M\,r. 
 
tihvary of Che Cheolocjical ^tmm<xxy 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
 'Hi v»x* 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Estate of 
 The Rev. John B. Weidinger 
 
 BV 4501 .S63 1911 
 
 Speer, Robert E. 1867-1947. 
 
 A Christian's habits 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
^ Cfjrigtian's! Ilabitsi 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 »& 
 
 PH I L AD ELPH I A 
 
 1911 
 
Copyright, 191 i, by 
 
 The Trustees of the Presbyterian Board of 
 Publication and Sabbath-School Work 
 
 Published April, 191 1 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, WITHERSPOON BUILDING 
 
 New York Chicago San Francisco 
 
 St. Louis Nashville 
 
 i\ 
 
 W-: 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 The Place of Habit 9 
 
 The Habit of Prayer 15 '' 
 
 The Habit of Duty. I 23 
 
 The Habit of Duty. II 29 
 
 The Habit of Duty. Ill 35 
 
 The Habit of Good Thinking 42 
 
 The Habit of Wise Spending 50 
 
 The Habit of Hopefulness 61 *' 
 
 The Habit of Doing Things Now 70 
 
 The Habit of High-Mindedness "jj 
 
 The Habit of HiGH-MiNDED Lowliness 85 
 
 The Habit of Not Dawdling •. 92 
 
 The Habit of Decision 98 
 
 The Habit of Finding the Will of God 107 
 
 r, 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 "A ND he entered as his custom was, 
 /^ into the synagogue on the sabbath 
 day." 
 
 "And as he was wont, he taught them." 
 
 "And went, as his custom was, unto the 
 iTfount of OHves." 
 
 "The Father . . . hath not left me alone; 
 for I do always the things that are pleasing 
 to him." 
 
 These were some of the habits of the 
 Lord. He had habits, as each man must 
 have, as God himself has; for do we not 
 read of "the ways of the Lord"? Is this 
 not ever the earnest man's prayer, "Show 
 me thy ways, O Lord, teach me thy paths" ? 
 Indeed, it was to be the blessing of the lat- 
 ter days that they w^ould fulfill this prayer. 
 "And many nations shall go and say, Come 
 ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jeho- 
 vah, and to the house of the God of Jacob; 
 and he will teach us of his ways, and we will 
 walk in his paths." 
 
 This little book is an effort to discover 
 and describe some of these paths of God 
 which are to be the habits of his children. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 L 
 
 THE PLACE OF HABIT 
 
 IFE is a school of habit. There is a 
 
 real sense in which our business here 
 
 is simply the acquisition of habits. 
 
 We start with certain inherited tendencies 
 
 and capabilities and these certainly do affect 
 
 our choices, and the choices grow into our 
 
 habits; but whatever the bias for good or 
 
 evil with which we start, we are not bound 
 
 by it. How often we see a good ancestry 
 
 shamed in some bad son, and a bad ancestry 
 
 exalted by some good son ! Whatever the 
 
 bias with which we are born, and the pres- 
 
 1 1 sure of our surroundings upon us, and how- 
 
 ' ever much excuse is to be found in these for 
 
 the wreck of some lives, it is still true that 
 
 we order our own ways and that we order 
 
 ■ i them by the character of the habits we 
 
 > choose to acquire. 
 
 We begin our work in this school when 
 I we begin to live. At once upon beginning 
 i to live we begin to act, and each act makes 
 its repetition easier, so that we are more 
 likely to duplicate that act than to perform 
 a new one. No one needs to teach us to 
 form habits. We do it by reason of our 
 
10 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 nature, of which, as Carlyle said : "Habit 
 is the deepest law. It is our supreme 
 strength, if also in certain circumstances, our 
 most miserable weakness. Let me go once 
 scanning my way with any earnestness of 
 outlook, and successfully arriving, my foot- 
 steps are an invitation to me a second time 
 to go by the same way. It is easier than 
 any other way. Habit is our perennial law 
 — habit and imitation — there is nothing more 
 perennial in us than these two. They are 
 the source of all working and all apprentice- 
 ship, of all practice and all learning in the 
 world." 
 
 The law of habit is not a dead mechani- 
 cal law. It is simply the government of 
 God applying to all life, giving stability and 
 order and firm principle to it. It is the as- 
 surance that we can keep the results of our 
 efforts and experience, that there is an end 
 toward which we can move and that we are 
 not to be left alone to be molded by nothing, 
 or to be molded by events and circumstances 
 which are more powerful than we. "The 
 truth is," as Edward Bowen, one of the great 
 English schoolmasters wrote in an essay on 
 "The Force of Habit," "the truth is not 
 that events mold us, but that we mold our- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 11 
 
 selves : that is. if with reverence it may be 
 spoken, the Creator supphes the instruments, 
 and we have the work to do. Whether our 
 work be a cheerless, solitary task, a forlorn 
 and unaided toil, or whether in no single 
 action are w^e destitute of a guidance above 
 ourselves, Plato did not doubt, and we shall 
 not: but that it is in this way that we shape 
 our being, and in everything work toward an 
 end. Scripture and reason prove." Habit is 
 God's assent to the finality and responsi- 
 bility of our acts. 
 
 If it were not for habit, we should never 
 have time or strength for any advanced liv- 
 ing. "If an act became no easier after being 
 done several times," says Dr. Moudsley in 
 'The Physiology of Mind," "if the careful 
 direction of consciousness were necessary to 
 its accomplishment on each occasion, it is 
 evident that the whole activity of a lifetime 
 might be confined to one or two deeds — that 
 no progress could take place in development. 
 A man might be occupied all day in dressing 
 and undressing himself; the attitude of his 
 body would absorb all his attention and 
 energy; the w^ashing of his hands or the 
 fastening of a button would be as difficult 
 to him on each occasion as to the child on 
 
12 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 its first trial, and he would furthermore be 
 completely exhausted by his exertions." 
 We can make headway upward in our life 
 struggle because each step is secure. We do 
 not need to go back to do it over again with 
 the same efifort. We can go on from it easily 
 to another step in the same direction. 
 
 Of course, the law of habit, like every 
 other law, is like a two-edged blade. It 
 cuts both ways. The good that we have 
 done once, we can do more easily the sec- 
 ond time. The evil, also, that we have done 
 once we can more easily repeat. "I know 
 from experience,'' says John Foster in his 
 "Journal," ''that habit can, in direct opposi- 
 tion to every connection of the mind and but 
 little aided by the element of temptation 
 (such as present pleasures, and so forth) in- 
 duce a repetition of the most unworthy 
 action. The mind is weak where it has 
 once given way. It is long before a prin- 
 ciple restored can become as firm as one that 
 has never been moved. It is as the case of 
 a mound of a reservoir : if the mound has 
 in one place been broken, whatever care has 
 been taken to make the repaired part as strong 
 as possible, the probability is that if it gives 
 way again, it will be in that place." The 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 13 
 
 law of habit is meant to ])e a blessing- to us 
 in making us masters, not a curse in making 
 us slaves. 
 
 In the religious life, habit is meant to 
 play a great and blessed part. '*In the great 
 majority of things," says Foster, "habit is a 
 greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt : in 
 religious character it is a grand felicity." 
 By it we are set free from many conflicts 
 which we had to wage earnestly at first but 
 in which the habit of victory became so fixed 
 that we are no longer aware of those conflicts. 
 The foes whom we meet are still with us, 
 but we give them no more thought than we 
 give to the earth we walk on, and without 
 which we could not stand up and walk for- 
 ward. By habit also, what w^as at first hard 
 and perplexing has become natural and 
 simple. Surrender to Christ and the sub- 
 ordination of our personal ambition to him, 
 once difficult, is now joyous. The lower 
 has been subjugated by the higher. "When 
 the missionary desire came in and took full 
 possession of my heart," says the veteran 
 missionary, Griffith John, "the lower desire 
 was driven out and driven out never to re- 
 turn again. That was a great victory, one 
 of the greatest victories ever won on the 
 
14 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 arena of my soul, and one for which I have 
 never ceased to feel truly thankful to God." 
 And the virtues and activities of the after 
 life are sweet to us in their full sweetness, 
 and secure and trustworthy only when they 
 have become, as they may become, habitual. 
 We should begin to acquire these habits 
 at once, the earlier the better. If we do not 
 learn to love God in our earliest years, and 
 to trust him and to pray to him, if we do 
 not become familiar with the Bible now, and 
 now acquire a love for purity that will not 
 look upon evil, it may be too late when in 
 after years we turn to these things deciding 
 to make them then habitual. While no one 
 need ever despair, it is true, as Professor 
 James says, that habit "dooms us all to fight 
 out the battle of life upon the lines of our 
 nurture or our early choice, and to make the 
 best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there 
 is no other for which we are fitted, and it is 
 too late to begin again." The kind of Chris- 
 tian we want some day to be, we must begin 
 to be to-day. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 15 
 
 THE HABIT OF PRAYER 
 
 THE most vital of all the habits of a 
 Christian is the habit of prayer. 
 This is the test of spiritual reality 
 and strength. The man whose principles and 
 character can be exposed to God, who loves 
 to go to God, and who, though aware of his 
 weakness and sin, ever rejoices to be searched 
 through by the light of God in the fire of 
 his presence, cannot be false. The man who 
 does not seek and bear this testing of prayer, 
 has no such sense of his own sin, of the 
 reality of God's forgiveness and power and 
 of the nearness of his presence to man, as 
 will make his word to his fellow-men of 
 deepest effect. "Without much solitary com- 
 munion with Jesus," says good Dr. Mac- 
 laren of Manchester, "effort for him tends to 
 become mechanical and to lose the elevation 
 of motive and the suppression of self which 
 give it all its power. It is not lost time 
 which the busiest worker, confronted with 
 the most imperative calls for service, gives 
 to still fellowship in secret with God. There 
 can never be too much activity in Christian 
 work, but there is often disproportioned ac- 
 
16 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 tivity, which is too much for the amount of 
 time given to meditation and communion. 
 This is one reason why there is so much 
 sowing and so httle reaping in Christian 
 work to-day." 
 
 It is just as important that praying should 
 become a habit with us, as breathing or eat- 
 ing or sleeping, or dressing in the morning. 
 If these things did not become habitual with 
 us, life would soon break down under the 
 burden of doing them. 
 
 But they are all made natural and almost 
 unconscious to us by practice, so that we do 
 them all instinctively. Prayer, of course, can 
 never become a habit which needs no at- 
 tention, for prayer is the fixing of the at- 
 tention upon God; but it can become per- 
 fectly natural for us to do this, so natural 
 that every instant our hearts will turn to 
 God, referring all things to him and seeking 
 his strength and peace. 
 
 Those who are not in the habit of prayer 
 at all times are not likely to make use of 
 prayer even in special times. In very great 
 crises, of course, they will probably do so. 
 Even men who pay no heed to God and re- 
 nounce prayer are likely, in the time of mor- 
 tal peril, to pray. When the steamship Spree 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 17 
 
 broke its shaft some years ago while cross- 
 ing the Atlantic, with Mr. Moody on board, 
 and the passengers realized their danger, 
 men who had shown no interest whatever in 
 religion joined the group around Mr. Moody 
 who prayed. But it is the men who habitu- 
 ally pray who know how to pray in such 
 emergencies. If we learn from our earliest 
 childhood to pray daily and hourly there will 
 never come a time when we cannot turn to 
 God with natural friendship and assurance, 
 and tell him our wants and desires. 
 
 For prayer is just converse with God, and 
 all conversation requires practice. If men 
 do not talk to one another, they lose the taste 
 and faculty of conversation, and so, also, if 
 men do not talk with God, they will not 
 acquire the love and power of prayer. We 
 can make constant converse with God the 
 habit of our lives. We are more likely to 
 do this if we think of God as Father, as 
 Jesus encouraged us to do. If we think of 
 him as some strange and distant monarch, 
 or as a vague, pervasive spirit, we shall feel 
 no disposition to speak to him as a man 
 would speak to his friend, but if we realize 
 that he is our personal Father, and our in- 
 separable Companion, we shall naturally turn 
 
18 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 to him to share our pleasure in each new 
 joy of life, our delight in all that is beautiful, 
 to thank him for every blessing, to seek his 
 guidance in every perplexity, and his com- 
 fort and help in every sorrow and need. 
 
 Such a habit, as Dr. Maclaren points out, 
 is not inconsistent with work and energy. 
 It is the best stimulus to work, and the great 
 fountain of energy. It is the men of prayer, 
 like Chinese Gordon and Stonewall Jack- 
 son who were the great soldiers. As Gordon 
 wrote to his sister : 
 
 "I believe very much in praying for others ; 
 it takes away all bitterness toward them. 
 ... If a man makes an arrangement with 
 his fellow-man, the greatest honor to him 
 is to consider that arrangement as effectual 
 and final. So it is the great honor to our 
 Lord to believe his word. It is not presump- 
 tion to claim the fulfillment of his promises ; 
 it is a comforting thought; indeed, it is 
 peace, for we place our burden on him, who 
 is both willing and able to bear it. The 
 prayers of the patriarchs were most simple; 
 they took God at his word, that is all. 
 
 "I like much this style of prayer, and rec- 
 ommend it to you : to plead with Christ to 
 look after his own members. He knew all 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 19 
 
 about those members, when he undertook the 
 covenant. Surely, if he bore the punishment 
 of our sins, as he did, he is not Hkely to 
 neglect the fruit of his work. Why, the 
 fact of his not doing so would be the triumph 
 of his foes, and would be virtual failure ; 
 and we know that he could not fail. I 
 am delighted with the prayer; I only realized 
 it latel}- — indeed a few days ago ; before that 
 it was misty. I now ask him in some way 
 to regulate matters for my earthly members, 
 for they also are his. I really believe we 
 shall enter the resurrection life by such 
 prayers, and die to the world." 
 
 And Jackson's biographer says of him : 
 "He prayed without ceasing, under fire 
 as in the camp; but he never mistook his 
 own impulse for a revelation of the divine 
 will. He prayed for help to do his duty, 
 and he prayed for success. He knew that 
 
 More things are wrought by prayer 
 Than this world dreams of; 
 
 but he knew, also, that prayer is not al- 
 ways answered in the way which man would 
 have it. . . . Jackson's religion entered into 
 every action of his life. No dutv, however 
 trivial, was begun without asking a blessing, 
 
20 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 or ended without returning thanks. He had 
 long cultivated, he said, the habit of con- 
 necting the most trivial and customary acts 
 of life with a silent prayer." 
 
 And in the time of peace as well as in war, 
 the man of prayer is the man of action. His 
 prayer is work. It effects things. No one 
 felt this more than General Samuel Chap- 
 man Armstrong, the founder of Hampton. 
 "Prayer," said he, "is the greatest thing in 
 the world. It keeps us near to God — my 
 own prayer has been most weak, wavering, 
 inconstant, yet has been the best thing I 
 have ever done. I think this is universal 
 truth — what comfort is there in any but 
 the broadest truth?" 
 
 The earlier we can acquire the best habits, 
 the better. As soon as children can talk, 
 and even before, it is time to begin with 
 them. But whether or not the habit was 
 begun with us then, we have something to 
 do ourselves, now, in strengthening it. We 
 must have our set time, morning and even- 
 ing, by grace at meals, by united prayer with 
 others for the settlement and confirmation 
 of our habit. And we need to associate the 
 thought of prayer and to cultivate its prac- 
 tice with all the various experiences of life. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 21 
 
 The time tliat we so often cannot spend in 
 any other work can be profital^ly spent in 
 ]:)rayer — the hours while awake at night, and 
 tiie moments during- the day when often we 
 can only sit still and pray. Maurice's wife 
 said that she never knew her husband to 
 wake up at night without praying. 
 
 The habit of prayer will be strengthened 
 with all of us who will remember to pray 
 after as well as before the events and ex- 
 periences of life. Often we need to pray even 
 more after some victory than before. We 
 shall probably remember to pray after our 
 defeat. Our humiliation and sense of need 
 will drive us to God in shame of weakness 
 and desire for strength. But when we suc- 
 ceed we often forget God, and are content 
 with what we think we have power in our- 
 selves to do. In truth, we have no power 
 in ourselves to do what we ought. All our 
 power is of God, and it is suicidal to cut 
 ourselves ofif from him — the one Source of 
 life and righteousness and power. 
 
 No habit of Jesus' life is more evident 
 than his habit of prayer. It must have been 
 begun in his earliest boyhood. It was the 
 great comfort and strength of his life. We 
 may not be able to make it mean to us what 
 
22 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 it meant to him, but without it we shall never 
 find what he came to give — the life of strong, 
 steadfast duty-doing, of love and peace and 
 joy. Let us set about acquiring it now, and 
 practice it every day and every hour. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 23 
 
 THE HABIT OF DUTY. 1 
 
 ONE of the most wonderful things in 
 the life of our Lord was his habit 
 of duty. How large a part it played 
 with him is concealed from us because the 
 word is so seldom used in our English trans- 
 lation of the Gospels. The English word 
 "duty" occurs only five times in the King 
 James Version, and but once in the Gospels 
 in the words of Jesus. "Even so ye also, 
 when ye shall have done all the things that 
 are commanded you, say. We are unprofit- 
 able servants; we have done that which it 
 was our duty to do." But the absence of 
 the term does not indicate the absence of 
 the idea. Again and again the thought of 
 duty is expressed by Christ when he says, 
 "I must." That is not a verbal mood, but 
 a separate word which might as appropri- 
 ately be translated, "It is my duty." "It 
 is my duty to be in my Father's house," was 
 the first expression of the noble conscious- 
 ness which was to dominate his career. 
 When his ministry began and the enthusi- 
 astic people of Capernaum would have kept 
 him for their local prophet, he replied, "It 
 
24 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 is my duty to preach the good tidings of 
 the kingdom of God to the other cities also : 
 for therefore was I sent." As the work of 
 his pubHc ministry absorbed him, he said 
 solemnly, "It is our duty to work the works 
 of him that sent me while it is day : the 
 night Cometh, when no man can work." 
 The great missionary duty of the divine love 
 lay especially upon his heart and to this and 
 the sacrifice by which it was to be ac- 
 complished he often referred. "Other sheep 
 I have, which are not of this fold : them also 
 it is my duty to bring." "It is the duty of 
 the Son of man to suffer many things, and 
 be rejected . . . and be killed." And the two 
 great ideas are combined with the impli- 
 cation of the Church's duty in the words of 
 the Lord after his resurrection. "It was 
 Christ's duty to suffer, and to rise again 
 from the dead the third day; and [it is your 
 duty to see] that repentance and remission 
 of sins should be preached in his name unto 
 all the nations." From the first to the last 
 a lofty sense of duty sustained the Son of 
 God. 
 
 The life of Paul was dominated by the 
 same principle of duty. It was so in his anti- 
 Christian earnestness: "I verily thought 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 25 
 
 with myself that it was my duty to do many 
 things contrary to the name of Jesus of 
 Nazareth." Nothing turned him aside from 
 what he believed to be the path of duty. 
 His conscience was serene on this point. He 
 was ready to admit afterwards that his moral 
 judgment had been terribly wrong in those 
 days, and when he afterwards discovered 
 how wrong it had been, he made every re- 
 paration in his power, but he never regret- 
 ted having made duty supreme. And as a 
 persecutor, so as a missionary he bent his 
 life with absolute devotion under his con- 
 viction of duty. "What do ye, weeping and 
 breaking my heart?" he remonstrated with 
 his friends in the house of Philip the 
 Evangelist, in C?esarea, as they sought to 
 dissuade him from the path of duty. "I 
 am ready not to be bound only, but also 
 to die." With him it was anything for duty. 
 It must be so with us. A rigid sense of 
 duty is the noblest thing in life. It is nobler 
 than love. For in its lower ranges love 
 is tinged with selfishness, and when it rises 
 above these ranges and is pure, untainted by 
 any requirements of return, it melts into 
 duty and becomes and remains the loftier 
 love by virtue of the preservative purity of 
 
26 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 duty. Only duty can put eternity into love 
 and lift it above all the vicissitudes and dis- 
 appointments and betrayals of time. And, 
 in fact, the Bible always grounds love upon 
 duty. In it as in God, right is the supreme 
 thing. God is love because he is right. And 
 we are bidden to love because we ought. 
 Duty and not affinity is the lofty motive of 
 the soul. This was our Lord's teaching. 
 "If ye love me, ye will keep my command- 
 ments." But what is it to love him? "Ye 
 are my friends, if ye do the things which 
 I command you." And the supreme duty 
 he laid upon his disciples, the commandment 
 he called "new" was the duty of love. "And 
 this is his commandment," says John, "that 
 we should . . . love one another. ... If 
 God so loved us, it is our duty to love one 
 another." Love is not a mood or a caprice. 
 It is a duty. It gets its greatness and its 
 sovereignty from the soul of duty which is 
 in it. There are sensitive souls which have 
 tortured themselves because they could not 
 serve from a sense of buoyant and joyous 
 love. Christ does not ask it. He asks us 
 to do our duty in the strength of God. We 
 do not need to want to tell the truth, or to 
 be unselfish, or to go as foreign missionaries. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 27 
 
 It is good if we do feel a spontaneous joy 
 in duty. But that is secondary. The duty is 
 the supreme thing and the doing of it will 
 produce the right feelings in time. If it 
 does not, it is of little consequence, if only 
 we ha\'e done steadily and honestly what it 
 was our duty to do. For this, as it is the 
 noblest element and the highest motive, is 
 also the one adequate rule of life, "What 
 is right?" "What ought I?" This and 
 not temperament or taste, which may or 
 may not be what they should, is the complete 
 law of life and action and being. 
 
 Obedience to the law of duty is the only 
 way to clear up all our intellectual confusion 
 and perplexities. "Most true is it," says 
 Carlyle in a familiar quotation, "as a wise 
 man teaches us 'that doubt of any sort can- 
 not be removed except by action.' On which 
 ground, too, let him who gropes painfully 
 in darkness or uncertain light, and prays 
 vehemently that the dawn may ripen into 
 day, lay this other precept well to heart, 
 which to us was of invaluable service. 'Do 
 the duty that lies nearest thee,' which thou 
 knowest to be a duty. Thy second duty will 
 already have become clearer." This is cer- 
 tainly a law throughout life. If I have doubt 
 
28 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 as to my ability to learn to swim, I can never 
 resolve the doubt by standing on the bank 
 and arguing about it. It can only be cleared 
 away by my going into the water and mak- 
 ing the effort. And so in higher things. 
 I can never settle the question of the ex- 
 istence of God or the truth of Christianity, 
 by speculation. Even if I am satisfied that 
 the results of my speculation prove the ex- 
 istence of God and the truth of Christianity, 
 both God and Christianity will still be un- 
 realities to me without action. I must ven- 
 ture out upon God. I must put Christianity 
 to the test of life. I must do my duty. And 
 if I do my duty, even if my speculations may 
 have baffled me, I shall issue forth at last. 
 Whoever will do right for right's sake and 
 follow this as a consuming principle will 
 come throusfh to God who is the Right. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 29 
 
 THE HABIT OF DUTY. 11 
 
 DONE steadily, as the law of life, duty 
 prepares men for whatever tests life 
 may bring. These tests, which are 
 God's examinations of the soul, come with- 
 out forewarning, and we may say reverently 
 that there is no cramming for these ex- 
 aminations of God. "The man's whole life 
 preludes the single deed." We do in the 
 crisis what the hidden principles of our 
 career have foredoomed. There are doubt- 
 less exceptions, some real, some apparent, 
 where a profligate life has flowered in a glori- 
 ous self-sacrifice. But shirking duty in the 
 common is no preparation for its perform- 
 ance in the exceptional, and the man who 
 meets his crisis when it comes is the man 
 who made it sure he would meet it by the 
 solid steadiness of his common duty-seeking 
 and duty-doing. This is the path to power 
 and to whatever greatness God has in mind 
 for us. The writer of some dialect reminis- 
 cences of Abraham Lincoln draws out this 
 lesson from the early crisis in that great, plain 
 man's life : 
 
 "I hadn't been watchin' him sweatin' his 
 
30 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 brains on that question (of slavery) for four 
 years without knowin'. I tell you nobody 
 that didn't see him often them days, and 
 didn't care enous^h about him to feel bad 
 when he felt bad, can ever understand what 
 Abraham Lincoln went through before his 
 debates with Douglas. He worked his head 
 day and night tryin' to get that slavery ques- 
 tion figured out so nobody could stump him. 
 Greatest man to think things out so nobody 
 could git around him I ever see. Hadn't 
 any patience with what wa'n't clear. What 
 worried him most, I can see now, was makin" 
 the rest of us understand it like he did. 
 ... I'd figured out by that time that Lincoln 
 was a big man, a bigger man than Stephen 
 A. Douglas. Didn't seem possible to me it 
 could be so, but the more I went over it 
 in my mind the more certain I felt about 
 it. Yes, sir, Ld figured it out at last w^hat 
 bein' big was, that it was bein' right, thinkin' 
 things out straight and then hangin' on to 
 'em because they was right. That was bein' 
 big, and that was Abraham Lincoln all 
 through — the whole of him." 
 
 Doing duty in the small is the road of 
 a man to character. Fret and tempest die 
 out in the life which is solidified and calmed 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 31 
 
 by duty. Consequences may be what they 
 will — of what consequence is it? Our course 
 has been set for us, our star has been given 
 us to steer by. The unseen Captain knows 
 the rest. 
 
 "The more we see of life," wrote Chinese 
 Gordon from Shanghai to his sister in 1880, 
 "'the more one feels disposed to despise one's 
 self and human nature, and the more one 
 feels the necessity of steering by the Pole 
 Star, in order to keep from shipwrecks; in 
 a word, live to God alone. If he smiles on 
 you, neither the smile nor frown of man can 
 affect you. Thank God, I feel myself, in a 
 great measure, dead to the world and its 
 honors, glories and riches. Sometimes I 
 feel this is selfish ; well, it may be so, I claim 
 no infallibility, but it helps me on my way. 
 Keep your eye on the Pole Star, guide your 
 bark of life by that, look not to see how 
 others are steering, enough it is for you 
 to be in the right way." 
 
 Peace and good conscience come from the 
 unity of the life with duty, with the con- 
 ception of life as duty, the vocation of God. 
 It is nowhere more nobly put than in the 
 closing paragraph of Trench's "Study of 
 Words," on "vocation" : 
 
32 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 "What a calming, elevating, ennobling 
 view of the tasks appointed us in this world, 
 this word gives! We did not come to our 
 work by accident ; we did not choose it for 
 ourselves; but, in the midst of much that 
 may wear the appearance of accident and 
 self -choosing, came to it, by God's leading 
 and appointment. How will this consider- 
 ation help us to appreciate justly the dignity 
 of our work, though it were far humbler 
 work, even in the eyes of men, than that of 
 any one of us here present! What an as- 
 sistance in calming unsettled thoughts and 
 desires, such as would make us wish to be 
 something else than that which we are! 
 What a source of confidence, when we are 
 tempted to lose heart, and to doubt whether 
 we shall carry through our work with any 
 blessing or profit to ourselves or to others ! 
 It is our 'vocation,' not our choosing, but 
 our 'calling' ; and he who called us to it, 
 will, if only we will ask him, fit us for it, 
 and strengthen us in it." 
 
 And, to speak of but one other thing, it 
 is the law of duty which gives beauty to life. 
 Sometimes we doubt. Duty seems harsh and 
 domineering and gray. But it is only seem- 
 in e. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 33 
 
 I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; 
 I woke, and found that life was Duty. 
 Was thy dream then a shadowy lie? 
 Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly ; 
 And thou shalt find thy dream to be 
 A truth and noonday light to thee. 
 
 It will be so because beauty is to be found 
 in tliat which duty is, order, fixed principle, 
 obedience to law. 
 
 All these results of duty-seeing and duty- 
 doing are illustrated in the lives of the men 
 who have been known as men of duty. 
 They were seen in Henry Lawrence, whose 
 classic epitaph has nerved multitudes to fol- 
 low the way he went : "Here lies Henry 
 Lawrence who tried to do his duty." They 
 were seen in Chinese Gordon, whose last 
 letter to his sister sent from Khartum ends : 
 "P. S. I am quite happy, thank God, and, 
 like Lawrence, I have 'tried to do my duty.' " 
 They were seen in the Duke of Wellington, 
 of whom one of Robert Louis Stevenson's 
 favorite quotations said, "He did his duty 
 as naturally as a horse eats oats." 
 
 Soldiers are not the only men who have 
 illustrated the iron supremacy of duty. Mis- 
 sionaries have been even nobler representa- 
 tives because all their obedience to duty was 
 personal and moral. Human love, comfort 
 
34 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS/ 
 
 and ambition have whispered to them .n 
 vain to turn back. Often deep disgust at 
 the life in contact with which they had to 
 hve and racial antipathy too deep for any 
 overcoming except the overcoming- of duty, 
 have protested, and perils like the soldier's 
 perils have threatened— all in vain against 
 duty. Nearer home the trained nurse is 
 every day enduring and subduing what it is 
 not the mood of sympathy or any impulse 
 which enables her to meet, but duty only. 
 I know of one who was called just after a 
 serious illness of her own to what she sup- 
 posed was some ordinary case of need, only 
 to find that it was a poor home where three 
 children were sick with scarlet fever and 
 diphtheria. There were no servants. The 
 mother had one of the children with her in 
 the kitchen. The home was unclean. The 
 bed given her was the bed in which one of 
 the children had died and the bed clothing- 
 had not been changed. She stayed and 
 nursed the family. Why? For love's sake? 
 Her soul revolted from the experience she 
 was passing through. She stayed for duty 
 and duty upheld her. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 35 
 
 THE HABIT OF DUTY. HI 
 
 A RECENT newspaper article detailing 
 the enormous sacrifice of life in the 
 industrial progress of Pittsburg bore 
 the gruesome title, "Riches Soaked in 
 Blood." In the first five months of 1907 
 the coroner recorded one thousand and 
 ninety-five deaths, of which three hundred 
 and forty-four came suddenly and violently 
 in the mills and railroads of the city. One 
 life, it was declared, was sacrificed for every 
 fifty thousand tons of coal shipped, one life 
 for every seven thousand tons of iron and 
 steel. Why were these men where death 
 met them prematurely ? They were working 
 for the support of their families or were 
 simply busy with the necessary work of the 
 world, and they died where duty placed them 
 and doing what they thought they must. 
 Somewhere along the line of the production 
 of every fragment of the world's wealth is 
 the blood of a man who fell in his duty with 
 no cry to the world for its praise, but taking 
 what came with his duty as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 How did duty get the power to dominate 
 
36 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 men in this way, and what enables it to assert 
 its power against home and Hfe? Because it 
 is the call of right, and what right bids us 
 to do it is wrong not to do. And right draws 
 its vital authority from God. God is the 
 great personal, living Right, and duty is 
 simply his voice. That is the lofty meta- 
 phor of one of our greatest odes. Let each 
 reader turn to his Wordsworth, and read 
 all of the ode of which these lines are a 
 part : 
 
 Stern Daughter of the Voice of God ! 
 
 O Duty ! if that name thou love 
 Who art a Hght to guide, a rod 
 
 To check the erring, and reprove ; 
 Thou, who art victory and law 
 When empty terrors overawe ; 
 From vain temptations dost set free ; 
 And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! 
 
 Through no disturbance of my soul, 
 
 Or strong compunction in me wrought, 
 I supplicate for thy control ; 
 
 But in the quietness of thought : 
 Me this unchartered freedom tires ; 
 I feel the weight of chance desires : 
 My hopes no more must change their name, 
 I long for a repose that ever is the same. 
 
 Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face: 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 37 
 
 Flowers laugh before time on their beds 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through thee, 
 are fresh and strong. 
 
 Because duty is the right thing, the will 
 of God for man, it is sufficient. For its 
 own sake alone, it asks to be done. Itself 
 is its own reward. It asks no other, and 
 there is surely something pitiful about our 
 practice in these days of rewarding and 
 decorating men for doing their duty. Why 
 should they not? Is duty something it is 
 wonderful to find a man doing, so wonderful 
 that he should get extra pay for it or be given 
 a ribboned medal? Surely Fielding's words 
 in "Tom Thumb the Great" are nobler: 
 
 When I'm not thank'd at all, I'm thank'd enough ; 
 I've done my duty, and I've done no more. 
 
 It is simply our duty to do our duty. It 
 is not the winning of a supererogatory merit 
 with either God or man. It is not a mat- 
 ter of reward. And it is not a matter of 
 comparison with other men's achievements. 
 Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker, was an ex- 
 pert. "I have made hammers," he told Doc- 
 tor Gannett once, "for twenty-eight years." 
 
38 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 "Yon ought to be able to make a pretty good 
 hammer, then, by this time," was the reply. 
 "No, sir!" came the emphatic answer. "I 
 never made a pretty good hammer — I make 
 the best hammer in the United States." This 
 was high, all but the comparison. Duty is 
 not to do better than another man, but to do 
 it all and to the limit on one's own line, for 
 the eye of God, not for the comparing eye 
 of man. But we live now in a competitive 
 day. In school and university and life the 
 rewards are all for exceeding other men. In- 
 dustry is organized on that principle. Our 
 athletics rest on competition with others or 
 with the record of others. It may be doubted 
 whether the good old times were as good 
 as our own times, but the spirit attributed 
 to them ought to be the spirit of all times. 
 
 "O good old man, how well in thee appears 
 The constant service of the antique world, 
 When service sweat for duty, not for meed ! 
 Thou art not for the fashion of these times, 
 When none will sweat but for promotion." 
 
 This high view of duty is our deep need. 
 There is a place for all true sentiment, for 
 temperament and inclination, but the place 
 of control is for duty. We need to acquire 
 the habit of doing the next thing as duty. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 39 
 
 Duty is ever with us and calling to us. It 
 ought to be done by us simply because it is 
 our duty until the thought of evading or 
 shirking duty will never come to us and we 
 do instinctively as though nothing else were 
 possible that which is our duty. The habit 
 of duty should become so fixed with us that 
 we should see nothing but duty. There is 
 a story of an archer who was teaching his 
 art. The mark was a bird in a tree. "What 
 do you see?" the archer asked the first man 
 who came forward to shoot. "I see a bird 
 in a tree," said he. "Stand aside," said the 
 archer. "What do you see?" he said to the 
 second man. "I see a bird," replied he. 
 ''Stand aside," the archer said. "And what 
 do you see?" he asked the third. "I see the 
 head of a bird," said he. "Shoot," the archer 
 cried. We should be blind to all that diverts 
 or obscures. The things that deaden the 
 sense of duty must have no place with us. 
 The "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God" 
 will endure no indulgences which stifle her 
 word in our hearts. 
 
 All duty can be done. What we ought 
 to do is the only thing we can do, if we are 
 what we ought to be. No right is impos- 
 sible. "Let us have faith that right makes 
 
40 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 might," said Lincoln in his speech in New 
 York in 1859, "and in that faith let us dare 
 to do our duty." It can be done, however 
 impossible, just because it is our duty to 
 do it. We must believe this if we have any 
 ear for God at all, for, as Emerson wrote 
 in lines inscribed on the wall of the school- 
 room of the most efficient school for boys in 
 America : 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 V/hen Duty whispers low, Thou must. 
 
 The youth replies, I can ! 
 
 "When I was a boy," said a man recently 
 speaking to boys, "my father gave me a 
 diary on Christmas at the close of a year 
 in which I made changes in my life plans 
 which were at the time a great shock and 
 disappointment to him. He was a reticent 
 man, so that when he did speak we heard. 
 He said little about the matter, but in the 
 diary he had written on the fly leaf, 'March 
 on to duty.' If it led away from his desires, 
 well and good, it was duty which was to 
 be followed wheresoever it led." A new 
 day will break in the Church and the world, 
 in college and home, in public and private life 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 41 
 
 when men "march on to duty/' unfrightened, 
 unseduced, obedient, when they will say and 
 live by their word, "It is my duty to be 
 about my Father's business and to finish the 
 work which he gave me to do." Those men 
 will vanquish death and hell, and, after 
 Christ, will build the walls of the kingdom 
 which is righteousness and duty. 
 
42 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 THE HABIT OF GOOD THINKING 
 
 " TT E was an essentially pure-minded 
 Jj[ man," said Edward Caird of his 
 brother John Caird, the head of the 
 University of Glasgow and one of the great- 
 est speakers and scholars of his day. "to 
 whom no one could speak of anything doubt- 
 ful or equivocal." He was a thinking man 
 and he thought of good things, and his good 
 thinking shaped his character and gave him 
 a good defense against all that was un- 
 worthy and base. Such things stayed away 
 from the man whose mind was always busy 
 and always clean. 
 
 This habit of good thinking is one of the 
 most necessary habits to acquire. We have 
 to think. We can only choose what we will 
 think about and how we will think, whether 
 carefully and consecutively or in disorder 
 and at random. What we think about is the 
 first thing. "I don't know what to do," said 
 a student in one of our colleges. "My father 
 is one of the best of men and my grandfather 
 was a noble man before him, and yet I have 
 such bad thoughts in my mind. I am 
 ashamed of them, and I want to get rid of 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 43 
 
 them." There is good hope that the boy 
 who is ashamed of bad thoughts can get rid 
 of them. If we despise them, and try to 
 make it uncomfortable for them, they will 
 soon go away of their own accord. And we 
 can do this best, not by dwelling upon the 
 wrong thoughts, but by refusing to dwell 
 upon them, by turning the mind, instead, at 
 once to good things. "Try thinking about 
 Christ whenever a bad thought comes," one 
 friend advised another as they sat and talked 
 under the trees on a hill overlooking a river 
 in North Carolina. "Let me hear how the 
 plan works after you have tried it.'' In due 
 time he had the simple answer : "I have tried 
 it. It works." 
 
 Each one of us should have a stock of 
 good thoughts — of places where we have 
 been, of great games we have seen or played 
 in, of rivers where we have fished or forests 
 we have hunted in, of great men we have 
 seen, of books we have read, of bits of poetry 
 or pictures of real deeds of heroism, or of 
 problems of life or politics. These we should 
 have at hand, so as to be able to draw on 
 them at any moment, and thus never 
 be alone with only wasteful or harmful 
 thoughts. And each time we have to make 
 
44 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 a choice between the thoughts that help and 
 those that harm, we need only say, "Now 
 which thoughts are the right ones?" and 
 think those alone. 
 
 But some say that it is hard to control 
 thought. It is at first. That is why the 
 law of habit must be used in the matter of 
 thoughts. Character will show itself in the 
 firm control of our thoughts, and on the 
 other hand, the firm control of our thoughts 
 will breed solid character. We can see this 
 clearly in Mr. Gladstone. "Character," says 
 Mr. John Morley in the "Life of Gladstone," 
 "as has often been repeated, is completely 
 fashioned will, and this superlative require- 
 ment, so indispensable for every man of 
 action in whatever walk and on whatever 
 scale, was eminently Mr. Gladstone's. From 
 force of will, with all its roots in habit, ex- 
 ample, conviction, purpose, sprang his lead- 
 ing and most effective qualities. He was 
 never very ready to talk about himself, but 
 when asked what he regarded as his master 
 secret, he always said, 'Concentration.' 
 Slackness of mind, vacuity of mind, the 
 wheels of the mind revolving without biting 
 the rails of the subject, were insupportable. 
 Such habits were of the family of faint- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 45 
 
 heartedness, which he abhorred. Steady 
 practice of instant, fixed, effectual attention, 
 was the key ahke to his rapidity of appre- 
 hension and to his powerful memory. In 
 the orator's temperament, exertion is often 
 followed by a reaction that looks like indo- 
 lence. This was never so with him. By in- 
 stinct, by nature, by constitution, he was a 
 man of action in all the highest senses of a 
 phrase too narrowly applied and too nar- 
 rowly construed. The currents of daimonic 
 energy seemed never to stop, the vivid sus- 
 ceptibility to impressions never to grow dull. 
 He was an idealist, yet always applying ideals 
 to their purposes in act. Toil was his native 
 element ; and though he found himself pos- 
 sessed of many inborn gifts, he was never 
 visited by the dream so fatal to many a well- 
 laden argosy, that genius alone does all. 
 There was nobody like him when it came 
 to difficult business, for bending his whole 
 strength to it, like a mighty archer string- 
 ing a stiff bow." We do not have the sort 
 of mind Mr. Gladstone had, but we can ap- 
 ply his principles to such minds as we have. 
 And, indeed, it is not great and original 
 thoughts which need to constitute the stuff 
 on which we keep our minds at work. What 
 
46 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 we need is to bring our common experi- 
 ences and necessities under the conscious 
 dominance of simple religious convictions. 
 We shall find problems enough here to tax 
 us and to give our minds all the occupation 
 they are capable of. Even so great a man 
 as John Caird found it so. "The difficulty 
 you talk of is a most real one," he wrote. 
 "I mean that of bringing principles to bear 
 on the common trials and petty anxieties of 
 daily life. Theoretical affliction and submis- 
 sion in a book, or in our solemn and some- 
 times formal words in prayer, are very dif- 
 ferent things from that homely, rugged, 
 hard-featured thing that meets us in the face, 
 when we come down from the clouds to the 
 world of realities, the world of headaches 
 and heartaches, of coarse, uncongenial con- 
 tacts and intercourses. But this is our trial, 
 and the trial which, since the age of perse- 
 cution is passed away, is perhaps the most 
 common and the most difficult to which a 
 Christian is subjected. I know no hope for 
 it but perseverance and prayer. It is the old 
 thought of great principles and small duties 
 and trials, and I need not descant upon it to 
 you. But I am quite convinced that Chris- 
 tian advancement consists in nothing so much 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 47 
 
 as a habit, acquired by long effort and after 
 many struggles and failures, of bringing high 
 religious motive and feeling to bear on the 
 common incidents of life. Don't you envy 
 that state of mind where this has ceased to 
 be a work of effort and conscious toil, when 
 duty becomes a delight, God's presence con- 
 stantly realized without endeavor, and so 
 his service perfect freedom?" This is what 
 comes to those who do bring all their 
 thoughts under control of the obedience of 
 Christ. 
 
 We can help ourselves to acquire the habit 
 of good thinking by persisting in seeing al- 
 ways first the good in people and in things. 
 And we can help ourselves to seeing the 
 good by refusing to speak of the evil unless 
 it is clearly necessary to do so. We do not 
 need to fall into the moral slovenliness of 
 the lines which declare that there is so much 
 bad in the best of us, and so much good in 
 the worst of us, that it scarcely behooves any 
 of us to speak ill of the rest of us. There is 
 ill which needs to be spoken of and spoken 
 against. But for the most part it is the 
 good which needs to be brought out, and 
 we can easily find it and bring it out if we 
 wMsh. Acquiring the habit of doing this 
 
48 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 will react upon our thoughts, and we shall 
 have our minds filled with what is pure and 
 worthy and of good report. 
 
 No habit can give more pleasure at all 
 times than the habit of good thinking. When 
 we are with others it will be the source and 
 ally of the habit of unselfish service, and 
 when we are alone and have no opportunity 
 to serve others, we can be glad and content 
 alone because we have always satisfying re- 
 sources with us. At night, when we lie 
 awake, we are not unemployed. Old Dr. 
 Samuel T. Spear said that he would go over 
 in his mind, as he lay awake, whole books 
 of the Bible. And those whose storehouse 
 is less richly supplied than his, should still 
 have enough there for all hours of solitude. 
 The treasure of good thoughts is better than 
 all other wealth. 
 
 We can begin to acquire the habit of good 
 thinking at once if we do not have it already. 
 The moment we lay down this book we 
 can begin to recall the lessons we learned 
 from it. We can review these in our minds, 
 talk them over with the first people we meet, 
 and begin at once to practice them In our 
 own lives. We can be on the watch and 
 not allow any vagrant thoughts to creep in 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 49 
 
 and lull the mind into indolence. When the 
 evening comes we can read some good book 
 and turn it over in our thought as we get 
 ready for rest. In the morning when we 
 awake, we can turn our minds at once to 
 the last thought of the evening before, and 
 then to the principles by which we are to 
 live the new day. A few days of discipline 
 like this will set our minds toward good 
 ways, and by patient continuance in good 
 thoughts, we shall soon have the habit of 
 them and the peace and strength which come 
 with a mind established in the love and 
 practice of what is good alone. 
 
50 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 THE HABIT OF WISE SPENDING 
 
 I 
 
 DON'T see why it is wrong to gamble 
 at cards," said a student in one of our 
 colleges. "On what ground is it 
 wrong? I do not lose more than I can af- 
 ford to lose and I like the excitement which 
 I get for the money." "Well," said his 
 friend, "I think I see several reasons why it 
 is wrong, but it seems to me that it is enough 
 to say that it is a silly way to spend money. 
 You don't really get anything in return for 
 it. And it is not only silly, it is wickedly 
 wasteful. When there are in every one of 
 our cities, agencies for the care of destitute 
 children and for all kinds of benevolent and 
 useful service, cramped and straitened for 
 funds, when you remember how much good 
 money can do, I think a man has no right 
 to waste his money in gambling." We have 
 no more right to spend wrongly than we have 
 to acquire wrongly. 
 
 This question of the wise spending of our 
 money is fundamental. It is a question of 
 the spending of our life, or of some one's 
 life. For money is life. As Dr. Schauffler 
 said once in an address : 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 51 
 
 "Money is myself. I am a laboring man, 
 we will say, and can handle a pickax, and 
 I hire myself out for a week at two dollars 
 a day. At the close of the week I get twelve 
 dollars and I put it in my pocket. What is 
 that twelve dollars? It is a week's worth of 
 my muscle put into greenbacks and pocketed ; 
 that is, I have a week's worth of myself in 
 my pocket. 
 
 "Now, the moment you understand this, 
 you begin to understand that money in your 
 pocket is not merely silver and gold, but is 
 something human, something that is instinct 
 with power, because it represents power ex- 
 pended. ( If you are not earning any money 
 of your own, and your father is support- 
 ing you, then you are carrying that much 
 of your father around in your pocket.) 
 Now money is like electricity; it is stored 
 power, and it is only a question as to where 
 that power is to be loosed, 
 
 "Do you see what a blessed, what a solemn 
 thing this giving is, this giving of my stored 
 self to my Master? Surely we need, in the 
 matter of giving, consecrated thought as to 
 where to loose ourselves, earnest prayer in 
 the guidance of the choice of where to loose 
 our stored power, and earnest prayer to God 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 to add his blessing to the loosed personality 
 in this money that I have sent abroad, that 
 there may come a tenfold increase because 
 of my personal power that I have sent." 
 What is true of giving is true of all spend- 
 ing. We have no right to be reckless of 
 human life, and yet we are reckless of life 
 when we spend money recklessly. 
 
 The question of saving is simply the ques- 
 tion of spending. Industry and frugality are 
 the simple rules of prosperity. 'Tn order to 
 secure my credit and character as a trades- 
 man," says Benjamin Franklin in his shrewd 
 autobiography, 'T took care not only to be 
 in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid 
 the appearances to the contrary." On these 
 two principles he constantly lays emphasis. 
 Of his printing business in Philadelphia he 
 writes : 
 
 "My circumstances, however, grew daily 
 easier. My original habits of frugality con- 
 tinuing, and my father having, among his 
 instructions to me when a boy, frequently 
 repeated a proverb of Solomon, 'Seest thou 
 a man diligent in his business? he shall 
 stand before kings; he shall not stand be- 
 fore mean men,' I thence considered industry 
 as a means of obtaining- wealth and distinc- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 53 
 
 tion, wliich encouraged me, thoiigli I did 
 not think that I should ever Hterally stand 
 before kings, which, however, has since hap- 
 pened ; for I have stood before five, and even 
 liad the honor of sitting down with one, the 
 King of Denmark, to chnner." 
 
 The fifth and sixth among the virtues he 
 set out to acquire were : 
 
 "Frugality — Make no expense but to 
 do good to others or yourself; that is, waste 
 nothing. 
 
 "Industry — Lose no time ; be always em- 
 ployed in something useful ; cut off all un- 
 necessary actions." 
 
 He tells us of his "Poor Richard's Alma- 
 nac" : 
 
 "I filled all the little spaces that occurred 
 between the remarkable days in the calendar, 
 with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as 
 inculcated industry and frugality, as the 
 means of procuring wealth, and thereby se- 
 curing virtue; it being more difficult for a 
 man in want to act always honestly, as, to 
 use here one of those proverbs, 'It is hard 
 for an empty sack to stand upright.' " 
 
 To be rich is no high ambition, but each 
 of us not only may, but ought to strive to 
 be independent and to provide for others de- 
 
54 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 pendent upon ns. And the way to do this 
 which is open to us is not the earning of 
 large sums of money, but the saving of small 
 sums. If we stop the leaks, the supply will 
 grow. What we thus save is not our treas- 
 ure. That is to be laid up "where neither 
 moth nor rust doth consume, and where 
 thieves do not break through nor steal." If 
 what we save becomes our treasure we are 
 doing wrong. But we are not doing our 
 duty if we carelessly let all that comes to us 
 slip loosely away and do nothing to prepare 
 for our future needs and those of others. 
 Nothing in Old Testament or New excuses 
 any of us from the duties of industry and 
 frugality. 
 
 The virtue of simplicity in spending is 
 rarer now than it was in an earlier day. Then 
 the very conditions of life in our country 
 forced upon the people, except a few, a much 
 sterner economy and more frugal manage- 
 ment than is usual now. Families then prac- 
 ticed both, cultivated an energy and a sim- 
 plicity wl'ich constituted in many a home the 
 finest school of character to be found, and 
 extracted from hard conditions a comfort- 
 able subsistence to the old, and a hard-bought 
 education to the young. In Mrs. Cheney's 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 55 
 
 life of her father, Horace Bushnell, there 
 is a beautiful picture of such a home, and 
 Horace Bushnell himself has described, in 
 a noble speech on "The Age of Homespun,'' 
 the frugality of the home : 
 
 "It was also a great point, in this home- 
 spun mode of life, that it imparted exactly 
 what many speak of only with contempt, 
 a closely girded habit of economy. Har- 
 nessed, all together, into the producing pro- 
 cess, young and old, male and female, from 
 the boy that rode the plow horse to the 
 grandmother knitting under her spectacles, 
 they had no conception of squandering lightly 
 what they all had been at work, thread by 
 thread, and grain by grain, to produce. They 
 knew too exactly what everything cost, even 
 small things, not to husband them carefully. 
 Men of patrimony in the great world, there- 
 fore, noticing their small way in trade or 
 expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to 
 charge them with meanness, simply because 
 they knew things only in the small ; or, 
 what is not far different, because they were 
 too simple and rustic to have any conception 
 of the big operations by which other men 
 are wont to get their money without earning 
 it, and lavish the more freely because it was 
 
56 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 not earned. Still, this knowing life only in 
 the small, it will be found, is really anything 
 but meanness.'' 
 
 Many of the strongest and best men of 
 our country came from such homes and re- 
 gret that their children wnll not have the 
 strong discipline of their fathers. 
 
 Occasionally a strong man who did not 
 grow up in such a homespun home has never- 
 theless a character of exactness and sim- 
 plicity and the will and wisdom to strive to 
 pass it on to his children. In Mr. Morley's 
 "Life of Gladstone," a letter of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's to his son is printed, revealing the 
 man who wrote, and counseling with sound 
 sense, the younger man who was in college 
 at Oxford at the time : 
 
 "i. To keep a short journal of principal 
 employments in each day; most valuable as 
 an account book of the all-precious gift of 
 Time. 
 
 "2. To keep also an account book of re- 
 ceipt and expenditure ; and the least trouble- 
 some way of keeping it is to keep it with 
 care. This done in early life, and carefully 
 done, creates the habit of performing the 
 great duty of keeping our expenditure (and 
 therefore our desires) within our means. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 "3. Read attentively (and it is pleasant 
 reading) Taylor's Essay on Money, which, 
 if I have not done it already, 1 will give you. 
 It is most healthy and most useful reading. 
 
 "4. Establish a minimum number of hours 
 in the day for study, say seven at present, 
 and do not, without reasonable cause, let it 
 be less ; noting down against yourself the 
 days of exception. There should also be a 
 minimum number for the vacations, which 
 at Oxford are extremely long. 
 
 "5. There arises an important question 
 about Sundays. Though we should to the 
 best of our power avoid secular work on 
 Sundays, it does not follow that the mind 
 should remain idle. There is an immense 
 field of knowledge connected with religion, 
 and much of it is of a kind that will be of 
 use in the schools and in relation to your 
 general studies. In these days of shallow 
 skepticism, so widely spread, it is more 
 than ever to be desired that we should 
 be able to give a reason for the hope that 
 is in us. 
 
 "6. As to duties directly rehgious, such 
 as daily prayer in the morning and evening, 
 and daily reading of some portion of the 
 Holy Scripture, or as to the holy ordinances 
 
58 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 of the gospel, there is little need, I am con- 
 fident, to advise you; one thing, however. 
 I would say, that it is not difficult, and it 
 is most beneficial, to cultivate the habit of 
 inwardly turning the thoughts to God, 
 though but for a moment in the course, or 
 during the intervals of our business ; which 
 continually • presents occasions requiring his 
 aid and guidance. 
 
 "Turning again to ordinary duty, I know 
 no precept more wide or more valuable than 
 this : cultivate self-help ; do not seek nor 
 like to be dependent upon others for what you 
 can yourself supply; and keep down as much 
 as you can the standard of your wants, for 
 in this lies a great secret of manliness, true 
 wealth, and happiness ; as, on the other hand, 
 the multiplication of our wants makes us 
 effeminate and slavish, as well as selfish. 
 
 "In regard to money as well as to time, 
 there is a great advantage in its methodical 
 use. Especially is it wise to dedicate a cer- 
 tain portion of our means to purposes of 
 charity and religion, and this is more easily 
 begun in youth than in after life. The great- 
 est advantage of making a little fund of this 
 kind is that when we are asked to give, the 
 competition is not between self on the one 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 59 
 
 hand and charity on the other, but between 
 the different purposes of rehgion and charity 
 with one another, among which we ought to 
 make the most careful choice. It is desirable 
 that the fund thus devoted should not be less 
 than one tenth of our means ; and it tends 
 to bring a blessing on the rest." 
 
 Such care and frugality, as Bushnell said, 
 are not meanness. They are simple honesty. 
 Some people think that all spending is good 
 because it promotes business, and that even 
 extravagance has its excuse in providing 
 labor for those who minister to it. But there 
 is bad and wasteful spending as well as good 
 and helpful spending. Money that is at work 
 employing men at useful production is doing 
 more than money that is lavished on frills 
 and whims whose manufacture can only be 
 capricious. 
 
 Some people want whatever they see. 
 Children are constantly longing for whatever 
 they have not, but see pictures of, or find 
 that other children have. And many 
 grown-up people are like children in this. If 
 they have money they spend it without look- 
 ing forward and asking whether there is 
 not some better use to make of it or some 
 greater need to be met. But having money 
 
60 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 is no reason for throwing it away. It is 
 ours to be used sacredly as a trust. And 
 worse than all this waste of what we have, 
 is the folly of some who spend what they 
 have not, incurring obligations which they 
 cannot discharge. The honest man cannot 
 understand how the dishonest or reckless man 
 can do this, or how doing it, he can hold up 
 his head among his fellows. The duty of 
 wise spending requires us to live within 
 what money we have, and not to spend what 
 we do not have. 
 
 We shall only use money wisely when we 
 can do so habitually, when the right use of 
 each dollar and of each cent of each dollar 
 is a law of our nature. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 61 
 
 THE HABIT OF HOPEFULNESS 
 
 TO be a dreamer and a visionary is to 
 lay one's self open, in this practical 
 day, to some scorn and reproach. 
 "Oh, come now, be practical," is the way we 
 are met if we wander away from things as 
 they are, or seem to expect more from men 
 than ordinary give-and-take conduct. The 
 reformer in politics is laughed at and told 
 that men are what they are and that they 
 must be dealt with as we find them; that 
 they are not open to high patriotic consider- 
 ations, but must be moved by motives potent 
 on their level ; that the dream of a purified 
 state in which men shall act disinterestedly 
 for the good of the nation is a mere imprac- 
 tical dream. The purist in business seems to 
 masses of men to be the same sort of vision- 
 ary. "You cannot be a Christian in business," 
 some man says, "and succeed. If you want 
 to succeed you must act, not on the Golden 
 Rule of the gospel, but on David Harum's 
 version of it, 'Do to the other fellow what 
 he intends to do to you and do it first.' " 
 Altruism, consideration for others who do 
 not take care of themselves and hold their 
 
62 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 own, has no place in the business world, these 
 men argue. The man who believes in an 
 order of love, of thinking first of his broth- 
 er's interests and only afterwards of his 
 own, such a man may be good material for 
 citizenship in heaven, but he is not adapted 
 to membership in the industrial society of 
 this age. And the world smiles in the same 
 way at the idealist in the Church, the man 
 who believes in the unity of the Church and 
 who longs to see that unity realized visibly, 
 who wants to see Christ's followers follow 
 Christ, who does not see why the command 
 of Christ which he said was fundamental, 
 the command to love one's brother better 
 than one's self, cannot be fulfilled, inside the 
 Church, at least. All these are victims, the 
 world thinks, victims of a groundless hope. 
 The world looks at them as Joseph's broth- 
 ers looked at him. "Go to," it says, "let us 
 hear what this dreamer says," Only it has 
 not as much time as Joseph's brothers had 
 and it soon loses patience and leaves the 
 dreamers to compare their dreams, while 
 it goes on its practical way. 
 
 Nevertheless the dreamers have caught the 
 true Christian secret of hope. On the day 
 of Pentecost, Peter pointed out that what had 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 63 
 
 happened that clay carried its own evidence 
 with it, for it had been foretold by the 
 prophets that when the Spirit of God should 
 come, the old men should dream dreams and 
 the young men should see visions. The peo- 
 ple of the true light would be visionaries and 
 dreamers. The old Hebrew ideal had been 
 the ideal of the seer, the man who could 
 look on to the greater things. The supreme 
 habit which the nation acquired during the 
 centuries of its education was the habit of 
 hope, of expectation of the Messiah and of 
 golden age. When the Messiah came, the 
 Jews failed to recognize him and soon lost 
 this hope which passed on to the Christians. 
 The Christians now became the people of the 
 dream, the men and women who saw the 
 higher and the better things and believed 
 they could exist here and now. Christianity 
 proved itself to be of God by the brave way 
 in which it closed its eyes to what prevented 
 the coming of the best things in individual 
 hearts and in the world by its blindness to 
 the despair of the world and by its confident 
 assertion that there was an order of God, 
 that men could and must find it and that the 
 kingdom of God must be on the earth. It 
 would not be discouraged or defeated. God 
 
64 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 lives, it said, and the world is his and he must 
 have it and rule it, and even that which 
 troubles men and seems to them unintelligible 
 has some meaning which will some day ap- 
 pear. Through it good is to be wrought out 
 and hope fulfilled. 
 
 Without hope scarcely anything that we 
 possess that is really worth while would have 
 come to us. All that is in fact, was first in 
 some one's hope before it ever came to be 
 in fact. The world itself existed in the 
 hope of God before it came really to be. 
 "By faith," says the writer of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, "we understand that the 
 worlds have been framed by the word of 
 God, so that what is seen hath not been made 
 out of things which appear." In science the 
 habit of hopefulness is absolutely indis- 
 pensable. The man of science with a great 
 problem, if he assumed that the problem could 
 not be solved and refused to try any appar- 
 ently hopeful solution of it, would never 
 make any progress. All progress is made in 
 science through the use of the "working 
 hypothesis," and the "working hypothesis" 
 is only the hope of a solution to be found 
 along a certain line. If that hope is disap- 
 pointed the real investigator tries another and 
 
A C II K 1 S 1 1 A i\ • b H A B I T S 65 
 
 another and another. He will never give up 
 hope. It is the necessary habit of his mind. 
 It is so also in art and architecture and 
 poetry. What is wrought out by the artist, 
 the architect, the poet, is what he first hoped 
 and dreamed, what he saw in the far-off 
 reachings of his mind. In exploration it is 
 hope alone that sustains men, the hope of 
 the new land to be discovered, a new moun- 
 tain or lake to be found or a river source at 
 last to be traced up. Without an irrepres- 
 sible hope in the soul there could have been 
 no Livingstone, no Whitman, no Columbus. 
 
 How in God's name did Columbus get over 
 
 Is a pure wonder to me, I protest, 
 Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover, 
 Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest. 
 
 Bad enough all the same. 
 
 For them that after came, 
 
 But, in great heaven's name, 
 
 How he should ever think 
 
 That on the other brink 
 Of this wild waste, terra firma should be. 
 Is a pure wonder, I must saj-, to me. 
 
 How a man ever should hope to get thither, 
 
 E'en if he knew that there was another side ; 
 But to suppose he should come anj^ whither. 
 Sailing straight on into chaos untried, 
 In spite of the motion 
 Across the whole ocean. 
 
66 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 To stick to the notion 
 
 That in some nook or bend 
 
 Of a sea without end 
 He should find North and South America, 
 Was a pure madness, indeed I must say, to me. 
 
 What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy, 
 Judged that the earth like an orange was round. 
 None of them ever said, '"Come along, follow me. 
 Sail to the west, and the east will be found." 
 
 Many a day before 
 
 Ever they'd come ashore. 
 
 From the "San Salvador," 
 
 Sadder and wiser men 
 
 They'd have turned back again ; 
 And that he did not, but did cross the sea, 
 Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me. 
 
 Even when things seem to happen, they 
 happen to the seekers, the seers, the men 
 of hope. 
 
 All social, intellectual and moral progress 
 results from the hope of better things than 
 the things that are. A vision is a rent in 
 the sky, a breach in the wall, a gateway 
 through which the larger things pour in. 
 The dreamer is he w^hom Von Sturmer de- 
 scribes in his lines in Richard Jeffries' "Story 
 of My Heart" : 
 
 Dim woodlands made him wiser far 
 
 Than those who thresh their barren thought 
 With flails of knowledge dearly bought. 
 
 Till all his soul shone like a star 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 67 
 
 That flames at fringe of heaven's bar, 
 Where breaks the surge of space unseen 
 Against Hope's veil that hangs between 
 
 Love's future and the woes that are. 
 
 There are men who reahze that nothing that 
 is can be accepted as the final tiling until at 
 last the perfect is come, the longed-for and 
 hoped-for best thing of God. 
 
 The strength of life is to be found in the 
 depth and height of our hopes. Garibaldi 
 and Mazzini dreamed of an Italy united and 
 free and were strong to lead and achieve 
 because the hope they cherished held them 
 so firmly. And Horace Bushnell was so great 
 a preacher because the habit of a mighty hope 
 in the gospel enthralled his soul. He saw 
 great things in God, and what he saw in God 
 he strove to bring out in speech for men. 
 All great preachers must be men of hope. 
 The world cannot be won to despair. It is 
 true that great multitudes of men hold to 
 hopeless religions like Buddhism, but they 
 cannot hold to them contentedly. The out- 
 reaching of the soul for larger and better 
 things cannot easily be suppressed. Men are 
 waiting for a hopeful word, and the religion 
 and the preachers who can speak it to them 
 control the future. All ereat leaders of men 
 
68 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 must have somewhere to lead men. Their 
 goal must be a hope, and the courage and 
 patience of all struggle will depend on the 
 faith and strength of our forward dream. A 
 man without resources of his own takes up 
 a tunnel scheme which has failed and by the 
 indomitable perseverance of his hope enlists 
 other men and means, and the enterprise 
 which connects two great states by a tunnel 
 under a great river is at once called after 
 his name by the public which benefits by 
 the victory of his hopefulness. The assur- 
 ance that he would find that which he sought 
 carried Livingstone through hardship enough 
 to destroy any ordinary man of hopeless 
 heart. Paul dreamed of a universal Church, 
 and his hope accomplished itself over every 
 obstacle of race and language. The hope 
 that the Campbells would come, and a half- 
 demented girl's conviction that they were 
 coming and that she heard their pipers, up- 
 held the men at Lucknow, whom nothing but 
 hope could save, until Havelock came. Our 
 own teachers would have given us up long 
 ago if it were not for their hope that in spite 
 of ourselves we could become something. 
 
 The best things of our lives are not our 
 possessions, but our hopes. We can be bet- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 69 
 
 ter men and women than we arc. The 
 divinest reahties are the purposes of God 
 for us which are not yet fulfilled, which are 
 among our distant hopes. And in these 
 hopes the comfort of life is to be found, the 
 things which we have not attained as yet 
 and cannot understand, but to which w^e hope 
 to come. Our hymns and poems tell us this : 
 
 Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing, 
 The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea ; 
 
 And laden souls, by thousands meekly stealing. 
 Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to thee. 
 
 So Faber puts it and so does Newman : 
 
 So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still 
 
 Will lead me on 
 O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 
 
 The night is gone ; 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile. 
 Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. 
 
 And so R W. H. Myers, in "St. Paul" : 
 
 What can we do o'er whom the unbeholden 
 Hangs in a night with which we cannot cope? 
 What but look sunward and with faces golden 
 Speak to each other softly of a hope. 
 
 No habit, after the habit of truth, is more 
 necessary to man than the habit of hope. 
 Whether or not we can acquire that habit will 
 determine for us whether we shall be strong 
 and glad, and leaders of men to better things. 
 
70 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 THE HABIT OF DOING THINGS 
 NOW 
 
 IN his book entitled "The Happy Life," 
 ex-President Eliot of Harvard quotes 
 the question of Emerson, asking what 
 use immortality would be to a man who does 
 not know how to live half an hour. Im- 
 mortality, in the popular view, is just an 
 ^endless number of half hours tied together, 
 one after the other. What would a man 
 do with a million of them who did not know 
 what to do with one? And of what use to 
 anyone will be a great, long-dreamed-of op- 
 portunity for heroism or service, unless prep- 
 aration has been made for it by such heroism 
 and service in the things that went before? 
 All these questions only bring out clearly the 
 true principle of life; namely, that living 
 now is the only living, that we ought to use 
 rightly each moment and fill it full of true 
 work and duty-doing. 
 
 This is the only sensible and workable 
 principle. Any other is impossible. You 
 cannot speak two words at the same time and 
 you cannot do two acts, each requiring the 
 whole personality, at once. There is no way 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 71 
 
 in which we can pull back into the present 
 an hour that is past, to do its work over 
 again, and there is no way in which we can 
 draw down into the present an hour out of 
 the future, in order to live it now. Living 
 now is the only living. Thinking of past 
 life or of life to come is not living. The 
 chance to live goes by while we are thinking 
 about it. We cannot break off an immense 
 achievement and do it at any one given time. 
 We can only live one moment at a time and 
 do at one time the work that can be put in 
 one moment. Life ceases to be such a com- 
 plicated and impracticable thing when we 
 realize this and are willing to live moment 
 by moment. 
 
 It is vitally important that we should 
 realize that the law of life is living now. The 
 kind of life we are living is producing the 
 sort we shall live forever. We may well 
 believe that death brings a mighty change, 
 but it is a change of sphere and of condition, 
 not of character. We shall be what we are. 
 The kind of things we do now and the way 
 we do them now will not suddenly undergo 
 a change. We shall keep right on. The 
 boy or girl who is now negligent and shift- 
 less and untruthful is likely to go on living 
 
72 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 SO in the future. If any boy or girl is prompt, 
 alert, faithful now, the habit of using life 
 for living, of doing things in the only time 
 we ever have to do them in, namely, now, 
 will get so established that the boy or girl 
 will go right on, really living always. 
 
 And this plan is the restful one. It saves 
 us from the dread, the paralyzing intimida- 
 tion and surrender of the soul on account of 
 life's bigness. We realize that we do not 
 have to live our years all at once, that all that 
 we have to do is the one thing that we can 
 do, merely live our lives a bit at a time. And 
 so we save ourselves also from the miseries 
 of memory and the terrors of our imagination 
 of the future by the simple plea of being 
 absorbed in present duty. Nine tenths of 
 the wretchedness of our lives does not spring 
 from the present. It springs from brooding 
 over the past and the things in the past 
 which are beyond recall, or it comes from 
 apprehensions of the future, most of which 
 never arrive. In other words, we lose our 
 lives in thinking of how we did live or failed 
 to live in the past, or how we will live in the 
 future. But this is missing the chance to 
 live, and so we die under the thoughts of 
 life. This is why life grows so uneasy and 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 73 
 
 fretful. Let ns stop all this and spend each 
 moment in really living. 
 
 By doing this we accjuire power for future 
 living. Lamentation about the quality of 
 our past living or great purposes about future 
 living will only weaken us unless they are 
 expressed in a better and firmer quality of 
 present living. And if we get into the habit 
 of living strongly now we shall live that 
 way hereafter without thinking about it. If 
 we do the things that ought to be done now, 
 we shall do them then. The great authori- 
 ties in any department are the men who grew 
 into authority gradually. They did . what 
 each moment brought to them, and so, after 
 a while, no moment brought to them any- 
 thing which they could not do. The world 
 soon found that out, and straightway began 
 to bring everything in their line to them. 
 "We become authorities and experts in the 
 practical and scientific spheres," writes one 
 who was himself an authority, an expert, "by 
 so many separate acts and hours of work. 
 Let no youth have any anxiety about the up- 
 shot of his education, whatever the line of 
 it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each 
 hour of the working day, he may safely leave 
 the final result to itself. He can with per- 
 
74 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 feet certainty count on waking up some fine 
 morning to find himself one of the competent 
 ones of his generation in whatever pursuit 
 he may have singled out. Silently, among 
 the details of his business, the power of judg- 
 ing in all that class of matter will have built 
 itself up within him as a possession that will 
 never pass away." 
 
 In this way also life achieves results. 
 National greatness is a product of slow edu- 
 cation, not of great efforts. Germany and 
 the United States and Japan have forged 
 ahead of other nations as they have, not be- 
 cause of national energy or of any sudden 
 effort, but as the result of a careful and 
 thorough public-school system which has 
 trained the people. No emergency effort on 
 the part of other nations can offset this ad- 
 vantage. They will have to begin now where 
 we began years ago and do some living in 
 the present, instead of spending time dream- 
 ing of the past or the future. And with in- 
 dividuals as with nations, results are sums 
 in arithmetic. The big, personal tasks, 
 whether in character or in work, are not 
 done wholesale, but are built up piece by 
 piece, just as the little coral insects build the 
 reefs or the ants their huge mounds. "Do 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 things now," is the way to get many and 
 great things done. 
 
 But while this principle is the key to the 
 achievement of great resuhs, it is not the 
 greatness of the results which is of signifi- 
 cance, but the spirit and purpose and the pro- 
 cess which produced them. A political writer 
 has recently compared Gladstone, Bismarck 
 and Cavour to the disadvantage of Gladstone 
 on the ground that he erected no new state 
 as each of the others did. But the results of a 
 man's work are dependent upon the circum- 
 stances and materials in the midst of which 
 his life fell. Not what it added up to, but 
 how he lived it, how faithfully, persistently, 
 unselfishly, is the great question regarding 
 each life. What was the quality and intent- 
 ness of his living? 
 
 In practicing this principle of "Do it now," 
 which was Dr. Babcock's motto, the rule of 
 "Living now the only living," there are two 
 things that will help. One is, of two duties 
 always do the harder one first. Do not sub- 
 stitute an easier thing for a hard one. And 
 the other is, check all unreal daydreams. 
 Don't live in the past. Don't live in the 
 future. Thinking backward and forward is 
 necessarv, but now is the living time, and 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 we have memory and imagination that by 
 them we may learn the lessons of the past 
 and draw upon the inspiration of the future 
 for the needs of present living. 
 
 This was the method of Jesus. His life 
 seems at times almost to have had no plan. 
 He stopped to spend hours with any inquir- 
 ing heart. He was impatient at no inter- 
 ruption. He seized each moment's oppor- 
 tunity for living purposes. He put out his 
 life incessantly. He actually lived. And 
 God unrolled the wonderful drama of his 
 life. He did, moment by moment, his 
 Father's will. "While it is day," was his 
 motto. Therefore he was at rest. "The 
 Father . . . hath not left me alone ; for 
 T do always the things that are pleasing to 
 him." This should be our law and our life. 
 
 Are you in earnest? 
 
 Seize this very minute. 
 What you can do 
 
 Or think vou can, begin it. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 77 
 
 THE HABIT OF HIGH-MINDEDNESS 
 
 EACH mind has an altitude of its own. 
 Some move on low levels. The 
 thoughts which come to them are low 
 thoughts, sometimes evil, sometimes vain, 
 sometimes merely trifling. Such minds seek 
 what they like. Serious conversation and 
 books are unattractive to them. They go 
 where they can find what is not to their dis- 
 like, where stories are told and language 
 spoken which involve no tax upon thought 
 and which feed the tastes of a low-leveled 
 life. As between the library and the grill 
 room, the solid book and the empty story, 
 the talk of men about real questions and life 
 and the chaff and gossip of the scandal- 
 spreader and fool-jester, they choose the 
 lower down. There are many other levels 
 below and above this. The highest is the 
 level of the men who try to bring all their 
 thoughts and tastes into conformity with the 
 best, who by always choosing the upper and 
 better have sought to acquire the habit of 
 a high mind, to which evil thoughts do not 
 naturally come and by which they are re- 
 jected when they do come. Such men hope 
 
78 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 some day to come to the height of character 
 set forth in Daniel's "Epistle to the Countess 
 of Cumberland" : 
 
 He that of such a height has built his mind, 
 And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, 
 As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame 
 Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind 
 Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong 
 His settled peace, or to disturb the same : 
 What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may 
 The boundless wastes and wealds of man survey ! 
 
 And with how free an eye doth he look down 
 
 Upon these lower regions of turmoil ! 
 
 Where all the streams of passion mainly beat 
 
 On flesh and blood ; where honor, power, renown, 
 
 Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ; 
 
 Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet. 
 
 As frailty doth ; and only great doth seem 
 
 To little minds, who do it so esteem. 
 
 How may we hope to attain to such high- 
 mindedness that our thoughts will be always 
 elevated and worthy, firm and consecutive, 
 that our minds may be busy in good things 
 and ready always for hard tasks ? 
 
 Substantial reading will help us toward 
 high-mindedness. It will give us a body of 
 good thoughts. The mind will inevitably 
 be employed upon something. If it is not 
 employed upon what is good and high, it 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 79 
 
 will resort to what is evil and low. The 
 radical weakness of human nature appears in 
 the tendency of our minds and hearts to 
 drop. There is a law of moral gravity as 
 well as a law of physical gravity. Unless 
 the mind is borne up, given good nourish- 
 ment from without, it will drop into empty 
 imaginings, or evil will slip in to fill the 
 place which belongs to good. Occasionally 
 "a full man," such as Lord Bacon had in 
 mind, may be made by meditation, but as 
 a rule he is made only, as Bacon said, by 
 reading. To be high-minded we shall have 
 to read substantial books. It is all right to 
 read books of different kinds. The mind 
 needs them. Dr. Thomas Arnold was very 
 positive about this. "Keep your view of 
 men and things attentive," he urged, "and 
 depend upon it that a mixed knowledge is 
 not a superficial one. As far as it goes the 
 views that it gives are true, but he who reads 
 deeply in one class of writers only, gets views 
 which are almost sure to be perverted, and 
 which are not only narrow but false. Ad- 
 just your proposed amount of reading to 
 your time and inclination — this is perfectly 
 free to every man ; but whether that amount 
 be laree or small, let it be varied in its kind 
 
80 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 and widely varied. If I have a confident 
 opinion on any one point connected with the 
 improvement of the human mind it is on 
 this." When people read at all nowadays, 
 however, this is not usually the warning they 
 need. Their difficulty is their diffuse read- 
 ing. What we need is more concentration 
 on a few great books which we shall master 
 and store in the mind. This will elevate its 
 level. 
 
 A wise use of conversation uplifts the 
 mind. Perhaps sometimes we feel that we 
 have nothing to give. Often the atmosphere 
 of a conversation seems to congeal our 
 minds. We feel a self-consciousness and un- 
 naturalness which strikes us dumb. At such 
 times we can at least draw out others. To 
 appreciate their point of view, to draw out 
 what cargo their minds carry, will quicken 
 and exalt our own minds. Even where other 
 people have no reasoned opinion to share 
 with us they have had their histories, their 
 experiences of life. They came from a definite 
 childhood environment. All that we can 
 draw out of them will enrich them in the 
 giving and will help to ennoble the tone 
 of our own minds if we view it with 
 sympathy. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 81 
 
 Each day has its opportunities for the en- 
 richment of memory. "I know over a hun- 
 dred poems and Psahiis now," said an old 
 man of humble circumstances but of a high 
 mind. "I memorize them on the cars and 
 whenever I can, and they make me ver}* 
 rich." A low mind cannot long remain low 
 when filled with the great words which can- 
 not be kept down, which soar aloft toward 
 God. Each of these words displaces some 
 other. The mind has elastic capacities, but 
 its working sections are limited and they 
 can be preempted or reclaimed by what is 
 great and good. 
 
 The high-minded man will use rightly and 
 yet with strong control the floods of news- 
 paper and magazine literature of the day. 
 Chinese Gordon at one time stopped his 
 newspapers altogether, and many people 
 would be better off without them. They fill 
 the mind with low and trivial interests and 
 they degrade its tone. The highest type of 
 mind cannot be produced from a diet of 
 periodical literature. It can use the papers 
 that pass in the night, but its light will be 
 thrown on them, not drawn from them. 
 
 Loving true judgments and sound knowl- 
 eds:e for their own sake and not for the sake 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 of the commercial uses to which they can 
 be put, exalts the mind. The mind that 
 dwells with the truth and that ever travels 
 with it will always have truth to give, but 
 the gift will be the richer because free and 
 not calculated, because it flows from a foun- 
 tain stored up for its own sake. The love 
 of truth gives the mind its fullest elevation 
 and freedom. 
 
 The mind is helped to a higher level by 
 an attitude of appreciation and good will. 
 If we are ever looking for what we dislike 
 and disapprove we shall soon feel the down- 
 pull of such an attitude upon the tone of the 
 mind. That which we despise the mind 
 should reject, but its lookout should always 
 be for the things to which it can assent. In 
 every conversation it will give most and 
 gain most by picking out what it can ap- 
 prove. If we watch ourselves we shall soon 
 discover how practical and searching this 
 principle is. The mind soon takes a hint, 
 and when it learns that it is to see what is 
 fair and to be blind to all else, it will re- 
 spond to the appeal of higher things which 
 this law addresses to it and will uplift itself. 
 
 We must check also in the interest of the 
 highest-mindedness all useless and evil 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 83 
 
 vagaries of the imagination. The im- 
 agination is a great wanderer. It lox-es to 
 stray everywhere. There is no nook or 
 cranny of the universe where it does not go, 
 and many of its journeys are wasteful or 
 worse. It goes down into low places and 
 drags the mind with it. The high mind must 
 lay a law upon the imagination and keep it 
 on the heights. 
 
 The highest things in the world are prin- 
 ciples. Whoever associates with principles 
 is in the loftiest company. The mind which 
 wants to be higher should be directed toward 
 principles. Each new principle which it 
 finds and fixes is a new anchorage to the 
 highest. When we have defined to ourselves 
 duty and truth and purity and unselfishness, 
 w^e have bound our minds to the noblest we 
 can know. They will be high minds as long 
 as they do not forget. 
 
 And no principles wnll more elevate the 
 mind than the principle of prayer and the 
 principle of Christ. Prayer checks all down- 
 ward movement of the mind and spreads out 
 over its every part the upward pulling of the 
 Spirit of God. And Christ is the great prin- 
 ciple of exaltation. He is more than that ; 
 he is the Person who lifts. 'T, if I be lifted 
 
84 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 up from the earth," he said, "will draw all 
 men unto myself." And to be a Christian 
 is to have the lower levels shut to us while 
 the mind seeks the things that are above, 
 where Christ is. He has now been lifted 
 up and the mind of the Christian must be 
 with him, on the high levels of God. 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 85 
 
 THE HABIT OF HIGH-MINDED 
 LOWLINESS 
 
 HIGH-MINDEDNESS never shows it- 
 self more unmistakably than in the 
 humility of true unselfishness. The 
 noblest illustration of this is found in the 
 incident of the Saviour's washing the dis- 
 ciples' feet on the evening of the night of his 
 betrayal. "Jesus, knowing that the Father 
 had given all things into his hands," says 
 John, "and that he came forth from God, and 
 goeth unto God, riseth from supper, and 
 layeth aside his garments ; and he took a 
 towel, and girded himself. Then he poureth 
 water into a basin, and began to wash the 
 disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the 
 towel wherewith he was girded." As a 
 simple statement of fact this is beautiful and 
 wonderful, but it is more than a statement 
 of fact. It is a spiritual interpretation. 
 Jesus rose and stooped. That is the fact. 
 But he rose and stooped "knowing that he 
 came forth from God, and goeth unto God." 
 That is the deep spiritual interpretation. 
 
 We see here first of all the relation of 
 belief to conduct, of thought to action. His 
 
86 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 deed sprang from his mindedness. His deed 
 was lowly because his mindedness was high. 
 What we hold theoretically is bound to de- 
 termine what we do practically. It is so in 
 the sciences and arts. The results flow from 
 theory, and the theory determines the results. 
 At a Yale alumni dinner some years ago, 
 Mr. Julian Kennedy, a famous oarsman in 
 his day and now one of the leading blast- 
 furnace engineers, took issue with the 
 modern demand for practical technical train- 
 ing as against the old-fashioned theoretical 
 type. He defended the Sheffield Scientific 
 School for preserving old-time traditions in- 
 stead of making its courses manual, work- 
 shop courses. "It is the man who knows 
 the theory who does the thing," said he. *Tt 
 is the true theory that counts. The man who 
 designed the guns used on the American 
 ships in the Spanish War never had any ex- 
 perience with a hammer and bench, and he 
 did not see the guns cast. It was all purely 
 theoretical. But when the guns went off 
 the results were not theoretical." And so 
 in all great modern buildings. The en- 
 gineers sit in their offices and figure and draw 
 on paper. In mills which they do not visit, 
 the girders are made. On ground which 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 87 
 
 they have never seen the material is as- 
 sembled and the bridge or the sky-scraper is 
 reared, each piece fitting each other piece, 
 and the whole great structure falling prac- 
 tically together from mere thecM-etical draw- 
 ings. The result flows from the mindedness 
 of the engineer. And wdiat is true in these 
 arts is true also in the art of life. - There 
 as truly as in the physical sciences results de- 
 pend upon our theories, what we do upon 
 what w-e think. Professor James begins his 
 lectures on "Pragmatism" with a quotation 
 from Mr. Chesterton's "Heretics," in which 
 he sets forth his conviction : "There are 
 some people," says Mr. Chesterton, "and I 
 am one of them, who think that the most 
 practical and important thing about a man 
 is still his view of the universe. We think 
 that for a landlady considering a lodger it 
 is important to know his income but still 
 more important to know his philosophy. . . . 
 We think the question is not whether the 
 theory of the cosmos affects matters, but 
 wdiether in the long run anything else affects 
 them." And Professor James adds : "I 
 think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I 
 know that you ladies and gentlemen have a 
 philosophy, each and all of you, and that 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 the most interesting and important thing 
 about you is the way in which it determines 
 the perspective in your several worlds." 
 
 What kind of mind we have will determine 
 what kind of deeds we do, and it is primarily 
 upon these questions on which Jesus had a 
 certain mind that all depends. He knew his 
 origin and his destiny. In a note in one 
 of his books, Ruskin says there are three 
 great questions which confront every soul : 
 "Where did I come from? What can I 
 know? Where am I going?" What we do 
 depends on what our mind is with regard to 
 these. We shall serve men in the spirit of 
 God if we have a mind high enough to realize 
 its heavenly origin and heavenly destiny. 
 
 We see also in this incident in Jesus' life 
 power conscious of itself but used in serv- 
 ice. That is the end of power. The supreme 
 virtue of machinery is docility. The history 
 of civilization is only the story of the taming 
 of force, the bending of the power of nature 
 to obedience. Just so Jesus regarded living 
 power. It was a thing to be used. "There- 
 fore doth the Father love me, because I lay 
 down my life," he said. "I have power to 
 lay it down, and I have power to take it 
 again." It was this possession of limitless 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 89 
 
 power all subjugated to unselfishness which 
 made Jesus so calm and steadfast. He had 
 the habit of lofty-minded self-forgetfulness. 
 Such self-forgetfulness and unselfishness 
 are a sign of confidence in one's own posi- 
 tion, an evidence of easy noble-mindedness. 
 It is the noble who dare be lowly. Jesus with 
 his full knowledge of his origin and destiny 
 in God would stoop to any lowliness. He 
 was high-minded enough to dare. It is told 
 by one of the childhood friends of the late 
 Walter Lowrie, who was drowned at New- 
 port in 1 90 1, just at the threshold of his 
 career, that "one summer several young peo- 
 ple, some guests of the family, and the 
 Lowrie boys were waiting outside the Tyrone 
 station for a train. A wretched-looking wo- 
 man with a little baby in her arms, carrying 
 a traveling bag, came past, with another lit- 
 tle child hardly able to walk clinging to her 
 skirts and following as best it could. One 
 of the boys, half in earnest, probably, yet 
 thinking it was hke Walter, said, 'There's 
 your chance,' and without hesitation Walter 
 spoke to the woman, picked up the child and 
 carried it over to the branch train and onto a 
 car. It was always rather crowded round 
 the station in the afternoon, and Walter came 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 back looking- a little foolish, not because he 
 minded being seen by so many, but rather, 
 T think, because we could not help showing 
 that we thought it fine of him, and he had 
 a horror of showing off." He was sure 
 enough of his social position to dare to stoop. 
 A high mind bred a lowly love. 
 
 And is there not a self-revelation in 
 haughtiness and pride? Where there is no 
 lowly love we know there is no true high- 
 mindedness. The people who are priggish 
 and snobbish, who act discourteously, betray 
 an origin and a destiny very different from 
 the Saviour's, who rose and stooped. 
 
 And deeds not only reveal our minds, 
 haughty deeds low minds and lowly deeds 
 lofty minds, but deeds also help to make 
 minds. Humble and loving acts will help to 
 make us high-minded. 
 
 Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend 
 
 And see the Father's face. 
 To all his children humbly bend 
 
 And seek the lowest place. 
 Thus humbly doing on the earth 
 
 What things the lofty scorn 
 Thou shalt assert the noble birth 
 
 Of all the lowly born. 
 
 On the other hand, unlowly conduct is a 
 source of deterioration of mind and charac- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 91 
 
 ter. That was why the best sentiment of 
 the South disapproved of slavery. It might 
 or might not be bad for the slave. It was 
 unmistakably bad for the slaveholder. No 
 man was fit to own another man. The sense 
 of ownership of a man could not be good 
 for the man who owned him. And so haz- 
 ing, often good for the hazed, is invariably 
 bad for the hazer. All use of power that 
 is not humble and unselfish is bad for high- 
 mindedness. The possession of it is pre- 
 sumption not for its wnllful exercise, but for 
 its restraint. We have it only as a trust. 
 
 Naught that I have nn- own I call, 
 
 I hold it for the Giver. 
 My heart, my life, my strength, my all, 
 
 Are his and his forever. 
 
 He who feels this and acts upon it is the 
 truly high-minded man. 
 
92 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 THE HABIT OF NOT DAWDLING 
 
 THE habit of not dawdling is one of the 
 most needed and most useful Chris- 
 tian habits. A dawdler can't really 
 make a good Christian. If he does, he in- 
 variably ceases to be a dawdler. 
 
 Plenty of boys and girls who are now 
 dawdlers have in them the making of good 
 Christians, and one of the first signs of their 
 real purpose to be Christians will be the lay- 
 ing aside of all dawdling. Some boys take 
 twice as long to run an errand as it ought 
 to take and waste a great deal of time mak- 
 ing up their minds to run it. Some girls 
 are so slow in dressing that their mothers 
 have to do a great many things which their 
 daughters could have done for them if they 
 had only been prompt and quick. A great 
 deal of time and patience is wasted by 
 dawdlers. 
 
 And as a rule the dawdlers are the very 
 people who complain most when other peo- 
 ple dawdle and inconvenience them. If the 
 postman loiters along the way and delivers 
 the mail late, if the train is slow and does 
 not arrive on time, if the coachman who was 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 93 
 
 to meet the train lounges about his work and 
 is not there, no one is more impatient than 
 the very people who always dawdle them- 
 selves and who are now vexed at nothing 
 l)ut the very principle on which they them- 
 selves act, the principle of dallying with one's 
 work instead of doing it. 
 
 There is a good word for all dawdlers 
 in the Second Book of Samuel. It was after 
 the long war between the house of Saul and 
 the house of David. At last Abner re- 
 volted from the house of Saul and sent word 
 to the elders of Israel, saying, "In times past 
 ye sought for David to be king over you : 
 now then do it." That was the manly way 
 to talk. "Now then do it." Duties are 
 not to be talked about, they are to be done. 
 In our work and our warfare with evil and 
 in our home duties and our achievement of 
 character, the word for us is Abner's word, 
 "Do it." 
 
 It is fooJish to dawdle because of fear 
 that we cannot do. The only way that 
 we can find out whether we can or not is 
 to try at once and to try hard. And all that 
 we ought we can. There is no such thing 
 as impossibility in the line of our divinely 
 assigned work. General Armstrong used to 
 
94 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 scorn the idea of impossibility. At an In- 
 dian Rights conference at Lake Mohonk he 
 once' leaped up, when some one had pro- 
 nounced a certain righteous course of action 
 as impossible, with the words : "Impossible ! 
 What are Christians in the world for but 
 to achieve the impossible by the help of 
 God?" As he went about in behalf of 
 Hampton Institute he was constantly com- 
 pelled to do what could not be done. "Once," 
 he said, "there was a woodchuck and a dog || I 
 got after him. Now woodchucks can't climb 
 trees, but this one had to, so up he went." 
 And another time, when he simply had to 
 get money for the school, he told of an old 
 negro who was seen digging in a tree for 
 a 'possum. Some one told him there was 
 no 'possum there. "Ain't no 'possum in dat 
 hole?" said the old man. "Dey's just got 
 to be, 'cause dey's nuffin' in de house for 
 supper." 
 
 Men always can. "I can do all things in 
 him that strengtheneth me," declared Paul. 
 There were, of course, things which he did 
 not do. There are things which we cannot 
 do. But the only way to find out is to try, 
 and if we try we shall find that we can do 
 everything that we ought to do. There is 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 95 
 
 no excuse for dawdling because we can't 
 perform. 
 
 The best cure is to begin at once. In the 
 matter of character-building, where daw- 
 dling is most deadly and most easy, we can 
 begin now by cutting off some indulgence, 
 or by taking on some new practice, such as 
 prayer at a fixed hour or a new attitude in 
 prayer which will break up dawdling habits. 
 Or we can deal with our speech, and by 
 making it clear and right and instant, help 
 to confirm the habit of straightforwardness. 
 
 But the difficulty with most dawdlers is 
 not the difficulty of beginning, but the diffi- 
 culty of keeping at it. They are like the son 
 in the parable who said promptly, 'T go, 
 sir," and went not. They are ready to make 
 a start, but they soon stop to rest or to think 
 of something else or to look out of the win- 
 dow or to wish that the task were done. 
 They are like the Bandar-log, the Monkey 
 People who are always dreaming and wish- 
 ing that things could be done just by wish- 
 ing that they w'ere done, who never stick at 
 anything long enough to complete it, but 
 always are carried off by some new scheme. 
 
 There is a character in the "Jungle Book" 
 who was no dawdler. That was Rikki-tikki- 
 
96 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 tavi. When he saw something- to be done 
 he did it, and when he took hold he did not 
 let go. Woe to Rikki-tikki if in his fight 
 with Nag he had released his hold on the 
 big cobra's head, and woe to the family in 
 the bungalow if he had dawdled in taking 
 hold. 
 
 In our struggle for character we must not 
 be frightened into letting go. We shall 
 certainly be lifted up higher before we get 
 through than we had ever dared to hope to 
 go, but we are not to fear. The Saviour 
 of whom we have taken hold has taken hold 
 of us with his divine grasp and he means to 
 raise us far above all that is low in life and 
 at last to lift us sheer into his home above. 
 We ought not to be fearful. 
 
 Jesus when he was here was looking for 
 men who would not dawdle. His own life 
 was full of eager, unhesitating action, and 
 he called men to come to him in the same 
 spirit, and straightway they rose up and left 
 all and followed him. That was the kind of 
 disciple he desired. And he taught these 
 men how to act as the workmen of God. 
 prompt, eager, ready for opportunity, quick 
 to do every duty. 
 
 In life and work we are not to be as those 
 
 ,_> 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 97 
 
 who are asleep, who begin, perhaps wake- 
 fully, but soon dawdle off again. We are 
 to watch and work as the children of the 
 day. Our Captain's appeal to us is the old 
 
 hymn : 
 
 Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve, 
 
 And press with vigor on ; 
 A heavenly race demands thy zeal, 
 
 And an immortal crown. 
 
 A cloud of witnesses around 
 
 Hold thee in full survey : 
 Forget the steps already trod, 
 
 And onward urge thy way. 
 
 'Tis God's all-animating voice 
 t r That calls thee from on high ; 
 
 1 1 'Tis his own hand presents the prize 
 
 I * To thine aspiring eye : 
 
 That prize with peerless glories bright, 
 
 Which shall new luster boast, 
 When victors' wreaths and monarchs' gems 
 
 Shall blend in common dust. 
 
 Blest Saviour, introduced by thee. 
 
 Have I my race begun ; 
 And, crowned with glory, at thy feet 
 
 I'll lay my honors down. 
 
 I. 
 
98 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 THE HABIT OF DECISION 
 
 T 
 
 HE word decision occurs in only one 
 ^ place in the Bible. That is in the third 
 t \ chapter of Joel. "Multitudes, multi- 
 
 tudes in the valley of decision ! for the day 
 of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision." 
 This was the valley where issues were set- 
 ' ' tied and judgment was to be passed. To 
 
 ; ', that momentous time Jehovah was bringing 
 
 ■ 1 the nations. In that valley is where all men 
 ' j ever are. 
 
 ■ : And so, though the word occurs only here, 
 i in the prophecy of Joel, the idea of the sig- 
 nificance of our choices, and the importance 
 and supremacy of the act and character of 
 decision, is everywhere in the Bible. God 
 is shown to us as the great chooser, the One 
 who deals with men and nations with posi- 
 tive and firm decision. He is spoken of thus 
 twenty-eight times in Deuteronomy alone. 
 And the true man is set forth as the chooser. 
 "I have chosen the way of faithfulness," he 
 
 !• says. "Thine ordinances have I set before 
 
 me. I cleave unto thy testimonies : . . . Let 
 thy hand be ready to help me ; for I have 
 chosen thy precepts." This was the glory 
 
 y 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 99 
 
 of Daniel and his friends. When they joined 
 the young men in the king's court, they de- 
 cided that they would not defile themselves, 
 and when, later, they were put to the test 
 of fidelity to their God, they met the test 
 with unflinching decision. To the threat of 
 the fiery furnace they solemnly replied : "Our 
 God whom we ser^•e is ahle to deliver us from 
 the burning fiery furnace; and he will de- 
 j j^ liver us out of thy hand, O king. But if 
 
 ^ » not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we 
 
 will not serve thy gods, nor worship the 
 golden image which thou hast set up." De- 
 cision was the redeeming quality in the un- 
 just steward. And it was the splendid thing 
 in Paul. He was always straightforward, 
 clear-cut, decisive. It was not his habit to 
 temporize and dawdle. It was his habit at 
 once to seek the will of God and to do it. 
 The habit of decision is still the g-reat and 
 commanding virtue. The undecided man, 
 the wabbler, is to us the most pathetic and 
 helpless of men. In "David Harum" there 
 was a man who was always distressed when 
 he had to make up his mind. He could not 
 decide what shoes to put on in the morning, 
 and he would get a black shoe on one foot 
 and a tan shoe on the other foot, and then 
 
100 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 sit in misery, unable to decide which one to 
 change. The New Testament is strong in 
 its condemnation of the irresokite man. "Be 
 no longer children," it says, "tossed to and 
 fro- and carried about with every wind of doc- 
 trine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, 
 after the wiles of error." "He that doubt- 
 eth," adds James, "is like the surge of the 
 sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let 
 not that man think that he shall receive any- 
 thing of the Lord; a doubleminded man, 
 unstable in all his ways." How different and 
 how much nobler is the man who can act, 
 who is ever ready for instant and unhesi- 
 tating action. "I hate this dreadful titter- 
 fritteration of time ; I can't stand it any 
 longer," said Samuel C. Armstrong during 
 the war. He was used to decision, to doing 
 things. 
 
 Few books have exerted more influence 
 than John Foster's essay on "Decision of 
 Character." That is our great need — such 
 a habit of decision that we shall not waste 
 time and strength in thinking about future 
 decisions, or in devising reasons for not mak- 
 ing present decisions, but shall do at once, 
 without delay, what we see to be duty. 
 When our fathers or employers say, "My 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 101 
 
 boy, will you please do this," we will say, 
 whatever we are doing at the time, not "Ex- 
 cuse me for a moment, please," not "I cannot 
 just now," but "Yes, sir," and do it with- 
 out loitering. And we need the habit of 
 decision not only as to acts, but also as to 
 character, so that we shall be firm and posi- 
 tive and straight-acting. Some people are 
 this way. They know how to make up their 
 minds and to do directly what they have 
 minded to do. And others are wabblers and 
 hesitators. 
 
 Perhaps we say : "Yes, we are among 
 the weak. How can we acquire the habit 
 of decision?" 
 
 A house needs a foundation. So does 
 a character. Or rather the house is the 
 foundation plus the structure built upon it. 
 The character runs down, too, to include 
 the foundation. If we want characters of 
 decision we should lay the physical basis 
 for them in clean, active, swift-answering 
 bodies. We can give ourselves a good, 
 wholesome discipline to this end by taking 
 our bodies in hand. With many great men 
 early poverty and necessity did this service 
 for them, and frugality and hard work gave 
 them tough, w^ell-knit, well-purged bodies. 
 
102 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 But deliberate choice can take the place of 
 necessity. Paul tells us he took his body, in 
 hand and disciplined it. "I buffet my body," 
 he says, "and bring it into bondage." A 
 governed will is not likely to live in an un- 
 governed body. An alert, determined, 
 quick-working will is more at home in a body 
 held in subjection and taught obedience. 
 
 We can help ourselves to become resolute 
 and decided by doing conclusive thinking on 
 our problems. \\'e need to make up our 
 minds on fundamental things and to keep 
 them made up. There are many questions 
 about which we do not need to bother our- 
 selves, and which should not bother us. 
 These we can postpone. But there are others 
 which lie at the very root of things. The 
 questions of the supremacy of truth, of our 
 duty to God and man. of the divinity of 
 Christ, are central questions. We should 
 think of them until we are clear about them. 
 and we should build solidly upon our con- 
 victions of truth and act fearlessly in accord 
 with them. If we have no convictions 
 we shall have little character. Decision in 
 conviction will produce decision in char- 
 acter. 
 
 If we fix our attention rigidly on virtue, 
 
 f 
 
 ^ 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 103 
 
 on truth, on things that are good, we shall 
 find that such thinking hreeds decisiveness 
 of action and character. Our wills are given 
 to us for the purpose of directing our 
 thoughts. "The point to which the will is 
 applied is always an idea," says one of our 
 leading psychologists. "The only resistance 
 which our will can possibly experience is the 
 resistance which such an idea offers to being 
 attended to at all," If, accordingly, we will 
 think of good things and of doing good 
 things, and will, as we can, refuse to 
 let our attention turn to bad things or to 
 not doing good things, the rest will take 
 care of itself, or, rather, God who is 
 working in us will take care of it. Paul 
 knew this when, in the counsel he gave the 
 Philippians, he bade them simply to take care 
 of their thoughts. "Whatsoever things," he 
 said, "are true, whatsoever things are honor- 
 able, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
 whatsoever things are of good report ; if 
 there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
 think on these things." If they thought thus 
 first, then they would do what he bade, and 
 the God of peace and strength would be 
 with them — the God of decision. 
 
104 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 Also we can help ourselves by practice. 
 We can set ourselves by practice to make 
 decision a habit of our life. Professor James 
 has told us how to acquire the good habits 
 we desire. These are some of his sugges- 
 tions : ( I ) Make automatic and habitual, as 
 early as possible, as many helpful actions as 
 we can. Get into the way of settling things 
 decisively. (2) We must launch ourselves 
 with as strong and decided an initiative -as 
 possible. The new Christian must openly 
 and bravely confess Christ. This will make 
 him surer in his discipleship, and it will make 
 him a firmer and more dauntless character. 
 (3) Never suffer an exception to occur until 
 the new habit is securely rooted in your 
 life. Following this rule with any good habit 
 we wish to acquire will breed decision. (4) 
 Seize the first possible opportunity to act on 
 every resolution you make and every prompt- 
 ing you may experience in the direction of 
 the habits you aspire to gain. (5) Keep the 
 faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratu- 
 itous exercise every day. "The man who 
 has daily inured himself to habits of con- 
 secrated attention, energetic volition and self- 
 denial in unnecessary things, will stand like 
 a tower when everything rocks around him 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 105 
 
 and when his softer fellow-mortals are win- 
 nowed like chaff in the blast." 
 
 Unselfishness is a great help to decisive- 
 ness of character. It is easier to think 
 quickly for others than it is for ourselves, and 
 if we will set out to do things for other peo- 
 ple we will find that we can be decided for 
 them wliere we were irresolute for ourselves. 
 And unselfishness is itself an essential part 
 of decision. Decision of character involves 
 readiness to do for the right and to die for 
 the right. It is that that marks us as men 
 and that shows that we have achieved the 
 manly character. General Armstrong's negro 
 troops sang this in "The Enlisted Soldier" : 
 
 We want no cowards in our band 
 
 That will their colors fly, 
 We call for valiant-hearted men 
 
 Who're not afraid to die. 
 They look like men. They look like men. 
 
 They look like men of war. 
 All armed and dressed in uniform 
 
 They look like men of war. 
 
 Are we such men or do we only look like 
 them ? 
 
 And lastly, the unflinching Christ, who 
 never hesitated, but met all, can take us and 
 make us his. His living Spirit, which 
 
106 . A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 wrought in Simon Peter, who denied him at 
 the taunt of a girl, but a few days later faced 
 the multitude in his name, and died at last 
 in his service, can work also in us the same 
 mighty change from weakness to decision. 
 Shall he not be given freedom to do it ? 
 
> 
 
 s 
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 10^ 
 
 THE HABIT OF FINDING THE 
 WILL OF GOD 
 
 THE most important thing in life to look 
 for is the will of God. Nothing can 
 be of more significance to each of 
 us than his own right life work, which that 
 will assigns. "For what doth it profit a 
 man," asked Jesus, "to gain the whole world, 
 and forfeit his life?" Which we may in- 
 terpret to mean, in the language of our own 
 condition, what shall it profit a man to gain 
 the whole w^orld but to miss his life work? 
 God has such a work for each one of us. It 
 is made up of all the works he has for us 
 to do day by day. We need, above all things, 
 the habit of always finding this work. 
 
 The strength of life consists in the power 
 of the grip of God's purpose upon us. Has 
 it control of us? The hold of a man upon 
 truth, it has been remarked, is of less con- 
 sequence than the hold of the truth upon the 
 man. How fast does it hold him? How 
 completely does it dominate him ? These are 
 the questions which arise also regarding our 
 lives and the will of God. Does it have a grip 
 upon us ? How masterfully does it hold us ? 
 
108 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 It is all right for us to talk of our purpose 
 for God, but the great reality is God's pur- 
 pose for us. When we have been absorbed 
 in that, then at last we know what strength 
 and rest are. We lean then not upon the 
 firmness of our resolves, but upon the mighty 
 grasp of God and his will upon our lives. 
 
 We have no right to fall into the habit of 
 drifting with regard to the will of God. 
 Many people move along, accepting all that 
 comes without scrutiny, assuming that the 
 path of least effort, least resolution, least re- 
 sistance, is the will of God. Sometimes it 
 is, and sometimes, oftener, it is not. We are 
 bound to think, to open life to all the di- 
 vine possibilities, to consider anything that 
 may be able to show that it is the will of 
 God for us. "The family money was in that 
 business," said a young man studying for 
 the ministry, of a great business firm, "and 
 I might have gone in there too. It would 
 have meant a good deal more in the way of 
 return to the family, but I didn't see that 
 that was where I wanted to put my life." 
 So he chose what God chose for him, entirely 
 apart from the natural and obvious thing for 
 him. If we are going to find the will of God 
 we must be willing to look for it where it 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 109 
 
 is, which will often be where we don't ex- 
 pect to find it. 
 
 IVIany men have been diverted from what 
 they at first wanted and thought was God's 
 will, but found out in time was not. Every 
 man who is following a selfish or evil course 
 will find himself wrenched away from that 
 the moment he seeks the will of God. But 
 even among good men the will of God is 
 constantly a surprise. David Livingstone 
 desired ardently to go to China. He had 
 been interested in China through Gutzlaff. 
 But God's will took him to Africa. Robert 
 Morrison wanted to go to Africa. God's 
 will took him to China. Griffith John wanted 
 to go to Madagascar. But God's will led him 
 to central China. Whoever would habitu- 
 ally follow the will of God must be pre- 
 pared for surprises — all of them ultimately 
 far better than our original designs. 
 
 And now, assuming that we are willing 
 to follow the will of God, how may we get 
 into the habit of knowing what it is ? 
 
 ( I ) First, then, however great our prob- 
 lems ahead may be, there is always some 
 small duty near. The first thing is to do 
 that, to get into the habit of always doing 
 that. That will lead on to the next thing. 
 
110 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 Life is a unity. It may look like a chaos 
 and tangle, but it is one, not a heap of de- 
 tached items. It is rather like a long twine. 
 What we need to do is to take hold where 
 we can and work straight along. So in find- 
 ing duty we need to accept the present task. 
 To shirk our present assignment blinds us 
 for seeing future assignment. The accept- 
 ance of present duty teaches us the habit of 
 doing all duty, of ever knowing God's will. 
 
 (2) Think carefully of the reasons for and 
 against the various possible courses of action, 
 and balance them as well as you can. In 
 his reminiscences, John D. Rockefeller tells 
 how, in the early years of the Standard 
 Oil Company, he and his associates were 
 always ready to consider and to discuss any 
 proposal whatever. They were looking for 
 the best methods, and never took it for 
 granted that there were no better ones than 
 those they were following. If men act in 
 this way in business, much more in the su- 
 preme thing of all ought we to be open- 
 minded and thoughtful. 
 
 (3) Seek unselfish, disinterested and high- 
 minded counsel. ]\Iany people ask advice of 
 those who will not counsel them impartially, 
 but whose judgment is biased by desire. 
 
1 
 
 u 
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 111 
 
 And even when they ask disinterested coun- 
 sel, it is not always high-minded. People 
 who do not themselves live in the will of 
 God, and who have no habit of regarding it, 
 are poor people to consult. 
 
 (4) Above all others whom we consult, 
 we should advise with God through prayer. 
 His counsel is worth more than that of 
 anyone else, and he is ready to give it. Be- 
 cause of our own ignorance, our helpless- 
 ness and impatience, because of the spiritual 
 hindrances without and within with which 
 only prayer can cope, because God knows 
 what we cannot know and makes his knowl- 
 edge available for our guidance, we ought 
 to seek the habit of discernment of duty 
 through prayer. 
 \\ (5) We should put off all unnecessary de- 
 
 j ( cisions as to details. Such details usually 
 take care of themselves in any case. But we 
 should settle, as soon as possible, the great 
 questions of principle. God's custom is to 
 
 / I show not the end of the way, but the way. 
 
 What will come later on in the way we 
 must not ask. We must settle now the di- 
 rection of the way. The earlier we decide 
 
 ; 5 the better, for the sake of our character, for ■ \^ 
 
 ! the sake of our preparation for the future, 
 
112 A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 for the sake of our influence now. We have 
 no such assurance of the future as will war- 
 rant us in putting off the acceptance of God's 
 true will for our lives. 
 
 (6) Let us keep ever before us the Scrip- 
 ture principles of duty-knowing and duty- 
 doing : "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his 
 righteousness"; "Lay not up for yourselves 
 treasures upon the earth, where moth and 
 rust consume, and where thieves break 
 through and steal" ; "We look not at the 
 things which are seen, but at the things 
 which are not seen : for the things which are 
 seen are temporal ; but the things which are 
 not seen are eternal" ; "Seek the things that 
 are above, where Christ is." In all things let 
 Jesus Christ "have the preeminence." The 
 higher our hearts are lifted above the ma- 
 terial and transient, the more fully and joy- 
 fully and naturally will they move among 
 men, ruling the present world and not being 
 ruled by it. 
 
 (7) Let us habitually ask what is morally 
 right and face this question unflinchingly 
 and under the scrutiny of Christ. What so- 
 ciety approves is of no great consequence. 
 The important question is. "What is in ac- 
 cord with the character of God?" Rieht- 
 
A CHRISTIAN'S HABITS 113 
 
 eotisness is not the consensus of opinion. It 
 is what Christ is. We shall always recognize 
 God's will if we always see God in Christ 
 and test all things in that presence. 
 
 (8) We must not be timid about taking 
 chances. Faith is a venture. It is a rea- 
 sonable venture — far more reasonable than 
 unwillingness to take the venture — but still 
 it is a venture. If we never leap into the 
 dark we shall never find eternal life or eternal 
 service here, or the Eternal City hereafter. 
 The will of God is not a visible and ma- 
 terial object. It is a way of the soul. Only 
 the soul's eyes can discern it. The habit 
 of seeing it is the habit of seeing with the 
 inward vision. 
 
 (9) We can fortify the habit of doing- 
 God's will by ever choosing the personal 
 duties. Jesus always did this. He was al- 
 ways accessible to souls. No enterprise was 
 more important to him than the service of 
 souls, of living persons. Personal duty 
 should always be given the preference by us. 
 As over against any general, indefinite, in- 
 stitutional calls, there are always the calls 
 of particular men, women and children. 
 These are the important things. If we get 
 into the habit of finding people who need 
 
114 ACHRISTIAN'S HABITS 
 
 help and of helping them, we shall be fol- 
 lowing the religion of God, as James de- 
 fines it. 
 I I (lo) There are two selves in each of us 
 
 i \ — a superior and an inferior. We are never 
 
 I % ' in any doubt as to which is which. We may 
 be in doubt as to some outer problem, but 
 ; \ \ we know the better nature in us. What does 
 
 ' y it require? The better within us can never 
 
 • ' be satisfied save by the will of God. 
 
 ( II ) Lastly, almost everything will depend 
 on how commanding the conception of duty 
 is with us. If our habit is to do duty, and in 
 '_ our minds and hearts we exalt duty as the 
 
 \ loftiest thing" in life, we shall be able to find 
 
 \ what each particular duty is much more easily 
 
 ! than if the whole notion of duty is slovenly 
 
 ;- and careless. If we regard the will of God 
 
 I as the one commanding thing, and habitually 
 
 'I order our lives by the desire to do it, we 
 
 I shall have no trouble in acquiring the habit 
 
 • of recognizing always what it is. 
 
 There could be no greater or finer habit 
 than this. ' We have a fine old hymn which 
 / \ exalts it in the one noble line : 
 
 /i 
 
 To do Thy will the liahit of my heart. 
 
 Is it the habit of our hearts? 
 
 
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