth, 
 one serves God, and himself, by serving his 
 fellow-creatures. Worship, like the expression 
 of filial affection, is natural and spontaneous. 
 Its public forms, like the decorous customs of 
 the household, are determined by fitness and 
 usefulness. Its architecture and accessories are 
 , not according to the wealth and social position of 
 the worshipper, but, again, are for fitness and 
 use, and are limited by the economies of service. 
 Service of fellow-creatures is the one business 
 and study of life ; service of self is incidental or 
 indirect. Giving of mind, body, and estate is 
 the normal process, the daily joy of life ; inabil- 
 ity or failure to give is its chief distress. Self- 
 indulgence beyond rational use is disreputable ; 
 private display is both ungenerous and vulgar. 
 Public spirit, with all that it implies, is the natural 
 
Cbe Diftercnce 143 
 
 atmosphere of the life of service ; public mis- 
 fortune a personal grief, public disgrace a per- 
 sonal shame. The welfare of the Nation, not 
 as a jealous competing neighbor of other states, 
 but as a generous and beneficent member of the 
 Commonwealth of Nations, is the glory and 
 pride of the Christian citizen. 
 
 The world is grievously afflicted. The 
 church has doctored the symptoms of its ail- 
 ment empirically, in an intermittent and emo- 
 tional way. According to the Law of Service 
 we are to deal scientifically with the disease 
 itself by radical and constitutional treatment. 
 The springs of human life must be cleansed, its' 
 processes made normal and vigorous, its activi- 
 ties reformed. We have reckoned on selfishness 
 as the motive of human action ; let us have the 
 faith and courage to reckon on love. Self- 
 seeking competition is war, with all its miseries^ 
 generous service is peace with all its blessings. 
 
 THE END 
 
1 1012 01247 0144 
 
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