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The Open Door 
 
THE WORKS of 
 HUGH BLACK 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIP SERIES 
 
 Friendship 
 Work 
 Comfort 
 Happiness 
 
 * According to My Gospel n 
 The Open Door 
 Culture and Restraint 
 Listening to God 
 Christ's Service of Love 
 The Gift of Influence 
 
The Open Door 
 
 By 
 HUGH BLACK 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1914, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 & 
 
 ^>\p 
 
 <z> 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
 NOV -7 1914 
 ©CU387385 
 
Contents 
 
 I. The Open Door . 
 
 II. The Laws of the Open Door 
 
 III. The Shut Door . 
 
 IV. The Doorways of Tradition 
 
 V. The Magic Door . 
 
 VI. The Lure of the Open Door 
 
 VII. The Door of Opportunity . 
 
 VIII. The Adventure of the Open 
 
 Door .... 
 
 IX. The Last Open Door , 
 
 7 
 29 
 
 55 
 79 
 
 127 
 155 
 
 181 
 
 203 
 
The Open Door 
 
Arc there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, 
 Two points in the adventure of the diver, 
 One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, 
 One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl ? 
 Festus, I plunge! 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 cK <F*— 
 
 ^ JU 
 
 HE purpose of this book is 
 to suggest a certain attitude 
 towards the world and life. 
 The common figure of speech, 
 " The Open Door," chosen for 
 the title, indicates this general attitude. It ex- 
 presses the spirit of hope with which we may 
 face the future in every region of human 
 endeavour. Man has not exhausted his ex- 
 periences. The universe has not ended its 
 experiments. There are no impassable limits 
 anywhere. When we think we have charted 
 the complete region and have found the con- 
 fines, there is a way out into something bigger, 
 an open door into a larger world. 
 
 In every age man thinks he has about reached 
 the limits and begins to make a snug nest for 
 himself in a world which he understands — 
 when he finds the limits are stretched and he 
 
 9 
 
io The Open Door 
 
 must readjust himself to a larger environment. 
 We like incidents that are closed, and condi- 
 tions that are settled, and subjects whose bound- 
 aries are fixed. But we discover that nothing 
 will remain closed, and settled, and fixed. We 
 think of situations, and we find that there are 
 not any such, but only movements. We learn 
 — or we should learn — that we are living in a 
 world where nothing is static. 
 
 At first this is disquieting. When we would 
 settle down, with our thinking done, with 
 our religion fixed, with our social conditions 
 permanent, with everything pigeonholed and 
 orderly, we are indignant or distressed that 
 we are not left in peace. Some new knowl- 
 edge or new experience demands that our 
 thinking be done over again, or that our relig- 
 ious propositions be revised, or that our indus- 
 trial and social conditions be amended. Soon 
 we realize that this is our hope, instead of our 
 despair. It makes for courage to see that new 
 knowledge is always open to us, and new ex- 
 periences are always in store for us, and new 
 conditions are always possible to us. The mood 
 that suits the fact is one of faith and expect- 
 
The Open Door n 
 
 ancy. The door is ever open to the sons of 
 man. 
 
 We used to think of the world in terms of 
 statics. It was looked on as a hard inert mass 
 which shaped us and which we could do little 
 to shape. If we did not submit to let it shape 
 us it would break us, the poor pigmies of earth. 
 The world was a rigid thing with fixed bound- 
 aries. It was stationary, with definite laws. 
 Our only part was to learn these laws and 
 submit to them like the inflexible rules of a 
 game. We could do nothing to them except 
 submit, and if we did not submit they did 
 definite things to us. 
 
 There was, above all, a very solid and rigid 
 thing called matter. Dr. Johnston's argument 
 against an idealistic philosophy consisted of 
 stamping his solid foot on the ground, and 
 common sense everywhere felt that he had 
 triumphantly disposed of the question. Now 
 even the solid ground is falling away from 
 such solid feet. Matter itself is no longer 
 being viewed as rigid mass. Science has grad- 
 ually been analyzing it, first into molecules and 
 atoms, but to older science the atom was itself 
 
12 The Open Door 
 
 a rigid thing like infinitesimal bullets by which 
 was built up the substantial universe. Newer 
 science carries the analysis further to aeons 
 and electrons, and all modern speculation and 
 investigation go frankly on the theory that 
 the constitution of matter is electrical. There 
 seems nothing rigid and stable and stationary 
 in all the universe. 
 
 We are thus learning to think of the world, 
 not in terms of statics, but in terms of dynam- 
 ics. Everywhere we are touching not dead, 
 inert mass, but living, moving force. Every- 
 where we are dealing with something pliable 
 and plastic, with frontiers that shift and that 
 can be shifted. The world we inhabit is not 
 a rigid thing with changeless boundaries and 
 fixed limits. The mind of man does encounter 
 limits in every region where it pushes, but the 
 limits are not always the same. Indeed they 
 are not limits to the world, but limits to the 
 mind of man. Ever there appears an open door 
 leading out, so that a portion of the unknown 
 gets swept into the confines of the known. 
 
 It is so much easier for us to deal with the 
 
The Open Door 13 
 
 static, that we never are cured of our heresy of 
 treating things as if they "stayed put." When 
 some new wonder of the living universe comes 
 to us we are disturbed for a time, but at last 
 reach peace by classifying it and putting it 
 away as a new fact in our museum. But the 
 world is not fixed like a museum, though we 
 are always tempted to treat it so. We think 
 the account is closed, and have handy little 
 compartments to stow away things. We have 
 a scheme of things which we call the natural, 
 and if we allow anything else we call it the su- 
 pernatural. The natural is usually conceived 
 of as a fixed domain with no open doors out 
 from it. 
 
 At every stage of human life there is the bare 
 crude fact, the solid basis of experience, the 
 things we know and count on. Above that is 
 the unattained, which the ordinary man thinks 
 is also the unattainable. As a matter of fact 
 the level is always shifting. When a new ex- 
 perience takes place or new facts are learned, 
 the hitherto impossible becomes possible and at 
 last becomes commonplace. It gets its place in 
 our museum. We accept the new level of ex- 
 
14 The Open Door 
 
 perience as a matter of course and try to get 
 things stable and stationary once more. We 
 have even a definite picture of what we call the 
 " real world," and all else is treated as vision- 
 ary, until we can deny it no longer. 
 
 When the telephone was invented, most men 
 found it hard to conceive that it could even be 
 possible to speak a thousand miles so as to rec- 
 ognize the very tones of a friend's voice. If an 
 eager believer spoke of it, he was told that was 
 not the real world but a dreamer's idea of the 
 actual. The actual was what we knew, and we 
 knew that it had never been done. I will 
 never forget the thrill when I received my first 
 marconigram five hundred miles from land, and 
 I realized that wireless telegraphy had become 
 an established fact in the world. Ocean-goers 
 now send and receive messages as a matter of 
 course, and have got back to their static uni- 
 verse. When wireless telegraphy was first 
 spoken of, men smiled at the absurdity, as if it 
 were either a practical joke or the madness of 
 a dreamer. It did not belong to the real world. 
 
 What is the real world ? Is it the world as 
 men thought of it yesterday, or as we think of 
 
"The Open Door 15 
 
 it to-day, or as it will be viewed to-morrow ? 
 Our habit of treating it as something fixed 
 seems almost incurable. In most ages the 
 world has been for man like a prison, ample 
 and roomy even with pleasure grounds at- 
 tached, but still a prison. If he goes far 
 enough in any direction he comes to a hard 
 stone wall, against which he will only hurt him- 
 self if he butts his head. To much ancient 
 wisdom the one secret of happiness is for a man 
 to learn the limits and keep carefully within 
 them. It is as old as Ecclesiastes to say that it 
 is a mistake to be over-wise, or for that part 
 over-righteous. 
 
 Everything in our day which has compelled 
 us to reconstruct our intellectual life was here 
 in every previous day. Man never invents any- 
 thing : he can only discover. An invention is 
 merely the application of a discovery. To dis- 
 cover is simply to disclose what actually is. 
 Electricity, radioactivity, X-rays, were in the 
 world always. The forces which men are now 
 harnessing and using have ever been here, only 
 there were no men with knowledge enough to 
 appreciate the fact. "Who can set limits to 
 
16 The Open Door 
 
 what is ? Who can draw a line and declare 
 that within it lies all that is possible ? Who 
 can say what forces there are unknown, one 
 day it may be to be utilized by the sons of 
 men ? The world is not one definite thing, but 
 is whatever we men, with knowledge and cour- 
 age and faith, are able to make it. When we 
 reach the borders, there is ever an open door 
 into a larger place. The world is just as big 
 as we are big enough to inhabit. 
 
 Like all true things this is not completely 
 new. We have always known it in other re- 
 gions. iEsthetically the world is to each what 
 he is able to appreciate. How different a single 
 scene may appear to different views, since the 
 eye sees what capacity and knowledge and 
 training give it the power to see. As an Amer- 
 ican naturalist put it, you must have the bird 
 in your heart before you can see it in the bush. 
 Buttercups and daisies, the common flowers of 
 the field, may be a delight to a child and a 
 nuisance to a farmer. A single flower is one 
 thing to a botanist, another to an artist, another 
 to a market-gardener, and another to a lover. 
 
"The Open Door 17 
 
 William Blake the poet and artist said in his 
 old age to a little girl, " My dear, may God 
 make this world as beautiful to you as it has 
 been to me." 
 
 Kecently, looking at a picture in front of the 
 landscape it depicted, I asked the artist if he 
 saw all that colour on that hillside, and he re- 
 plied, " For years I have lived with and loved 
 that hill, and every year I see new colour in it." 
 His eyes were sharpened by knowledge and 
 sympathy. To uncultured eyes there are only 
 a few crude colours and a general dull gray 
 tone. There is a true sense in which it may be 
 said that we make our own world. Every 
 common thing may be viewed, according to the 
 angle of vision, in a hundred different lights. 
 Life itself, which to one man is the dullest 
 prose, may be to another a country of romance. 
 To one there are no surprises of beauty, and not 
 even anything new, only the accustomed scene. 
 To another there is a new world born every 
 new day. 
 
 If this is true in regions like those of science 
 and of art, it is also true morally and spiritually. 
 Two boys may grow up in the same town, in 
 
18 The Open Door 
 
 the same street, even in the same house, and 
 inhabit two different moral worlds. The out- 
 look on life determines the life. To one man 
 there are no far horizons, no stainless peaks, no 
 adventures of the soul. To another life is a 
 house of many mansions, and the doors are ever 
 open. Intellectually, as we saw, the world is 
 the product of forces, which if we discover we 
 can manipulate and use, and knowledge means 
 pushing back the frontier. Morally, also, life is 
 the product of forces, which also need to be ap- 
 prehended and applied. 
 
 Life to most of us is made up almost entirely 
 of custom and tradition. It has hardened into 
 set forms, so that it is no longer flexible. This 
 is why there are so often those periods of lull 
 in the history of human progress which daunt 
 the heart of its champions. It is so hard to get 
 men to see where the door is open, and harder 
 to get them to attempt the entry. They pre- 
 fer to settle back on the accustomed, and refuse 
 the risk of change. Progress everywhere is 
 checked because we are so ready to get back to 
 the static. It is not easy to remain accessible to 
 new views or tenets, and to keep free from preju- 
 
The Open Door 19 
 
 dice. So also in the region of morality it is 
 difficult to keep the heights which the soul is 
 competent to gain, until at last it becomes diffi- 
 cult even to believe that there are heights at all. 
 True education means keeping the passage- 
 way clear. The biggest thing we can do for 
 another is simply to open a door, or rather to 
 show him where the door is open, out to a 
 larger knowledge, a broader sympathy, a fuller 
 life. This alone is education, not spoon-feeding 
 with information, but deepening the insight 
 and widening the outlook. In the growth and 
 development of a child, we see how doors begin 
 to open as life goes on. The world seems to 
 press in by every avenue, claiming attention, 
 enticing to adventure. It acts through ear-gate 
 and eye-gate and touch-gate, through the gates 
 of the senses and then the sensibilities, through 
 the emotions and the mind, through the imagina- 
 tion and the heart and all the gifts of man's 
 great nature. Life is the opening of doors into 
 this rich world of God's and man's. 
 
 Too soon we let the sense of wonder die, and 
 we lose the very attitude of expectancy which 
 
20 The Open Door 
 
 makes us use opportunity when it comes. We 
 do not let life lead us into the further ways 
 even when we possess opportunity. For ex- 
 ample, the mastery of a new language should 
 mean gaining entrance into a new world of 
 thought and experience. To many, however, a 
 foreign tongue is an end in itself and not a 
 means — a discipline only and not an open door 
 leading out to new scenery. This cripples 
 much of our education. The schoolboy reads 
 Csesar as a task and rarely is taught to look 
 upon it as a book, to introduce him to a new 
 world, all the more new that it is so old. 
 
 Similarly, a new experience should open the 
 way to a larger life. It should bring fresh in- 
 sight, and wider interest, and keener sympathy. 
 Many do not use the new experience, but only 
 enjoy it. A great happiness will sometimes 
 come to a man and he will rejoice in it, 
 but yet he may not let it enlarge his life. 
 Strangely enough we sometimes find it only 
 narrowing him. So a sorrow, which we would 
 expect to soften and deepen, will often only 
 harden and embitter. We do not always 
 learn the true lesson of the Open Door. We 
 
The Open Door 21 
 
 forget that we are pilgrims of the way, whose 
 experiences should enrich. An experience is 
 not merely something that we have to pass 
 through, but something that should remain with 
 us as one of the spoils of life. 
 
 A new idea, also, ought to unlock a door 
 where the whole horizon is broadened. The 
 idea will come to many, at last indeed is pre- 
 sented in some shape to all, but not all treat it 
 alike. Some meet the new idea only to be 
 afraid of it and oppose it. Others receive it 
 hospitably, but only to add it as another fact, 
 like adding a rare kind of beetle to a collection. 
 It ought to be a key to open the gates to a 
 richer comprehension. 
 
 The history of the idea of evolution gives 
 ample illustration of all these attitudes. Many 
 met it with fear, and opposed it with hatred, 
 and tried to kill it with cheap ridicule. Some 
 examined the proof of it candidly and accepted 
 it as a further fact. Fewer still were willing 
 to follow its leading into the wonderful and 
 beautiful world to which it led. Even now we 
 do not candidly and courageously accept its 
 implications. It is too dynamic for the static 
 
22 The Open Door 
 
 universe we love to conceive ourselves as in- 
 habiting. It shatters too many illusions and 
 compels too radical a reconstruction of our 
 intellectual world. We use it to trace out the 
 past, and find it handy for explaining history, 
 but we will not apply it to our fundamental 
 thinking. Our philosophical and theological 
 and political and social systems might be dis- 
 integrated too swiftly, if such dynamite were 
 put under them. Yet more and more men are 
 learning that nowhere in the universe is there 
 dead mass but everywhere living force. They 
 turn to the future with the outlook of hope, as 
 night-watchers turn to the red dawn. 
 
 Socially, also, this attitude of outlook is 
 necessary for a noble and progressive com- 
 munal life. We see a door open, where before 
 there seemed none. Opportunity emerges for 
 juster laws, and cleaner environment, and finer 
 life for all. Among the signs of our time, for 
 instance, there is the new Peace movement. 
 This generation seriously proposes the abolition 
 of war. Some see the vision and take a share 
 in creating public sentiment about it. Of course 
 
The Open Door 23 
 
 we are told it cannot be done, as the same kind 
 of man said the same thing about duelling. 
 Some assume that it is an impossible dream 
 that cannot apply to the real world. What is 
 the real world, anyway, to which they refer? 
 If we got an answer to that question, we would 
 find that they were ignorant of the actual 
 forces which are beginning to dominate the 
 world of modern human life. We would find 
 that they do not know what modern democracy 
 means, and take no thought of its dynamic 
 influence as a spiritual motive. 
 
 The whole Democratic movement of our 
 time is an open door to all the brave hearts 
 that recognize it as the dawning of a better 
 day. Many fear it and many condemn, some 
 surely because they misunderstand and mis- 
 judge it. It is easy to criticize a great world- 
 movement by fastening on incidental weak- 
 nesses. It is easy to make it ludicrous by 
 speaking of getting wisdom by counting noses. 
 Democracy does not mean that, nor does it 
 mean a monotonous dead level of equality. It 
 means faith in essential humanity, the opening 
 of doors to all who can enter. Its ideal is a 
 
24 The Open Door 
 
 world of persons, each able to make the full 
 contribution of his whole personality to the 
 world. We should rejoice that the way is 
 being cleared for a juster state of society and 
 for true cooperation. 
 
 It may be false, but will you wish it true ? 
 Has it your vote to be so if it can ? 
 
 There are always doubters and tremblers and 
 followers of tradition, who tell us of all the 
 difficulties, the lions in the path. There are 
 defenders of every social order as sacred, who 
 dread change. In every region of thought and 
 activity we are almost strangled by the incubus 
 of tradition, till we are tempted or forced to 
 shake it off, and at last move to the lure of the 
 Open Door. 
 
 In our own day the forces of reaction have 
 been weakened by so many shocks that there 
 is even a danger of false hope, though any kind 
 of hope is better than indifference or despair. 
 There is a thrill of expectancy in the air, which 
 makes this age an intensely interesting one in 
 which to live. Of course dangers attend this 
 
The Open Door 25 
 
 attitude. Men become impatient of old posi- 
 tions, and despair of exact thinking, and let the 
 emotional swamp the intellectual. Instead of 
 a reasoned faith they sometimes substitute a 
 mushy optimism, with no groundwork of ex- 
 perience and no basis of fact. The expectancy 
 of our time is the fruit of the changes that 
 have already taken place, and the changes in 
 turn create a new expectancy. We may be 
 tempted to hasten the speed unduly or to make 
 rash experiments. Every thoughtful observer 
 knows that we have a vast program ahead of 
 us. Even to the most casual eye the race is on 
 the threshold of change greater than any yet 
 known. 
 
 One danger is to lose grip of fact and to 
 assume that change spells progress. Human 
 life cannot live permanently up in the air. We 
 need to gather and conserve our gains, and we 
 cannot afford to let go the painfully achieved 
 treasures of past experience. We must keep 
 our feet on fact. To live in a state of gaseous 
 uplift only invites the certain shock of the 
 down-drop. We may have cause to believe 
 that the constitution of matter is electrical, 
 
26 The Open Door 
 
 but mass remains as a fact of experience and 
 the earth still remains a pretty solid thing 
 to fall on. The open door to man does not 
 mean that nothing is closed. It does not mean 
 that anybody can move anywhere unimpeded. 
 There are laws that condition entry and that 
 allow no exceptions. The most hopeless mood 
 is the weak optimism that shuts the eyes to facts. 
 Another danger is that some eager souls 
 may think that the promised land is just round 
 the corner, and when disappointed of this 
 hope may be too sorely disillusioned. They 
 have not calculated the strength of the op- 
 posing forces and the inertia of human nature. 
 Knowledge of the past should inform them 
 of some of the inevitable obstacles, and should 
 prepare them for some of the repulses and the 
 patient waiting which the champions of prog- 
 ress must suffer. On the other hand, knowl- 
 edge of the past should bring encouragement, 
 as we look back over the long way by which 
 we have come. The restless seeking of man 
 has ever led him out into a larger place, and it 
 would be craven of us to turn back from the 
 long passion. Darkness has been dissipated by 
 
The Open Door 27 
 
 light, ignorance has given way before knowl- 
 edge, apathy has blossomed into love, and 
 the redemption is nearer than when we first 
 believed. 
 
 What should the parable of the Open Door 
 mean to us but courage and hope ? The true 
 mood is that of adventure. There is a high 
 and noble curiosity, allied to courage, which 
 has blazed the trail for others. This eager 
 seeking of the soul has been responsible for all 
 the gains of the race. We are saved by hope. 
 To know that there is something unattained 
 and to believe that it is not therefore unattain- 
 able has been the lode-star to progress. On 
 the whole we fail in moral courage, we do not 
 believe enough, and do not expect enough. We 
 look back with admiration on periods when 
 human life has flowered. We see times when 
 a group of men have been quickened and have 
 laid the world under eternal debt by the beauty 
 and strength of their thought. Height called 
 to height and deep replied to deep, and mind 
 and soul caught flame and spread it, and the 
 miracle of life happened. Even in a single 
 
28 The Open Door 
 
 city why should we never expect again the fer- 
 ment of mind which produced the Athens of 
 Socrates and the Florence of Dante and the 
 London of Shakespeare ? The world has ever 
 been saved by the kingly men who have made 
 adventure of soul, carrying the freight of the 
 spirit. 
 
 We look through the long vista of doors that 
 have been opened in the past and take courage 
 for the venture of our day of opportunity. 
 Amid the flux and flow of circumstance, 
 through the changes of history, over the long 
 road of the ascent of life, we see the unfolding 
 of purpose. The past exists for the future, and 
 we can believe that the future will explain the 
 past and justify the present. The door stands 
 open wide. 
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, — 
 
 A crystal and a cell, — 
 
 A jelly-fish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where the cave-men dwell ; 
 
 Then a sense of law and beauty, 
 
 And a face turned from the clod, — 
 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
II 
 
 The Laws of the Open Door 
 
It is fit things be stated and considered as they are. 
 
 — Bishop Butler. 
 
II 
 
 THE LAWS OF THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 NE of the most potent in- 
 fluences of our time that has 
 made for change is the relax- 
 ing of authority. We see it 
 everywhere, in education, in 
 religion, in the family, and in the state. It is 
 evident in every region both of thought and of 
 practical life. The breakdown of authority is 
 the natural result of the breakdown of static 
 conditions. Nowhere can we appeal with the 
 old dogmatism to established traditions, and to 
 truths delivered once for all in changeless form. 
 The world has broken away from its moorings. 
 The point of view suggested by our figure of 
 the Open Door acts like an acid to disintegrate 
 all fixed systems. If we learn to look at the 
 world and life in terms of dynamics and no 
 longer in terms of statics, we are done with 
 immutability anywhere. 
 We frankly recognize the dangers of the very 
 
32 "The Open Door 
 
 mood we are encouraging in this book. It un- 
 doubtedly means the weakening of old au- 
 thority, and there are places where a blind step 
 may mean a step into the abyss. The first les- 
 son surely is that our steps should not be blind. 
 It is sometimes assumed that this doctrine of 
 the Open Door means that there are no pen- 
 alties, and that all we need to do is to move 
 gaily forward making any kind of experiment 
 in life without risk. If we walk up confidently 
 to any obstacle it will obligingly remove itself, 
 and when we come to a stubborn barrier a way 
 through opens up as by magic. We must learn 
 that there is nothing magical in the world, that 
 this is not a casual but a causal universe. 
 
 The problem is that human life must have 
 some sort of authority on which it can rest and 
 build. How to get it, if everywhere we are 
 touching moving force and never dead mass ? 
 If everything changes and we change with it, 
 if reality is like a stream and we are in the 
 stream, where can we find anything which we 
 can call permanent ? Well, we must frankly 
 build on experience, and if it needs faith to be- 
 lieve that experience itself is not illusion, we 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 33 
 
 are compelled to exercise that faith. This is 
 necessary for sane life. 
 
 The first law of the Open Door may be called 
 the law of faith. Fundamentally it means 
 trust in the sanity and order and purposiveness 
 of the universe. Without this faith, we are 
 appalled at the littleness of man before the 
 greatness of the world's forces. Man is crushed 
 by a sense of insignificance. We with our 
 larger knowledge of infinite space feel even 
 more awed than the ancient poet who looked 
 up into the eastern sky at night and said, 
 
 When I behold Thy heavens, the work of Thy 
 fingers, 
 
 The moon and the stars which Thou didst es- 
 tablish, 
 
 What is man that Thou art mindful of him, 
 
 And the son of man that Thou visitest him ? 
 
 Modern man feels even more acutely the con- 
 trast between the worm man and the armies of 
 the sky. Only a sense of spiritual values, only 
 faith in the worth of man's life, can swing back 
 the balance from despair. 
 
 The sea is very large and our boat is very 
 
34 The Open Door 
 
 small, but the boat fits the sea. It can be made 
 to sail. The laws and facts of the sea can be 
 harnessed to serve the purposes of the boat. 
 Indeed the biggest fact of the sea is the fact of 
 the boat. The boat is at the mercy of the sea, 
 but is also the sea's master and dominates it for 
 human ends. The universe is unfathomable, 
 full of mystery, cruel in its impassiveness, and 
 human life with its history and achievements is 
 very weak and small. It is like a speck on the 
 vast ocean. But the biggest fact of the world 
 is the fact of man. He alone is conscious of 
 the contrast between the puny single species 
 and the majesty of the whole. 
 
 Pascal describes man feeble as a reed which 
 it does not need the universe to crush. " But 
 he is a reed that thinks, and were the whole 
 universe to crush him he is above that which 
 destroys him ; for he knows that he dies and 
 that which crushes him knows nothing." If 
 only to keep the gains of the past, man is com- 
 pelled to believe in himself. He must believe 
 that he has a destiny, as he has a history. Man 
 alone is conscious of his history, and can look 
 back over the long way with pride. There 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 35 
 
 seems to be meaning and purpose in that ro- 
 mantic story. Nowhere do we see human life 
 in a hopeless cuL-de-sac — a blind alley without 
 outlet. Somewhere it issues out into a larger 
 place. Somewhere a door opens to further ex- 
 perience and fuller life. To deny such a future 
 is to put a full stop to the story. Without this 
 faith, life would be a torso, whose general ap- 
 pearance is uncommonly like a grotesque. 
 
 Is it all for nothing that man has striven and 
 suffered ? Is it all for nothing that the race has 
 endured its long agony, and thrilled to its noble 
 joys ? Have all the triumphs of man's history, 
 his deepening self-knowledge, his progressive 
 control of natural forces, his social achievements 
 in building up a rational communal life, been 
 only nothing better than illusion ? Man will 
 never believe that, or when he does it will be at 
 last the race-suicide. As he looks back he thinks 
 he sees doors opening leading ever to the light, 
 and he believes that he will not come to a place 
 where there is no passage. If ever he comes 
 where there is no passage that way, he feels 
 sure that there is a passage some other way. 
 
 All a brave man needs is this simple faith that 
 
36 The Open Door 
 
 he is not in a hopeless cul-de-sac, that he will not 
 die like a rat in a hole. Even if he die, his 
 death will count for something, as he thinks his 
 life counted for something. Let him see that 
 spot of blue where invites the open door, and 
 he can withstand in the evil day and having 
 done all can still stand. All he asks for is the 
 wages of going on. Sometimes faith is only 
 another name for courage, in which man takes 
 life in his hand as he makes the great venture. 
 
 The first law of the Open Door then is the 
 law of faith. We believe that the door is open, 
 and that it is open for us. We can win through, 
 if we will. We can trust the world, and life, 
 and self, and the future. The religious man 
 means all this when he says we can trust God. 
 The universe may be a riddle as it has 
 often been called, but the riddle of the 
 universe is at least not a farce. We must 
 trust the world, in order to live. We must be- 
 lieve that the world has meaning and purpose 
 at its core, in order to live a man's life. This 
 fundamental faith carries with it faith in the 
 future. We may not know — we do not know 
 — anything but that a clear road invites our 
 
"The Laws of the Open Door 37 
 
 feet. We do not need to know any more than 
 that. Indeed, it is part of the attraction of life 
 that it should come to us as an adventure. 
 
 The world has been lifted forward by the 
 goodly succession of adventurers, who went forth 
 not knowing whither they went. Columbus 
 putting a theory to the test finds a new world. 
 The astronomer, working out a hypothesis, 
 sees a new planet swim into his ken. Men of 
 science extend the bounds of knowledge in a 
 spirit of adventure. Teachers are content if at 
 last they find students, into whose hands they 
 can put the torch to carry it on and it may be 
 to light other flames. The task of education, 
 and its glory, is not merely to transmit knowl- 
 edge and build up an intellectual system of dis- 
 cipline, but to inspire, and to kindle a flame 
 which will illumine the path for all the world. 
 We look far through time to get the distant in- 
 terest of all true investment. All education 
 worth the name has a spiritual source, and a 
 spiritual end. It lives by vision, and works 
 through insight and outlook, lifting the eyes to 
 wider horizons. 
 
 " The door is open," said the ancient stoic. 
 
38 The Open Door 
 
 He meant that there was a way of escape from 
 intolerable fate. His unconquerable soul had 
 always a last refuge. When things got to the 
 worst, when he could stand no more, when the 
 burden grew too heavy and life had become in- 
 sufferable, the door was open. He meant in a 
 plain word, Suicide. There was a way out 
 from under the burden, a way down and out. 
 It is the refuge of despair, a pagan solution of 
 the problem of life. The fact that so often 
 men and women of our day find easy recourse 
 to the same way of escape is proof that there 
 are still pagan elements in our modern society. 
 Set over against that despairing word the same 
 word interpreted by faith, " The door is open." 
 It becomes a word of hope and courage and 
 comfort and power. Instead of a way down 
 and out, there is a way up and out 
 
 This is the message of religion, if the implica- 
 tions of faith are frankly accepted. It should 
 issue in peace and hope and joy. Too often 
 religion is treated as narrow and cramping, 
 something that will dwarf our powers, and im- 
 prison us, and cut off our rightful joy. It is 
 looked on as if it would hamper life, and narrow 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 39 
 
 it down into a small corner. Whereas, it is the 
 biggest and widest thing that can come into a 
 man's life, ennobling every faculty and glorify- 
 ing every power. It should lead a man out 
 into a large place, till he feels he is standing in 
 the Supreme Will, so that with a pure heart he 
 can serve his generation e'er he too fall on 
 sleep. 
 
 Take as illustration the obvious open door 
 before this generation of social and industrial 
 reconstruction. It is natural that there should 
 be some timidity before a great change, even 
 when we recognize that the change is inev- 
 itable. Some allow their fears to swallow up 
 their courage, till the only forward look they 
 have is one of dread. Others of the privileged 
 classes harden their hearts in selfish possession, 
 determined to resist to the last all that seems 
 to disturb their comfort. There is a new order 
 to be born out of the new stirrings of life, and 
 in what temper should it be met ? Surely in 
 that of faith, which not only believes that the 
 change will result in better conditions, but also 
 which believes that because it believes in man. 
 It sees that the civilization which does not 
 
40 The Open Door 
 
 afford its members the opportunity to become 
 their best selves is a failure. It believes that 
 as of old God is calling His sons out of Egypt, 
 and that the way to the Promised Land will 
 open, though it be through the sea and the 
 desert. 
 
 For our comfort in facing the change, it 
 should be remembered that the world has never 
 known anything but change. We have been 
 born into our present order, and we forget how 
 recent it is. We think of it as somehow per- 
 manent and with the sacredness of the estab- 
 lished about it. As a matter of fact it is only 
 of yesterday, and is merely one of the ceaseless 
 experiments of man in society. Even if our 
 present condition were satisfactory to more of 
 us than it is, we could safely argue from his- 
 tory that it could not last indefinitely. When 
 added to that, we have a condition seething 
 with righteous discontent, full of stupid ab- 
 surdities as well as of cruel wrongs, we know 
 that the time for change is ripe. Indeed the 
 change is already going on. Everywhere 
 democracy is beginning to sweep the world, 
 and the dispossessed classes are entering into 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 41 
 
 political power. "Willingly or unwillingly we 
 are moving to an open door that will bring us 
 to a change of scene. In high faith and in the 
 courage of faith we look hopefully and long- 
 ingly to the better day, trusting in the destiny 
 of man and in the purpose of God. 
 
 The second law of the Open Door may be 
 called the law of fitness. The faith with which 
 we face the future must be disciplined and 
 rational, must know whereof it speaks. The 
 temper of faith and hope is better in any case 
 than that of indifference or despair, but if it be 
 a sloppy trust that things are going to turn out 
 all right, it will only lead to the morass ? 
 Faith needs to be informed by fact, and in- 
 spired by knowledge. It needs to be corrected 
 and tested by experience, even when it looks 
 for new experience. A vague Micawber-like 
 confidence that somehow fortune will look 
 after things is doomed to failure. That is to 
 treat the world as a gamble, and if we do we 
 will discover that we play against loaded dice. 
 The universe is not so constructed that if a man 
 opens his mouth to the sky, larks already 
 
42 The Open Door 
 
 roasted will obligingly fall into it. That would 
 make it a foolish world for man, and an impos- 
 sible one for larks. We can never make any- 
 thing of the open door, until we dismiss reso- 
 lutely our childish dreams of chance happen- 
 ings. 
 
 There are many so-called chance discoveries, 
 but on investigation we usually find that they 
 were made by those who had put themselves in 
 the way. Thousands of others had met the 
 same chance, but never saw it, or if they did 
 were by previous bent unable to do anything 
 with it. The Inch goes to the good player, as 
 every golfer knows. When a man is fit, every- 
 thing comes his way. An opportunity goes 
 a-begging for years, till the man who can use 
 it comes along. The discovery was always 
 possible, when the conditions of it were met. 
 We tell tales of Galileo being led to his experi- 
 ments about falling bodies by the fact that the 
 famous Leaning Tower of Pisa was handy for 
 such experiments, but the Leaning Tower could 
 have suggested it to any one else. In the life 
 of Galileo it is related how one day in the 
 Cathedral he noticed a bronze lamp suspended 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 43 
 
 by a long cord swinging slowly before the 
 altar. During the singing he noticed that 
 though naturally the lamp slackened its vibra- 
 tion, it always beat in the same time, and from 
 that he was led to begin his researches on the 
 motion of the pendulum. But everybody in 
 Pisa and elsewhere had seen a lamp swing. Or 
 the story is told of Newton in his garden at 
 Woolsthorpe seeing an apple fall to the ground 
 and having suggested to him his researches on 
 the force of gravity. But millions of apples 
 had fallen, and some had even bumped the 
 heads of men, with little enough suggestion. 
 The time was fit, when the man was fit. 
 
 This does not mean that it is always personal 
 fitness that leads to the open door. What we 
 may call social fitness is an even more impor- 
 tant factor. Without this a single discovery, 
 even if made, would signify little and could 
 not be conserved. It is possible for a man to 
 be before his age, born out of due time, though 
 there are countless more cases of men who are 
 behind their age. What usually happens is 
 that the world had arrived at the stage where 
 a reach forward was possible and even inevi- 
 
44 The Open Door 
 
 table. All men who have achieved anything 
 are the first to recognize that they built on the 
 labours of others. Previous work had so ad- 
 vanced the subject that contemporary thought 
 and experiment found the further step easy. 
 This is the explanation of the fact that often a 
 discovery is made independently by different 
 people almost simultaneously, like Darwin and 
 Wallace with the evolution hypothesis. A cer- 
 tain thing is in the air as we say, and men 
 everywhere are working on it, feeling towards 
 it, and when one takes the right step, behold 
 there is an open door. Flying machines have 
 been " in the air " for a much longer time than 
 any machine has been. The story of any 
 achievement is one of much obscure romance, 
 and there are names on the roll of honour of 
 which the public is ignorant. Sometimes the 
 man, to whom comes the fame or the fortune, 
 has done the minor part of the work. 
 
 Especially true is this of the great move- 
 ments which have profoundly affected man- 
 kind. Lord Acton was preparing nearly all 
 his life to write the History of Liberty and 
 died without having done it. One hardly 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 45 
 
 wonders that he should have been appalled at 
 the task; for it would have meant writing 
 practically the history of man. What open 
 doors generation after generation have been 
 passed through in the enfranchisement of man's 
 mind and life. Sometimes we speak as if 
 liberty were an American, or an English, or 
 an Anglo-Saxon achievement. When some 
 crisis in that history comes, and a new triumph 
 is recorded, it is seen to be the work of no one 
 man. In every world movement there is the 
 same almost impersonal note. ISTo single man 
 was responsible for the Renaissance, and no 
 single man produced the Reformation. The 
 modern democratic movement is impressive, 
 because it calls no man father, and needs no 
 sponsor. It too comes because the time is ripe, 
 and the time has been ripened through new 
 compunctions of conscience, and new stirrings 
 of desire, and new movements of life. 
 
 But no door opens through a magic word, or 
 because people idly wish it. This law of fit- 
 ness has to be emphasized to-day, because so 
 many have a bland creed that everything is 
 
46 The Open Door 
 
 going to be all right anyway. We hear men 
 loudly proclaiming that they believe in prog- 
 ress, and that the world has ever been growing 
 better and must ever grow better. One may 
 have cause to believe such a statement in the 
 general without subscribing to every applica- 
 tion of it. All change has not been progress, 
 and there can be degeneracy as well as ad- 
 vance. A general proposition may be true and 
 have many exceptions in detail. A flowing 
 tide can have many recessions and times 
 when it looks like ebb instead of flow. It 
 has been said by way of confidence in the ulti- 
 mate future of America that the man who 
 "goes bear on America goes broke." It is 
 a graphic way of describing a general trust in 
 the country's destiny, but sometimes the phrase 
 has been used merely to boom a rise in the 
 Stock Exchange. One can believe in the busi- 
 ness future of a country, and yet know that 
 the most favoured land can have times of de- 
 pression. 
 
 The soft creed of inevitable progress is an 
 offense to all who desire to know and accept 
 facts. The worst of it is that such a temper 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 47 
 
 delays true progress, if it does not destroy the 
 very chance of progress. If we take to think- 
 ing of liberty as something that is bound to 
 come as if it were ground out automatically, 
 we endanger liberty itself, forgetting that its 
 price is eternal vigilance. That is the price of 
 anything worth having — the price of knowl- 
 edge, of material and intellectual and moral 
 advance. It is the law of the Open Door. In- 
 stead of inevitable progress in human affairs, 
 our actual experience is the opposite. There 
 is a constant tendency to settle and sink. If 
 we leave a garden alone, we soon learn what 
 happens to the choicest flowers. If we leave 
 any institution or condition of social life alone, 
 we soon find it in the quagmire. The degra- 
 dation of the best is always the worst kind of 
 corruption. If we leave ourselves alone, we 
 slide back to lower levels of thought and of 
 practice. It may be a commonplace to say 
 that there is no standing still for life, but it is 
 none the less true. The life that does not 
 move forward goes backward. It is not 
 enough to have a pious faith in progress. To 
 the faith must be added patience and knowl- 
 
48 The Open Door 
 
 edge, the qualities that save the faith from 
 shame. 
 
 Man has indeed learned to fly — or is learning 
 — but he never learned, and never would have 
 learned by throwing himself off a pinnacle, even 
 of the temple. The only way man could ever 
 learn to fly was to understand the problem, and 
 master the laws, and manipulate the forces at 
 his disposal. Many things come to him in his 
 long search to fathom the laws that govern the 
 phenomena of nature and to understand the 
 reason of things. The world is truly as big as 
 man is big enough to inhabit and he has not 
 yet taken possession of one tithe of his inherit- 
 ance, but more important than believing in the 
 bigness of his task is it to become big enough 
 to undertake it. It is more important, simply 
 because the one is the condition of the other. 
 We take an immense step in every region of 
 endeavour when we accept simply and humbly 
 the fact that we have to do with a causal and 
 never with a casual universe. 
 
 Thus, we dare not let go our hold on ex- 
 perience. Experience really means the results 
 of experiment, the acquired and tested facts. 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 49 
 
 Fortunately we are not confined to our own 
 single experience, but have the vast body of 
 human experience on which to fall back for 
 guidance and correction. Not as on something 
 sacred and immovable, a fetish to clog our souls 
 and our feet, but simply as we do in every 
 branch of natural science. In science there has 
 grown up a body of experiments, which we are 
 glad to accept, but which if need be we hold 
 the right to test again and to extend, and from 
 which we may draw different conclusions should 
 new facts warrant it. So in the practice of life 
 there has grown up a body of experiments, 
 which has valid authority for us. There are 
 some assured gains, facts that may be accepted, 
 and principles that are certain. It is sometimes 
 a little amusing, and oftener more pathetic, to 
 hear men loudly proclaiming as a panacea 
 something that the world has already tried out. 
 Instead of marriage as we have it, they suggest 
 a relationship which seems a rare and novel 
 improvement, and appear amazed at their daring 
 and original thinking. All who know anything 
 of history know that it is only a reversion to 
 type. The world has gone through that very 
 
50 The Open Door 
 
 stage, and nature in her ruthless way of eliminat- 
 ing the unfit has declared that there is no 
 passage that way. 
 
 In the individual life also the law of fitness 
 applies. Previous attainment conditions further 
 progress. The future is what the past makes 
 possible. Hope is indeed a good companion, 
 but rather a poor guide. Idle hope, with no 
 backing of experience and no reserve of knowl- 
 edge, will only once more illustrate the parable 
 of the blind leading the blind. Mere wishing 
 will never find any open doors, or if it does will 
 not know what to make of them. If it were 
 only a choice between hope and fear, there 
 would be no hesitation as to which were better ; 
 since it is better even to be duped by hope than 
 to be betrayed by fear. But we are not con- 
 fined to these alternatives. Hope may be 
 informed and inspired by experience, leading 
 ever to new triumphs. 
 
 In Bunyan's classic allegory, perhaps the 
 most attractive character is Hopeful, who made 
 the way bright for his companion as well as for 
 himself. There is also Mr. Fearing, one of the 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 51 
 
 most troublesome pilgrims that Great-heart the 
 guide ever had to do with. Great-heart's de- 
 scription of the poor chicken-hearted man is a 
 masterpiece. He had lain roaring at the Slough 
 of Despond for about a month, until one sun- 
 shiny morning he ventured and so got over, but 
 when he was over he would scarce believe it. 
 He had a Slough of Despond in his mind. At 
 the entrance gate to the way and then at the 
 Interpreter's door he behaved himself in the 
 same fashion, shaking and shrinking, though 
 he had the root of the matter in him ; for with 
 all his trembling he would never turn tail and 
 go back. " "When he was come to the entrance 
 of the Valley of the Shadow of Death I thought 
 I should have lost my man," says his guide. 
 But Mr. Fearing did w r in through after a rather 
 dismal journey, making mournful music for 
 himself and others, only able to play on one 
 string. In Bunyan's incomparable gallery of 
 portraits there is another called Ignorance, a 
 very brisk lad from the Country of Conceit. 
 He seemed to find everything easy, and walked 
 along comfortably with his mind full of good 
 motions. When the other pilgrims asked for 
 
52 The Open Door 
 
 the grounds of his easy assurance and tried to 
 inform hiin, he replied, " That is your faith but 
 not mine, yet mine I doubt not is as good as 
 yours, though I have not in my head so many 
 whimsies as you." With all his sprightly 
 assurance, poor Ignorance, who would not learn 
 of any one, came to a bad end. When he came 
 to the Door, it was closed to him. 
 
 The law of fitness means that to him that 
 hath shall be given — a paradox which is true 
 along the whole line of life. There is a corre- 
 spondence between past achievement and future 
 opportunity, between what a man has done and 
 what he will get to do. There is even corre- 
 spondence between what he has attempted and 
 what he will be given to try, between the 
 spirit of his past endeavour and the new occa- 
 sions that will come his way. The man who 
 has been faithful over a few things becomes 
 the ruler over larger things. Whatever be the 
 endowment of the talents, whether ten or five 
 or one, if careful use of them is made, as a re- 
 sult larger opportunities are afforded, and the 
 promise of a fuller life is held out. There 
 
The Laws of the Open Door 53 
 
 comes a new accession of power, a new occa- 
 sion for practice, a new enlightenment into op- 
 portunity, a new entrance into the spacious 
 places of life. 
 
 This is the natural principle of promotion 
 that we use in all our social affairs. If a man 
 makes good in any line of business, he is not 
 rewarded by being laid on the shelf, but by 
 getting some bigger task to perform. Educa- 
 tion is graded to lead on from achievement to 
 achievement. The principle runs not only 
 through the business and the intellectual life, 
 but also through the moral life. Spiritual pro- 
 motion goes far more surely on this natural 
 principle than even promotion in business does ; 
 for only to him that hath can it be given. 
 This principle is in the nature of things ; it is 
 the way the world is built. We may trust the 
 moral world, the whole life of man, on that 
 basis. It is the law of the Open Door. The 
 soul that has sincerely tried to be faithful can 
 look for other chances to be faithful. If we 
 have walked according to our light, we will get 
 fuller light. If we have entered into past op- 
 portunities, we may expect new ones. The 
 
54 The Open Door 
 
 moral world will not go back on us. The fu- 
 ture will contain nothing that is inconsistent 
 with the past. None can prevent us from en- 
 tering into our inheritance, and we may go in 
 boldly to take possession. The door is open. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Shut Door 
 
Ah, the past, the pearl-gift thrown * 
 To hogs ; time's opportunity we made 
 So light of, only recognized when flown. 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
g» <* TO 
 
 III 
 
 THE SHUT DOOR 
 
 HERE is a slushy optimism, 
 which lays hold of the hope- 
 ful point of view we are 
 also recommending, but which 
 pays no heed to any facts that 
 seem to contradict it. From the last chapter, 
 which states the laws of true hope, it will be 
 seen that at least we do not seek to live in that 
 Fools' Paradise. It is a poor ostrich trick to 
 hide the head in the sand, thinking that if we 
 refuse to see the impending evil it will cease to 
 be. Yet it is a common trick. In the scho- 
 lastic cant of our time many seem to think that 
 the word " psychological " explains everything. 
 As if things must be in reality as they are in 
 our minds, and as if the universe accommodated 
 itself to our view of it ! It is of course only 
 the exaggeration of a fact. We do have power 
 over our lives, and we live in a world which is 
 largely our own creation. A bright and cheer- 
 
 57 
 
58 The Open Door 
 
 f ul spirit will find much to feed cheer on. A 
 gloomy and fearful nature, which expects 
 trouble, will get a good deal of what it ex- 
 pects. But important as all this is for the 
 happy conduct of life, it does not alter the fact 
 that we are in a certain universal order, which 
 does not budge for all our wishing. It will 
 budge all right, when we know how to make 
 it. Gravitation will not cease to work, merely 
 because we would like to fly. The only way 
 to fly is to use gravitation, by playing off 
 against it some other forces we have learned. 
 
 Cheap optimism thinks that if things are not 
 going our way, all we need to do is to form a 
 Sunshine Club, and keep smiling and " boost- 
 ing." If we keep on saying it is all right and 
 is going to be all right, then it will be as we 
 say. It is a pretty good thing to have a smile 
 on the lips and cheer in the heart, provided 
 that we do not look on these as a quack medi- 
 cine to cure all. It was a great English theo- 
 logian, and not as we might have expected a 
 scientist, who suggested the reign of law in the 
 simple phrase, " things are what they are, and 
 their consequences will be what they will be." 
 
The Shut Door 59 
 
 There still remains of course the task of finding 
 out what they really are, but we are not much 
 helped in that by merely putting on rose-col- 
 oured spectacles to view them. There is one 
 way of reaching a pleasant conclusion by elim- 
 inating everything that tells against us, but it is 
 not a way of courage. It is of a piece with 
 the common practice of finding comfort by ig- 
 noring everything around us of squalor and 
 ugliness, and by resolutely excluding every- 
 thing that will not come sedately into our 
 colour scheme. 
 
 Our insistence of the Open Door as the fit 
 figure for human life might be thought to be 
 ministering to such shallow optimism. When 
 we point to the forward look, and to man as 
 the master and not merely the victim of his 
 fate, when we glorify opportunity, it may be 
 asked if there are no shut doors, no inexorable 
 barriers, no opportunities that are closed. In- 
 deed there are, and it is from the stern and 
 tragic background of the deprivation of life 
 that we would fain set the hope that saves. 
 Whatever may still be available, there are some 
 things irrevocable. Not even tears can wash 
 
60 The Open Door 
 
 away the writing of the Moving Finger, when 
 once it sets down the recorded fact. 
 
 At some times of our life we are entranced 
 by the opening of doors, by the romance of the 
 unknown that seems ever approaching us. On 
 every side there are avenues reaching out, un- 
 folding fresh vistas of thought and feeling and 
 experience. It is a rich and large world we 
 inhabit, and there seems no end to what we 
 can be and do. In the buoyancy of hope we 
 never dream that disappointment can lie for us 
 at the end of any path we may choose, that 
 there can be for us ultimate failure in any line. 
 If anything we are embarrassed by the richness 
 of our opportunities, and we hardly know what 
 to be at, or what road to take. Doors open at 
 a touch. Body and mind and heart and soul 
 are feeling for their possibilities, giving us 
 hints of pleasant adventures and satisfying 
 experiences. 
 
 The unfolding of the powers of youth suggest 
 many worlds to conquer, and it does not matter 
 much with which we begin. There is plenty 
 of time and we will have plenty of opportuni- 
 
The Shut Door 61 
 
 ties. If this does not do, we can try something 
 else. If this road we are traversing does not 
 suit, there will be many a crossroad into which 
 we can turn ; or even we can go back and begin 
 over again. In youth life is long and very 
 spacious. Doors and ways keep opening in 
 most pleasant fashion, as they do to the knight- 
 errant in chivalry or to the hero in fairy-land. 
 We cannot think that any road will lead us to 
 a standstill, or if it does that it will not be a 
 simple thing to retrace our steps and try our 
 luck again. We cannot imagine ourselves 
 without resources, helpless in the face of cir- 
 cumstances. The pathos of hope ! To the 
 contemplative mind there is nothing so beauti- 
 ful, and perhaps nothing so sad, as this buoyant 
 mood. " If youth only knew : if age only 
 could," is an old French saying. 
 
 It is perhaps just as well that youth does not 
 know ; for if youth did know, youth might 
 never try, and everybody would be the loser, 
 both youth and age and the world at large. 
 It would be fatal if youth knew, in the sense 
 of believing that nothing was worth a venture 
 and that eventual disappointment awaits every 
 
62 The Open Door 
 
 effort. That is false doctrine, stifling high hope 
 at its birth, and sapping the strength of noble 
 life. It is youth that keeps the world alive, 
 not merely in the prosaic material sense, but in 
 the spiritual sense also that we depend upon 
 the supply of vigour and courage and faith and 
 hope from men, who do not calculate results, 
 and who go gaily into the fight. It is pitiful 
 folly, or worse, to be ever crooning vanity of 
 vanities as the one burden of the song of life. 
 " If youth only knew," what then would be our 
 counsel ? To depress hope and take the heart 
 out of courage, to preach the blase creed that 
 everything ends in vexation of spirit, and that 
 there is nothing better than that a man should 
 cultivate a cautious moderate Epicureanism ? 
 If that is the fruit of worldly wisdom and the 
 experience of age, then indeed it would be folly 
 to be wise. 
 
 Still there are some things which it would be 
 well for youth to know, in order that its ener- 
 gies might be directed into the right channels ; 
 and one of them is the lesson that opportunities 
 are not endless, and that occasions can be lost, 
 and a door, which seems always open to be 
 
The Shut Door 63 
 
 entered when it suits, may at last be shut. 
 " Experience is a good school," says Jean Paul 
 Kichter, " but the fees are high." Yes, the fees 
 are high, and they may be too high. They 
 have a way of getting higher. The price be- 
 comes prohibitive. The fees may be so high 
 that though we have got the experience all 
 right, we may not be able to buy one single 
 opportunity of using the experience. A door 
 may be shut which will not open to bribes, or 
 threats, or pleadings, or tears. If youth only 
 knew this, it would be worth knowing, not that 
 it may be made to despair, but that it may be 
 made serious, accepting its great opportunities 
 and its solemn responsibilities. It is wise to 
 learn truth and to accept actual facts ; and this 
 is the absolute truth, a fact of daily experience, 
 that there are things which are irrevocable, 
 beyond recall, beyond another chance, and 
 when we come up for another chance we find 
 that the door is shut. 
 
 The first natural illustration of this is the 
 very passage of time itself. Sentimentally 
 once a year we are reminded of this, as the 
 
64 The Open Door 
 
 shadows of the dying year deepen around us. 
 There is of course nothing in the passage of the 
 last day of the old year into the first day of 
 the new year — nothing beyond what happens 
 in the passage of every day. It is however a 
 convenient measure of time, and a customary 
 occasion to review the past and to consider how 
 it has left us. We may have more time 
 granted us, but that time on which we look 
 back is irrevocable : we may have a future, but 
 the past is gone beyond recall. We would per- 
 haps like to go back and alter some of the 
 things. Here we made a decision, or took a 
 step that carried large consequences ; here we 
 turned definitely in a certain way. We would 
 like to do otherwise now ; we are calm as we 
 look, while then we were swayed by passion or 
 interest. We might have gone another way : 
 certainly it was open to us, but we can no 
 more go that way. Whatever we may now be 
 able to do, we cannot undo the past. The door 
 is shut. 
 
 This is true of more than time. It is true of 
 every sphere of life and every power of our 
 nature. There is a period when the faculties 
 
"The Shut Door 65 
 
 are in a fluid state as it were, able to run into 
 almost any mould, but after we have been set 
 in a particular kind of work and are bent to a 
 particular way of life, many doors are shut 
 that formerly were open. The man who has 
 begun to study at thirty may become truly 
 learned and may develop magnificently in 
 mental power, but he knows that there are 
 certain branches of the scholar's work that are 
 closed to him. The time has passed when he 
 could enter and take his place with the fore- 
 most. There are some losses that cannot be 
 repaired, and some chances that can never be 
 regained. The loom of life weaves out the 
 web, and after a time there is no going back 
 to gather up dropped stitches. The web must 
 remain with its flaws. It does not mean that 
 we need to have signs of age and of failing 
 powers to convince us that for us some doors 
 are now shut. Indeed the stronger we are in 
 our special career, the more we realize that we 
 have excluded ourselves from other things that 
 once were possible in other lines. 
 
 The young man facing life has before him 
 
66 The Open Door 
 
 many alternatives even in the matter of the 
 kind of work he will do, but it does not take 
 long before he realizes that the alternatives 
 have begun to dwindle, till after some years of 
 work he must go on with his choice, if he is to 
 make anything of his life at all. The Un- 
 just Steward, when the prospect of losing 
 his situation was before him, was only 
 stating a fact of experience when he said, 
 " Dig I cannot ; to beg I am ashamed." The 
 more special a man's work is, the more doors 
 have been shut against him if he would seek 
 other work. 
 
 We find it hard to believe that we can lose 
 capacity, even when we admit the possibility 
 of losing opportunity. In youth life looks as 
 if it were to be merely the endless opening of 
 doors. The senses awaken and lead out to 
 constantly new experiences, and all the facul- 
 ties unfold, and opportunities come tumbling 
 over each other as they offer themselves and 
 press themselves. There is an embarrassment 
 of riches as the whole world lies before the 
 nascent life. He feels that he can go anywhere, 
 and be anything, and do anything. "The 
 
The Shut Door 67 
 
 world's mine oyster, which I with sword will 
 open." 
 
 In the matter of capacity the average boy 
 with a good education can be any one of half 
 a hundred things almost equally well. Now 
 and again there is a boy with a single definite 
 bent, born with a temperament which drives 
 him irresistibly, but that is rare. The ordinary 
 college boy stands before a great many possible 
 openings, and his friends think it fortunate 
 when at last he gets his alternative down to 
 two. He will gravely say that he is not sure 
 at present whether he will take up architecture 
 or agriculture. Or he is hesitating between 
 being a doctor or a minister ; or he is not sure 
 whether to go in for law or business. There is 
 no affectation about it, as older people some- 
 times think. It is an exact statement of the 
 case. In youth the whole world seems to lie 
 open to a man, and he can choose his path. It 
 is the charm and romance of life in youth that 
 this is so. He does not know that it will not 
 be thus forever, and even not for long. He 
 does not realize, what his elders have experi- 
 enced, that when one passes through a certain 
 
68 The Open Door 
 
 door, the others begin to shut. We do not go 
 very far before we almost hear them shutting. 
 Door after door swings on its hinges and clangs 
 to the portal. 
 
 Capacity, which formerly was fluid, gets set 
 and hardens. It is at last in its groove. In 
 acquiring facility for its special work, it loses 
 adaptability for other kinds of works. Take 
 the shoemaker from his last, and you may spoil 
 a good shoemaker without getting anything of 
 value in return. In Browning's beautiful poem 
 to his wife, One Word More, the story is re- 
 called that Eaphael the great painter, Eaphael 
 of the dear Madonnas, wrote a volume of son- 
 nets. Artists, who acquire mastery of one 
 medium, are often ambitious of rivalling their 
 fame in another line. It might well be that 
 Raphael should think little of his Madonnas 
 and would fain write great poems. But " you 
 and I will never read that volume." And 
 Dante, of the dread Inferno, once prepared to 
 paint an angel, according to report. The poet 
 suggests that he stopped his painting because 
 certain people of importance entered when the 
 inspiration was on him, and interrupted. " You 
 
The Shut Door 69 
 
 and I will never see that picture." Even for 
 them, the most gifted sons of men, there are 
 doors that are shut. 
 
 There are even sterner limitations still. 
 There are things that bring before us in even 
 more drastic manner our lost occasions and the 
 irreparable past. Think of the doors that death 
 shuts, for example. "It is the bitterest ele- 
 ment," says Lord Morley, " in the vast irony of 
 human life that the time-worn eyes to which a 
 son's success would have brought the purest 
 gladness are so often closed forever before suc- 
 cess has come." We may however have bit- 
 terer thoughts in the presence of death than 
 even that. We may know something of the 
 remorse of lost opportunities, which can never 
 come to us though we seek with tears. Death 
 closes doors not only for the dead, but for some 
 of the living. In Carlyle's Eeminiscences of 
 his wife Jane Welsh Carlyle there are some sad 
 passages, where he recalls scenes of the past. 
 One cannot read them without almost hearing 
 the sob in the words from the old man's breast, 
 as he brings back in memory the occasions 
 
70 The Open Door 
 
 when his wife had been his unwearied helper, 
 and as he longs for the chance to tell her what 
 he felt. Many a man has known that moment, 
 it mav be when the first sod fell clattering 
 upon the lowered coffin. Or he recalls tired 
 eyes that are closed, and thinks of patient lips 
 that no longer can speak their comforting word, 
 and remembers loving hands that lie still. At 
 such time we know too poignantly that there 
 are some things that are irreparable. It may 
 be that we would fain show some of the love 
 we felt but never expressed, lavish tenderness 
 on the dear head, or sob repentance to the 
 gentle soul. Too late ! The door is shut which 
 no man openeth. 
 
 What is true here is true of all that we call 
 opportunities. For all of us there are some 
 mistakes we would gladly retrieve, and some 
 chances we would wish to regain, and some 
 steps to retrace. It is hard to realize that 
 every step in our journey is really irrevocable. 
 Men are inclined to think about some grave de- 
 cision that they can at the worst go back if the 
 venture turn not out as they hope, but it is a 
 vain thought. They may return, but never to 
 
The Shut Door 71 
 
 the same place, and they who return are never 
 the same. The scene has changed, and they 
 have changed. When Goethe wrote the second 
 part of Faust, he remarked that the man who 
 had written Part I was dead. 
 
 A deeper shade comes over our thought of 
 the irreparable past, when we see that it is not 
 merely a question of having lost certain oppor- 
 tunities that will never come back to us, but 
 that we have lost something of the self we 
 might have been. It is not only that time has 
 been squandered and opportunities missed, but 
 also a character has been formed thus far for 
 good or ill, and a life burdened with disabilities 
 which past action has brought. Men do not 
 often speak of this, but with some it represents 
 the one acute sting of all retrospect. They 
 sometimes think pathetically of what they 
 might have been, and what they might have 
 achieved. This note is often heard from men, 
 when they open their hearts in moments of 
 self -revelation. Even when new life opens up 
 and new hope is found, there remains the 
 knowledge that the old life is not given back 
 
72 The Open Door 
 
 to be lived over, and the old opportunities are 
 never renewed. 
 
 Kepentance can bring forgiveness of sin. The 
 past can be buried, its sorrow forgotten and its 
 shame covered up, but even sin forgiven can 
 never undo all the past. Many a man knows 
 to his cost that he is weak when he might have 
 been strong, that qualities in him are languid 
 which should have been vigorous, that his 
 character is poor in places where it might have 
 been rich. There are indeed many illustrations 
 which compel us to look with chastened heart 
 at the tragic deprivations of life. It is against 
 all history and against all experience to act as 
 if any door of opportunity would never shut 
 either for individuals or for nations. We only 
 need to know a little of the past to have seen 
 the doors at the appointed time crash at the 
 threshold. 
 
 The one subject of habit suggests the many 
 places where we ourselves have opened and 
 shut doors for ourselves. In common speech 
 we say that a certain thing has now become a 
 second nature to us, and the phrase accurately 
 describes the fact. By repeated action habit 
 
The Shut Door 73 
 
 builds itself into the very fibre, until it is 
 securely entrenched in the life. It begins to 
 work tentatively and gently, but in the end its 
 sway is despotic. Usually we only hear of the 
 evil side of this subject, and moralists naturally 
 warn us that failure in life issues very largely 
 from the contracting of bad habits. But like 
 all other laws of life, it is for life, not to destroy 
 but to conserve. It is because of habit that 
 man is able to do so many things. He can 
 hand over the great mass of ordinary affairs to 
 be attended to by habit. This only shows how 
 inexorable it is all the same. What was a 
 tendency becomes ingrained, and after a time 
 we are in most things walking bundles of habits. 
 There is little wonder that moralists emphasize 
 the importance of the habit-forming period of 
 youth. Many of the doors, that later we find 
 shut upon us, have been shut by our own hands. 
 
 There is no gospel in the teaching of in- 
 exorable nature and implacable consequence. 
 To speak alone of closed doors that no man can 
 open would be to preach fatalism. But that is 
 the stern background from which there emerges 
 
74 The Open D 
 
 oor 
 
 a possible gospel. Hope itself is born of need ; 
 for what a man hath, why doth he yet hope 
 for ? If there is no gospel in the doctrine of 
 the shut door, it alone makes a gospel necessary. 
 Gospel means the good news that all is not lost, 
 that recovery is possible, that a way opens out 
 from the bondage into a new liberty. If we 
 must not treat the world as a place of childish 
 magic where consequences are playthings, if we 
 must be sure that in every act we are launch- 
 ing a cause which has its inevitable effect, there 
 still remains the fact that new causes can be 
 launched. Though the old is never obliterated, 
 the new is always possible. There can be the 
 new life itself, with its new meaning, and new 
 motive, and new manner of living. 
 
 In this whole subject of the irretrievable we 
 must be careful not to state it in terms of an 
 unmoral fatalism, breeding a cureless despair 
 both of the past and of the future. While there 
 is life there is always hope. We sometimes 
 speak of nature as if it were a machine, wound 
 up to grind out its products till it runs down. 
 We may not be able to say what nature is, but 
 at least we know enough to be sure of what it 
 
The Shut Door 75 
 
 is not ; and whatever nature may be, it is not a 
 machine. When we discourse on the inexo- 
 rableness of natural law, we seem often to be 
 thinking of a machine, and certainly we are 
 leaving out of account certain facts and aspects. 
 The world is not all red with tooth and claw. 
 There are beneficent and healing forces in 
 nature. She covers up her scars, and even 
 makes them beautiful. We can put nature on 
 our side with her healthful streams. The 
 true figure of life is not that of being held and 
 ground in a ruthless dreadful machine. Eather 
 it is a House of Many Mansions, where man 
 can be at home, and yet never can come to the 
 end of his surprises. Doors everywhere can 
 open to him, doors into knowledge, and into 
 beauty, and into peace, and into joy, and into 
 fullness of life. 
 
 Our consideration of the shut doors of life, 
 while it should not lead to despair, should 
 surely make us serious. Better know some- 
 thing of sorrow and remorse, than live the shal- 
 low surface life that never thinks at all. It 
 might be well for youth to call a halt amid the 
 
76 "The Open Door 
 
 enticements of novel experience, and lay hold 
 of the fact that there may be one of life's bless- 
 ings which, if lost, a man can never find again 
 though he seek it diligently with tears. Men 
 no longer young are sometimes tempted to 
 linger too long over the backward look, and to 
 stand by the grave of buried hopes. They 
 think of what they might have been and done, 
 how they might have grown in character and 
 in gracious life. They think of what they have 
 lost by the way. It is a mood which, rightly 
 used, has its value, though it is not without 
 danger. Its value lies in clearly appreciating 
 facts and accepting them calmly. It may also 
 drive a man to redeem the time and buy up his 
 opportunities. Its danger is to spend itself in 
 sentiment and self-pity, or to blind the eyes 
 to the new doors of opportunity that are still 
 open, in the painful thought of those that are 
 now shut. 
 
 If we look back, it is that we may learn to 
 look forward. The lesson of any regret or re- 
 morse in the backward look is, not that we may 
 feel the despair of the past, but that we may 
 feel the responsibility of the present. An ex- 
 
The Shut Door 77 
 
 elusive view of the past would drain from us 
 all strength : that way madness lies. If we 
 look backward to learn, we can and ought to 
 look forward to hope. We can learn, only be- 
 cause we hope. We sweep out the dead au- 
 tumn leaves, because the fresh buddings of 
 spring will come and cover the earth with its 
 sweet green mantle. The past may have its 
 dead to bury, but while there is life there is 
 hope. It is in no spirit of childish optimism 
 we can still look for the open door of life's pos- 
 sibilities, but made solemn by the knowledge 
 that no opportunity in all the world is offered 
 to us forever. All the future is ours, and to 
 look forward in any useful sense means to ask 
 what it is going to be. The same wasted time, 
 and lost chances, and broken endeavours of 
 good ? A life circling round an ever poorer 
 self with narrowing opportunities, or a life that 
 reaches out through service to ever larger ends 
 till it passes gladly, laden with rich spoils ? 
 Our sombre look at the irreparable past and at 
 the shut doors will have done its true work, if 
 it make us serious, and move us to the new en- 
 deavour of the new way. 
 
IV 
 
 The Doorways of Tradition 
 
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfills Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
IV 
 
 THE DOORWAYS OF TRADITION 
 
 N some ways we treat the past 
 with too much reverence. 
 We sometimes give it a false 
 authority. This is true even 
 although, as we saw in the 
 last two chapters, we also often underrate its 
 importance and its enduring results. We can- 
 not wisely face our future without knowing the 
 past and taking it into account. The law of 
 fitness conditions our opportunities, and the 
 law of consequences is unfailing. These two 
 laws justify much of the authority, which the 
 past claims and receives from us. At the same 
 time we let ourselves be hag-ridden by tradi- 
 tion, and the open door is hidden from us. The 
 very achievements of the past have the effect 
 of robbing the next generation of its own legiti- 
 mate triumphs. We forget that the sacredest 
 traditions which we rightly prize were once 
 themselves only open doors, through which 
 
82 The Open Door 
 
 men passed and took possession. By the same 
 right we too may press towards the gateway 
 of our own generation. 
 
 The relative place of the traditional and the 
 original makes an interesting study in every 
 region of life. We see the battle for pre- 
 cedence going on in politics, in law, in educa- 
 tion, in industry, and perhaps most acutely of 
 all in religion. A political system gathers a 
 kind of sacredness from the fact that genera- 
 tions were born into it and brought up under 
 it. It may have outlived its usefulness, and 
 may be a most cumbrous machine that only 
 works with creaks and jolts, but we will patch 
 it up and tinker it endlessly, rather than send 
 it to the scrap-heap. It is only in times of 
 revolution that such summary treatment is 
 meted out to it. Even after the spasm we find 
 men laboriously picking out pieces from the 
 pile to work into the new machine. 
 
 A legal code gathers authority from the mere 
 fact that it is called law. It may be absurd, it 
 may be unjust, with enactments that none 
 would attempt to justify by reason, yet in too 
 will be kept going, till it falls through of its 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 83 
 
 own weight. The proverbial law's delays are 
 often due to the conscientious working of a 
 crazy machine. Charles Dickens in " Bleak 
 House" scarified the absurdities and corrup- 
 tions of the old English Court of Chancery, yet 
 that court began as an attempt to correct strict 
 law by equity. Dickens' satire of the state of 
 law of his time, while exaggerated, was essen- 
 tially true. His hero in " David Copperfield " 
 when looking out for a profession was advised 
 to be a proctor. On asking what that was, his 
 friend replied, i; He is a functionary whose ex- 
 istence in the natural course of things would 
 have terminated about two hundred years ago. 
 I can tell you best what he is by telling you 
 what Doctors' Commons is. It's a little out-of- 
 the-way place, where they administer what is 
 called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of 
 tricks with obsolete old monsters of Acts of 
 Parliament, which three-fourths of the world 
 know nothing about, and the other fourth sup- 
 poses to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in 
 the days of the Edwards. It is a place that has 
 an ancient monopoly in suits about people's wills 
 and people's marriages, and disputes among 
 
84 The Open Door 
 
 ships and boats. . . . It is a very pleasant, 
 profitable little affair of private theatricals." 
 
 Space would fail if we attempted to recount 
 the absurdities that for generations held their 
 place in education. We can recognize and 
 appraise some of the more ancient absurdities, 
 both in the subjects taught, and in the manner 
 of teaching them. We see them to have been 
 relics of past ages, when they had some ap- 
 propriateness and meaning — grammar taught 
 in a fog of weird forms and barbarous terms, 
 Latin versification to boys who knew nothing 
 of what even English poetry was. The sub- 
 jects and the methods had gathered sacredness 
 through mere antiquity, and were kept going 
 through use and wont. It is still hard for 
 some of us who were trained in the old school 
 to rid our minds of the idea that there can be 
 only one true system of education. We go on 
 doing things for no other reason than that they 
 have been done, and we assume that there can 
 be no other right method of doing them. The 
 incubus of tradition lies heavy on us, and we 
 lay the hard burden upon the tender backs of 
 the next generation. 
 
"The Doorways of Tradition 85 
 
 Our present social order and industrial system 
 have also "acquired merit" in the selfsame 
 way. They have grown, and we have grown 
 accustomed to them, so that even when we 
 ourselves can riddle them with criticism we 
 think them inevitable. We dislike the thought 
 of change from our static conditions. "We feel 
 that anything else would be unworkable, and 
 are afraid to touch the whole social fabric in 
 case it comes down about our ears. Economic 
 principles like supply and demand, and the 
 divine right of competition, are intoned in our 
 ears like items of a sacred creed. Some even 
 resent criticism, and speak as if sacrilegious 
 hands were laid on the carved work of the 
 sanctuary itself. Property is spoken of as if it 
 had some inalienable rights, instead of being 
 the product of society which society can alter 
 if it desires. 
 
 In every art there grows a system of pre- 
 scribed rules, a sacred way of doing things. 
 Established schools arise according to definite 
 canons laid down once for all. The ideal be- 
 comes clever variations of recognized standards 
 — vain repetitions as the heathen do ! Even 
 
86 The Open Door 
 
 science achieves some formulas which acquire a 
 certain sacredness. The chief enemies of any 
 advance often come from these, who work in 
 the same sphere, and who Hke to think that 
 they have reached absolute authority. Heretics 
 are not confined to ecclesiastical circles. Doc- 
 tors are sometimes the bitterest opponents of 
 new methods in medicine. Men who have 
 themselves become authorities in a science 
 shake their heads gravely over the vagaries 
 of newer schools. Science fortunately for 
 itself does not suffer so much, since it cannot 
 suffer so long, because of its frankly exper- 
 imental basis. It may be disconcerting to 
 have settled views of the constitution of matter 
 upset by radioactivity, but radium and its 
 properties can be seen and somehow must be 
 taken into account. 
 
 It is not to be wondered that in religion the 
 same process should be seen intensified, for it 
 deals with the most intimate region of life and 
 with the profoundest experiences. The very 
 reverence which the soul has for ancient truth, 
 fragrant with sacred memories and holy asso- 
 ciations, makes it easy to give it authority. No 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 87 
 
 institutions among men last so long without 
 shadow of change as those that have to do with 
 religion. There are more functionaries than 
 Dickens' proctor, whose existence in the natural 
 course of things should have terminated two 
 hundred years ago ; and there are some other 
 institutions that go on as profitable little affairs 
 of private theatricals. More readily here than 
 anywhere else in life do we fall back on 
 authority, of church, or creed, or book. Tradi- 
 tion carries more weight here than elsewhere, 
 and fights its battle more stubbornly. In what 
 folio ws we naturally take many of our illustra- 
 tions from this sphere because tradition is more 
 deeply intrenched here. It is not that any 
 different quality of human nature is displayed, 
 but merely the same natural characteristic as 
 is seen elsewhere. We sometimes speak of the 
 ecclesiastical mind, as if it were a different order 
 of human being. But it is only man showing 
 there the same temper as we find in other 
 spheres, only in an exaggerated form. 
 
 Is there a justification for this wide-spread 
 tendency ? Is there a true instinct lying back 
 
88 The Open Door 
 
 of this tenderness with past institutions ? There 
 must be, since wo find it so universal. Of 
 course temperament and training do much to 
 influence us as to the amount of authority we 
 give to tradition. Great masses of men and 
 whole churches practically rest on it, and those 
 who think themselves free of it often find the 
 same refuge under disguise. Custom and tradi- 
 tion play their immense part with only a dif- 
 ference of name. The restlessness of Protes- 
 tantism, with its ferment of new opinions and 
 theories, may seem to be well contrasted with 
 the settled trust in tradition. As a matter of 
 fact, however, though there is more freedom, 
 we often find in Protestantism only a trans- 
 ference of authority from the Church to the 
 Bible. Historically the tyranny of tradition is 
 seen becoming so great that there is a swing of 
 the pendulum to the other extreme. To-day in 
 some quarters there is seen impatience of au- 
 thority, and an exaggeration of the rights of 
 the individual, and an assertion of the exclusive 
 claim of personal experience. 
 
 There is a true tradition and a right weight 
 to be given to the past. In every region of 
 
"The Doorways of Tradition 89 
 
 knowledge and in every branch of activity wise 
 men recognize that through the ages there 
 accumulates experience, and that customs and 
 thoughts and methods as well as material are 
 transmitted. In religion as elsewhere it is 
 folly to cut ourselves from the life of the past, 
 and to refuse to enter into our inheritance. 
 We cannot do this without loss in any sphere 
 of life, in law and morals and science and art, 
 and to do it in religion always spells failure. 
 This great fact explains the mass and weight 
 of the whole Roman Catholic position and its 
 attraction to many minds, and the lack of it 
 explains why so often Protestantism has broken 
 up into sections and diffused itself vainly. 
 The true attitude does not despise tradition. 
 It only sifts it, and tests it, and seeks to sep- 
 arate false elements from the true. To have a 
 right attitude towards tradition in religion 
 settles for us many questions. It makes an 
 epoch in a man's life, when he goes to the root 
 of the whole matter of religious evidence, and 
 raises the question of what is original and what 
 is merely traditional, what is personal and 
 what is derivative, what he owes to custom or 
 
90 "The Open Door 
 
 unthinking usage and what he arrives at inde- 
 pendently or at least what he has made his 
 own. 
 
 When we speak of originality we do not 
 mean starting afresh, but making vital tradition 
 our own. Not that personal experience is 
 independent of all authority, but that it is to 
 the soul the supreme evidence, the corrobora- 
 tion and attestation of the truth by which it 
 lives. This is the difference of appeal a religious 
 message makes. To some it is hearsay, some- 
 thing that can be classed with rumour, oral or 
 written words, and therefore something outside 
 of life, and it does not make much difference 
 whether they believe it or not. To others it is 
 something spoken to heart and conscience, and 
 it is as if it were written within, till it seems as 
 though it were graved indelibly on the soul, 
 something with which they are in vital connec- 
 tion. They have thrilled to it, made it their 
 own, and respond in newness of life. 
 
 Of course in a sense we owe everything to 
 others. What have we that we have not re- 
 ceived? The chief education of life consists 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 91 
 
 in learning what has been said, and felt, and 
 thought, and done by others. We enter into 
 the inheritance of the past with all its gathered 
 riches. All knowledge is a growth, and if the 
 fruit is now it is because the roots are back in 
 the sub-soil of history. We are dressed in 
 garments that come to us ready-to-wear, made 
 by other hands. Art, science, literature, re- 
 ligion, all the precious essence of the human 
 spirit, is exuded drop by drop through the toil 
 and tears of many generations. If we know 
 anything, it is because others told it us. In 
 every sphere of human life, practical, intellec- 
 tual, moral, spiritual, other men laboured and 
 we have entered into their labours. Education 
 in any branch of learning must begin with sim- 
 ple reception of information. The child is not 
 asked to prove the multiplication table, but to 
 learn it. Some of the trouble of our education 
 is that he is not always made to learn it. Ex- 
 ternal authority is the first method of educa- 
 tion. The child is naturally imitative, and the 
 process of learning is a form of mimicry. He 
 says and believes things not of himself, but be- 
 cause others tell them to him. 
 
92 The Open Door 
 
 This is true of religion, as well as of other 
 spheres of knowledge. Some religious beliefs 
 may be primitive and instinctive, but if we 
 were confined to that source we can imagine 
 how fragmentary and mistaken they would be. 
 We are in a great succession, and our inner life 
 is shaped and coloured for us. We are born 
 into a spiritual climate as well as a physical 
 one, and the effects of the first are even more 
 far-reaching than the latter. We cannot re- 
 nounce authority altogether, even if we would 
 like to do it. And authority ought to have 
 great weight w^ith us always. It is foolish to 
 run amuck against all custom and immemorial 
 usage and tradition, as if the world could begin 
 all over again with us. It is absurd to suppose 
 that past history can go for nothing in religion, 
 any more that it can in the life of a nation. 
 External authority plays an important part in 
 our early religious education, as it plays an im- 
 portant part in all other education. We be- 
 lieve first of all because we have heard. 
 
 So far as it goes, that is satisfactory ground. 
 Tradition is not the seat of authority in relig- 
 ion, but it is foolish to exclude it without ade- 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 93 
 
 quate examination. A wide and long-continued 
 faith is at least presumptive evidence, that 
 there is something in it to be examined with 
 reverence and care. To deny any authority to 
 tradition in religion would be logically to cut 
 away the feet from any form of knowledge, 
 and to condemn any kind of education what- 
 ever. The Church must ever begin her argu- 
 ment, as the Psalmist began his plea, by the 
 statement, " We have heard with our ears, O 
 God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou 
 didst in their days, in the times of old." It is 
 not enough for a stable and permanent faith, 
 but it at least is something to begin with. 
 Tradition can never take the place of experi- 
 ence; but without tradition experience would 
 lack much of its weight. 
 
 Absolute originality is impossible in anything. 
 What we usually mean by originality in the 
 great creative works of genius in literature 
 and art is simply individuality, that the artist 
 has taken from the common stock, but given it 
 a new setting, passed the truth through his 
 own mind and heart, brought out new beauties 
 and fresh aspects. We call Shakespeare the 
 
94 The Open Door 
 
 most original of English authors. Yet Shake- 
 speare got his blank verse from Marlowe, his 
 plots from wherever he could find them, and 
 even sometimes lifted a whole play bodily. 
 But he made them " suffer a sea-change into 
 something passing rich and strange," so that 
 they are his absolutely. If any poet was origi- 
 nal it was Kobert Burns, singing with native 
 grace. Yet many of his best songs were the 
 songs of the country, crooned by the old 
 women over the fire, and whistled by the 
 ploughboys in the field. But he passed them 
 through the alembic of his own nature, so that 
 they came out coloured by the blood of his own 
 hot heart, and they are his alone. "Without 
 this individuality work is drudgery, and art is 
 sterile, and worship is convention. The highest 
 originality is always related to the old and the 
 past. Truth does not begin with us any more 
 than it will die with us. In a very real sense 
 we can say nothing that is entirely of ourself ; 
 and if we do say anything of value, it is be- 
 cause others have told it us. The student of 
 history or science or art cannot ignore the past, 
 though unimpeachable certainty may be his 
 
The Doorways of "Tradition 95 
 
 chief purpose. A man of science, who tried to 
 perform all the experiments that brought his 
 subject up to its present stage, would need to 
 look forward to a long life. There is nothing 
 more offensive in religion than contempt of the 
 past in doctrine, in faith, in life. 
 
 Because of this, the prevalent temptation is 
 undoubtedly a temptation to lay too much em- 
 phasis on tradition and external authority, and 
 to leave no scope for new vistas of truth to be 
 opened up. The conventional has a firm hold 
 on us, because religion is not a living energiz- 
 ing power with us. One note of Christ's work 
 is the stress He laid on the single life. He 
 taught and enforced the originality of the sep- 
 arate soul. We need only think of the value 
 He put on the individual to show this. He 
 singled each man out from the mass, and made 
 him stand, a life apart. And the result of the 
 Gospel is always to define the personality with 
 clear lines, each with separate character, pe- 
 culiar gifts, special opportunity, particular 
 work and service. Each has a contribution to 
 make distinct from everybody else. This un- 
 
96 The Open Door 
 
 doubtedly follows from the teaching of Jesus, 
 and we see this emerging in actual life in the 
 early Church. The spirit of every man in direct 
 contact with the spirit of God is the New Tes- 
 tament conception, of religion. 
 
 ]STow all this is opposed to the spirit and 
 practice of the world, the natural inertia of the 
 ordinary state of things. Society works in- 
 cessantly at eradicating spiritual originality. 
 It keeps reducing men to the level of things — 
 a dead level — cutting all to pattern, rubbing 
 off corners. We know how society looks 
 askance at the original and the eccentric, and 
 has hard names of crank and fanatic for all 
 who run counter to social custom and preju- 
 dice. One must not speak strongly, or think 
 freely, or act individually. There is of course 
 good in this ; for it pulls up, as well as rubs 
 down, and it is a useful deterrent to parade of 
 singularity. The genius of society aims at col- 
 lective action, and moulds all to one type of 
 life. The sway of custom is strong in every- 
 thing, and mere protest against custom may be 
 only conceit or antisocial feeling. Still, it is 
 this conventionality which makes for medioc- 
 
The Doorways of ^Tradition 97 
 
 rity, and for the prosaic in every line of life. 
 Genius is always more or less of an affront, 
 either not recognized or hated or feared. 
 
 In politics we have the fetish of public opin- 
 ion, as if what the man in the street thinks 
 must be good policy, and the opportunist states- 
 man swings tremulously to catch the popular 
 breeze. He has no burning convictions, no im- 
 movable principles. In art also the world 
 wants only clever adaptations and repetitions, 
 the reproduction of past triumphs. In religion 
 especially this temptation abounds. We have 
 heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, 
 and we accept unthinkingly the past record. 
 How much of our faith is taken by us on trust, 
 a matter of hearsay ? Men repeat catch 
 phrases, which have gathered a certain sacred- 
 ness from antiquity. How seldom we hear a 
 real live original voice, that is not merely an 
 echo of some one else ! In spite of what we 
 have admitted as to the place of authority in 
 education, the true education after all is tested 
 by what we say and do and think of ourselves, 
 and not because others have told us. Though 
 it is not given to every one to be a pioneer of 
 
98 The Open Door 
 
 truth, yet truth is little to us until we have ab- 
 sorbed it and made it our own, so much our 
 own that it has practically ceased to be deriva- 
 tive and becomes personal. In religion tradi- 
 tion must have become experience before any- 
 thing is achieved. We must walk by faith and 
 not by custom : we must live by insight and 
 not by prescription. 
 
 Originality of a certain kind is always wel- 
 come. The Athenian temper is more or less 
 common, a desire to hear and tell some new 
 thing, and many more than the old king would 
 be willing to offer a reward for the discovery 
 of a new pleasure. Originality of execution in 
 literature and art and work generally is always 
 sure of recognition. But originality of thought 
 has a stiff up-hill battle to fight. Originality, 
 which asks for a new standpoint, which seeks 
 to change current views, which attempts to 
 alter custom and influence life, has usually to 
 learn the meaning of neglect and opposition. 
 In different forms and ways men have been 
 saying through all the centuries that a prophet 
 cannot come out of Nazareth, that no good can 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 99 
 
 come from Galilee, that a majority is always 
 in the right, that safety is got by the traditions 
 of the fathers, and truth from the wisdom of 
 the ancients, that the law shall not perish from 
 the priest, nor council from the wise, nor the 
 word from the prophet — and all along the cen- 
 turies this complacent creed has been con- 
 tinually falsified. It is from the unthought-of 
 quarter that the light comes. It is the unex- 
 pected that happens. From following the herd 
 is a prophet chosen, or from the steps of the 
 throne, or from the priesthood itself. 
 
 In other planes than the religious something 
 of the same truth is noticed. You can educate 
 talent; you cannot generate genius. In the 
 most unlikely places, from the strangest quarter, 
 the man is born with a quality of soul apart. 
 In every region of thought the period of de- 
 cadence has set in when men declare that there 
 is no further advance possible. The artist can 
 only repeat the past. There can be nothing 
 new in art, men have often said— till the new 
 appears, the thing that was impossible happens. 
 How simple is the new ; the stumbling block is 
 always the simplicity. Pretenders strive after 
 
ioo The Open Door 
 
 outre effects making up for the want of real 
 originality by a false sensationalism. All pos- 
 sibility in orchestration has been already ex- 
 hausted, say musical critics. And pretenders 
 seek to demonstrate genius by bizarre combi- 
 nations, by making strange and weird noises— 
 till the master of song again arises, and music 
 spontaneous as the note of a bird is once more 
 heard in the land. There may be nothing new 
 in the methods and materials, the old colours 
 on the canvas, the old instruments, the painter's 
 pencil and the sculptor's chisel, are the same 
 as of old. It is the spirit that is new. 
 
 In the highest sphere of all a man comes 
 from God with the divine afflatus, with clear 
 spiritual susceptibility, with a genius for re- 
 ligion, with an unerring instinct for morality 
 as a great artist has an instinct for beauty. 
 We the faithless ones, with our comfortable 
 creed which desires no change and therefore 
 asserts there can be no change, rejoice in our 
 darkness and call it light. It is as possible for 
 us as for the Pharisees to make the higher law 
 void by our traditions, by closing our eyes to 
 the light which leads us to new ethical re- 
 
The Doorways of Tradition 101 
 
 sponsibilities, by refusing to believe that there 
 is an open door for our generation. The 
 danger of tradition becomes greater from the 
 very lapse of time. The Gospel which came 
 as new life becomes like an oft-told tale, the 
 revelations that transfigure the world to early 
 believers do not seem so wonderful and fresh 
 to us. They do not grip us with the same in- 
 tensity, and drive us with the same impulse. 
 Koutine takes the place of inspiration. We 
 trust to the usual and the conventional, to 
 tradition rather than to experience, and life 
 loses the uplift of a commanding passion. 
 What was a new creation seems commonplace 
 and trite. We stand at the doorways of tra- 
 dition, blind to the open door of our own new 
 day. 
 
V 
 
 The Magic Door 
 
Enflamed with the study of learning and the admira- 
 tion of virtue ; stirred up with high hopes of living to be 
 brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous 
 to all ages* 
 
 — Milton. 
 
THE MAGIC DOOR 
 
 OTJTH stands at the magic 
 door of life, over which mys- 
 tery broods. It never remains 
 the same, but seems to alter 
 with every different applicant. 
 This is not strange, since youth itself does not 
 stay the same. We speak of youth as if it 
 were alwavs of one texture and colour, whereas 
 it is the time of chaotic contradictions. We 
 talk of the hopefulness of youth, which is true 
 enough, and yet some have known then a bitter 
 despair never again equalled. We call it a 
 time of impractical radicalism, and yet it is 
 curiously conservative. We speak of its blithe 
 carelessness, and yet it is sometimes marked by 
 moods of brooding sadness. It is like an April 
 day flecked with alternate sun and shower. 
 Whatever youth does, it does with zest, be- 
 lieves more valiantly, doubts more tragically, 
 
 i°5 
 
106 "The Open Door 
 
 hopes more buoyantly, fears more poignantly 
 than ever again. 
 
 All this because it is the time of dawning 
 self-expression. It is for the first time fully 
 conscious of being alive, and has eaten the 
 fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
 evil. Youth stands before ways that entice in 
 every direction. It has the key to the magic 
 door. It has a thirst for experience, and every- 
 thing depends on how it seeks to slake that 
 thirst. Some get drawn off by the urgency of 
 passion, and are turned away from the true 
 path of life, allured by the fickle lights of 
 pleasure. The sacred flame burns itself out 
 into dead ashes. To those who escape that 
 fate we turn for the world's hope; for the 
 inner heat of their nature gets outlet in the 
 enthusiasms and ideals that save us from stag- 
 nation. They come with their fresh keen in- 
 sight, and compel us to review our mouldy 
 formulas and tarnished standards. They force 
 us out from our timid and sleek securities into 
 untrodden ways. 
 
 The phrase is sometimes used of some one 
 
The Magic Door 107 
 
 who is still young in years that he is taking 
 the old maris view of things. It is said not in 
 praise, but in blame. There is always a tone 
 of reproach or regret in the accusation. We 
 mean by it that his mind has become static, 
 that he is no longer open to new ideas, and 
 that he has ceased to grow. It is not all com- 
 mendation when we say that such a one has an 
 old head on young shoulders, even when we 
 know that he has achieved some of the safety 
 that comes from prudence. We feel that he is 
 prematurely old, and with all our congratula- 
 tion for the appearance of wisdom there is a 
 sense of regret as at something untimely, like 
 the unexpected death of a child. He has ri- 
 pened too soon, and the freshness and promise 
 have departed. Youth ought not to be pru- 
 dent ; for prudence before its time can be the 
 meanest of the virtues. Each age has its nat- 
 ural virtues and its common vices. Moralists 
 tell us that covetousness is the vice of age. It 
 is never a pleasant quality, but in youth it is 
 hideous. Better spendthrift youth, careless of 
 the future, gaily venturing without undue fore- 
 thought, than always calculating advantages 
 
108 The Open Door 
 
 and always considering the main chance. The 
 old man's attitude may not mean any such 
 moral obliquity, and may only mean the loss 
 of intellectual curiosity and of interest in life. 
 
 Doctors say that old age physically comes 
 with the hardening of the arteries, which is 
 not in itself a matter of mere time. A man 
 may be reasonably young at sixty, and growing 
 old at thirty. Intellectually, old age comes 
 with the hardening of the brain passages. 
 Ideas are crystallized and life has become 
 static. The mind cannot adjust itself to a new 
 point of view. New evidence has no effect on 
 settled positions, and the man is even impatient 
 at being asked to reconsider questions. The 
 amazing procession of life can pass before lus- 
 treless eyes, and make no vivid impression. 
 There is a loss of interest, and experience in 
 any real sense has ceased. There is no vital 
 response to any new appeal. It is like knock- 
 ing at the door of an unoccupied house. Once 
 more this is not a matter of mere time ; for 
 some men old in years have kept their attitude 
 of curiosity alert and their interest fresh. 
 They have never quite forgotten their first 
 
The Magic Door 109 
 
 entrance through the magic door. The world 
 looks as big as ever, and life seems as signifi- 
 cant. We do not find such among those who 
 think it a sufficient answer to say to eager 
 youth that it is young ; for they know how 
 much the world owes to the youthful temper. 
 
 Youth feeds the world with life, not merely 
 that it assures physical continuity to the race, 
 but also that it keeps alive all spiritual adven- 
 ture. Older people sometimes assume a 
 patronizing air towards youth, as if they 
 looked down from a serene height with pity 
 for its inexperience. If all the truth were 
 known, there is more envy than pity in the 
 attitude. They know that now they are not 
 capable of the high enthusiasm, and generous 
 ardour, and noble passion, which they affect to 
 depreciate. All the time it is by these things 
 that we really live ; for youth puts the yeast 
 into the whole lump of life that saves it from 
 decay. Even the older men who keep alert do 
 so far more than they imagine by tapping the 
 brains, and using the strength of the younger 
 generation. We prey upon our children, and 
 suck the blood of our offspring. Life so soon 
 
no The Open Door 
 
 becomes stereotyped and hardens into settled 
 grooves, and only youth has the courage to 
 break the moulds. 
 
 The elder among us like to speak of the 
 value of experience^ and of course it has a great 
 value, but not as we often mean by it. It is 
 nothing in itself to have come through a great 
 many things. We look on experience as cap- 
 ital, which can be put out to interest and earn 
 us a living without any further effort. Capital 
 so treated often takes wings and flies away, 
 and the capitalist wakes up to find his re- 
 sources gone. Experience so treated ceases to 
 have any value. It has become conventional 
 and stereotyped, and does not apply to the new 
 conditions. This is one reason why youth is 
 often impatient at the pratings about experi- 
 ence. It seems to have no earthly relation to 
 the particular situation with which we are 
 faced. It is antiquated knowledge, and has 
 not been brought up to date. 
 
 What is experience, on which age puts such 
 mystical value ? We think of it as something 
 definite like money in our pocket. It is really 
 
The Magic Door m 
 
 the interpretation of life, and to be true and of 
 any value must change as life itself keeps 
 changing. Coleridge somewhere likens expe- 
 rience to the stern light of a ship at sea, which 
 illumines the track that has been passed over, 
 but does nothing to lighten the course to be 
 traversed. It is a fit description of much that 
 passes for experience. There ought to be a 
 residuum of wisdom left, a training in judgment 
 and character able to be applied to other and 
 new occasions. When this is the case it is a 
 valuable contribution. Age as a rule does not 
 really have experience, though it may once 
 have had it. It is youth which has experience, 
 as it actually tries out its new opportunities, 
 and meets its new situations, and grapples with 
 its new problems, and is hand to hand with life. 
 Knowledge of the ancient doorways of tradi- 
 tion is not all that is needed ; for youth is led 
 to ways that look like the old and yet some- 
 how have changed. 
 
 Youth therefore ought to be adventurous, 
 since the life that lies before us is all an adven- 
 ture. It has never been lived before, and none 
 can ever forecast it. The world never can go 
 
112 The Open Door 
 
 back over the way by which it has come, and has 
 not passed this way heretofore. It moves to 
 untried paths, and above all its needs it stands 
 in need of path-finders. The glorious idealism 
 of youth is its greatest asset. Youth ought to 
 be radical, asking its insistent questions, even 
 pouring its contempt on our smug ways and 
 respectable institutions. We sometimes blame 
 young men for being opinionative, and self- 
 willed, and too fond of airing their own notions 
 of things, and too individual in their attitude. 
 As a matter of fact they are too easily brow- 
 beaten into compliance with the conventional, 
 too soon licked into the usual shape, too afraid 
 of being themselves. The world is full of con- 
 formists, thinking, saying, acting the usual. 
 The poet that was in all of us dies too young. 
 "We need more non-conformists, more men 
 ready to protest, because their eyes have seen a 
 nobler vision. It would be a poor thing to 
 have youth prudent with the selfish cal- 
 culating prudence of worldly wisdom. Life 
 stretches out at the feet of youth to be made 
 what it will. It can be as rich and beautiful 
 as youth likes to have it. 
 
The Magic Door 113 
 
 This is the Magic Door, that ushers to the 
 very land of dreams. We have seen that the 
 world is not any one thing but is as big as we 
 are able to use, and life can be anything we 
 have the faith and courage and knowledge to 
 make it. The place of a man in the spiritual 
 kingdom is settled not by his graces, nor by his 
 attainments, nor even by his actions in them- 
 selves, but by his will. Ultimately what a 
 man wills to do, he does, and what he desires 
 he receives. What he bends his heart to reach 
 comes sooner or later to his hand. It is truly 
 a magic door, if we get at it what we demand. 
 This is our serious statement, that what we re- 
 quest is given to us, and what we really will in 
 our hearts we attain. Life comes and says calmly 
 and confidently, " Ask what I shall give you," and 
 the door opens out into the place of our asking. 
 
 This may seem at first an absurd statement 
 that what a man seeks he finds, and where he 
 knocks it is opened to him, but if we think a 
 little we will see that it is true. We may not 
 get the exact thing we most desire. The 
 particular object on which we have set our 
 hearts may be to the end out of our reach, but 
 
ii4 The Open Door 
 
 we get along the line of our desire. The 
 farmer who sows wheat may not get as much 
 wheat at the harvest as he would like (what 
 farmer ever does get as much as that ?) — but he 
 will get nothing else than wheat. He never 
 expects to get oats, where he sowed wheat. 
 If a man has set his heart on the world he may 
 not get as many of the things of the world as 
 will satisfy him (what man ever does get 
 that ? ) — but he will get nothing else than the 
 things of the world. If he is bent on the satis- 
 faction of the earthly appetites and desires, he 
 will get that to some extent, though afterwards 
 he may discover that his request has brought 
 with it leanness of soul, and an empty life. But 
 he will get nothing else. Let us be reasonable, 
 how can we expect anything else ? To choose 
 the world as our portion is to get it, — at least 
 it is to limit our resources to purely worldly 
 ones. To choose the higher life of the things 
 of the mind and of the soul as our portion is to 
 get them, to open up our heart to intellectual 
 and spiritual joys. There is no promise also of 
 the things which the worldly man enjoys. 
 That was not our request. 
 
The Magic Door 115 
 
 The point of distinction is the quality of the 
 request, the kind of satisfaction the soul puts 
 before it. It does not mean that the worldly 
 man will be successful in all his earthly ventures, 
 and will be satiated in every fleshly desire. 
 Merely, that if he is not satisfied there he can 
 be satisfied nowhere ; for nowhere else has 
 he sowed for a harvest. It does not mean 
 that the spiritual man will have every prayer 
 even for spiritual blessing answered exactly 
 as he asks, but that where he has put his 
 heart he will find his life. If his aim is to 
 attain to his own ideal, if he seeks growth in 
 gracious life, in noble character, in generous 
 service, all that is the kind of harvest he will 
 reap. One special prayer may not be answered, 
 for the very reason that it would not be along 
 the line of his usual desire. If he is bent on 
 character, he will enrich and sweeten character. 
 If he is bent on communion, he will have his 
 soul lifted up to the very presence of God 
 some time. The saint's trial is that the means 
 often seems so unlike the end he seeks and 
 prays for. But let him be sure that the law 
 holds good. 
 
n6 The Open Door 
 
 There is nothing magical on either side. We 
 call it a Magic Door, because there is no magic 
 in the world. It is one of the unchastened 
 dreams of the human heart to possess some 
 talisman to gratify every desire as it arises, a 
 magic carpet of the Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
 ment to transport us anywhere at will, a magic 
 lamp which at a rub will evoke unseen powers to 
 do our bidding, a magic word to open the world's 
 treasure-trove. That is an idle and somewhat 
 childish dream, but it is true nevertheless that 
 we already possess as much power over our 
 lives. What we lust after, what we give up 
 our heart to, what we really request from life, 
 what we desire as our chief good and foster in 
 our thoughts as the imperious need of our hearts, 
 that we cannot but get. When we make our 
 deliberate, conscious, persistent choice, we are 
 launching a cause that cannot fail of its effect. 
 
 This is the birth of sin, not in the act, but in 
 the desire. It is here is its guilt, as it is here 
 is the possibility of escape from it. An evil 
 will only needs opportunity to blossom out into 
 the full-blown crime, or vice, or cruelty, or 
 shame. The sin is in the selfishness which lusted 
 
The Magic Door 117 
 
 exceedingly. It only lacks an opportunity ; 
 and the opportunity cannot be kept from us for- 
 ever. In a sense the evil is already done, when 
 the heart is given up to it. Like strong-headed 
 oxen we pull at the yoke, pull and at last get 
 clear — to our own undoing. Sooner or later 
 we have our way. We persist, we seek it, we 
 will have it. It is as if life said to us to take 
 it — the sin and the curse, the desire and the 
 sting. 
 
 Not vindictively, not as a punishment, not in 
 revenge, a petulant revenge for the willfulness 
 that cannot be curbed. No, but because that is 
 the inevitable consequence ; that is of the very 
 nature of the case. Our hope lies in this. That 
 leanness of soul may send us, who have had this 
 terrible success, through very loathing to change 
 the current of our desires, to set our affections 
 not on the selfish worldly ambitions, but on the 
 higher things. The wasting sickness may turn 
 our hearts from the broken cisterns that hold 
 no water, to the true water of life, and here- 
 after we may live with whatsoever things are 
 true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, 
 and of good report. For there is a place of 
 
n8 The Open Door 
 
 escape. The point of departure for each of us 
 is in the will. 
 
 The great question then comes to be that we 
 should ask ourselves what our will is. If our 
 heart were unveiled, what would be seen there 
 at the bottom as the foundation of our scheme 
 of life ? The question is not whether we have 
 passed a blameless life, and can stand in con- 
 scious rectitude, not whether we have faltered 
 and fallen by the way and have come short of 
 our own ideal. The question has to do with the 
 bent, and bias, and direction of our life. Have 
 we chosen the better part, the part our own 
 heart tells us to be best ? If so, we may be 
 sure that we will get what we have chosen, and 
 more, a richer apprehension and a fuller pos- 
 session of goodness and beauty and truth. Or, 
 has our ideal of life been a purely selfish one, of 
 pleasure or ambition or low desire ? Has our 
 best vision gone out of our life these last years 
 since the world took such hold on us, as the 
 sunshine creeps out of the valley? What is 
 our will in this great matter of life ? Can it 
 be defined in the scathing pitiless condemnation 
 as only some variant of the lust of the flesh, 
 
The Magic Door 119 
 
 the lust of the eye, and the pride of life ? In 
 this great rich wonderful world of God, 
 
 Where all men's prayers to Thee raised 
 Eeturn possessed of what they pray Thee, 
 
 on this earth made beautiful with the beauty 
 of holiness, the scene of love and redemption, 
 the place of noble life and sometimes nobler 
 death, have we only asked for the poor and the 
 petty, and have been paid the price of our 
 prayer — a small, shrunk, lean, and loathly soul ? 
 What have we been asking — cmd getting — in 
 our ceaseless prayer for life ? 
 
 The world responds to asking, though not to 
 wishing. It is a rich world that knows no re- 
 spect of persons, but gives us each what we 
 most desire. True we may never get as much 
 as we desire, but only along the line of our de- 
 sire can we get at all. Nothing of value is 
 ever got without its price, but if we are willing 
 to pay the price it can be had, and the price is 
 that we should ask. The Arabian Nights' con- 
 ception of the world is a far poorer thought of 
 it than the reality. We learn that the universe 
 
120 The Open Door 
 
 has a moral and causal base, and that the ask- 
 ing to which it responds is far other than idle 
 wishing. To ask for a thing in this cosmic 
 sense means to bend heart and mind to it, to 
 foster it as the imperious need of life, to be 
 ready to sacrifice all else for it. What a man 
 seeks in such fashion he cannot fail to find. 
 We can rely on the law of cause and effect. If 
 a man applies himself exclusively to money- 
 making, one hopes that he will make a lot ; for 
 it is certain that he will make nothing else. 
 The material success may not be very con- 
 spicuous, but the making of the man will be ac- 
 cording to his ideal. 
 
 In our usual calculations we count on the 
 working of this principle. The world has 
 eternal justice at its heart, and we reap the 
 measure of our sowing. William James sums 
 up one of the chapters of his Text-book of Psy- 
 chology with this encouraging statement, " Let 
 no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of 
 his education, whatever the line of it may be. 
 If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the 
 working day, he may safely leave the final re- 
 sult to itself. He can with perfect certainty 
 
The Magic Door 121 
 
 count on waking up some fine morning to find 
 himself one of the competent ones of his gener- 
 ation in whatever pursuit he may have singled 
 out. Silently, between all the details of his 
 business, the power of judging in all that class 
 of matter will have built itself up within him 
 as a possession that will never pass away. 
 Young people should know this truth in ad- 
 vance. The ignorance of it has probably en- 
 gendered more discouragement and faintheart- 
 edness in youths embarking on arduous careers 
 than all other causes put together." 
 
 We are paid in the current coin of our own 
 ideal. If we know what we want from the 
 world and have made up our mind as to the 
 chief end of life, the door opens to us. This is 
 why our ideal is of more importance than even 
 our present real. The one has the shaping of 
 the other. The hope of the world lies with 
 those we call visionaries, who kick at our treas- 
 ured customs and ideas and inspirations, who 
 plan their spacious schemes of reform, who 
 dream dreams and see visions. It lies with the 
 very men who have to suffer from our ancient 
 gibes about enthusiasm and youthful ignorance. 
 
122 The Open Door 
 
 Without them everything tends to degradation, 
 in politics and business and art and religion and 
 social life. They have insight because they 
 have outlook. We pass our inane judgments 
 about Utopia and Castles in Spain, when 
 idealism is really the life of all that lives in 
 man. There might be some sense in asking 
 youth to give up its ideals, if we could point 
 to a state of affairs that was less of a stupid 
 muddle than our present condition. Rather 
 we might well welcome the youthful enthu- 
 siasm, which hopes and dares, and which above 
 all sees. Even with our purblind eyes we 
 recognize the tragedy when youth sells its 
 birthright for a mess of pottage. The tacit 
 assumption which we so easily make, that long 
 established wrong must remain, is responsible 
 for much of the world's misery. We refuse to 
 believe that we can make of human life and 
 human society what it is in our heart to make 
 it. Nothing can be done until we get our 
 vision right and cherish the true ideal. 
 
 The real value of a life is its central faith, 
 not as propositions of a creed but the affirma- 
 
The Magic Door 123 
 
 tion it makes to the world. Our faith is our 
 general spiritual attitude, and a life can only 
 be justified by faith. Our true worth must be 
 found in this region, not in those vulgar stand- 
 ards by which we commonly judge success. 
 Usually we have no time and little inclination 
 to consider anything but the logic of facts, and 
 so our judgments are rough and ready, con- 
 fined mostly to the surface of men and things. 
 We are tempted to take men at their own 
 valuation, and even when we do not, as often 
 as not we lay the stress on the wrong quality. 
 If we escape the more sordid estimates of 
 wealth or position, we may substitute as un- 
 trustworthy measurements such as talents or 
 even the work done. 
 
 It is certainly getting nearer the mark to 
 place men according to their achievements ; 
 for though a man does not merit credit for his 
 gifts he does for his use of them. Were the 
 talents put out to the best usury, or were they 
 hid in the earth ? Were the gifts of fortune 
 and person used for the highest purposes, or 
 were they neglected, or squandered on self? 
 The answer to this question will reveal much- 
 
124 The Open Door 
 
 Industry, perseverance, plodding patience, are 
 looked down on as inferior qualities. Our 
 pinchbeck geniuses sneer at them as of lower 
 standing, but after all they are the only quali- 
 ties for which a man has the smallest ground 
 of pride. The man, who can point to his tale 
 of bricks skillfully and honestly made, has 
 something to go upon. Work done must al- 
 ways receive its meed of praise. Even in re- 
 ligion good works represent the great object 
 which must ever be kept in view. And as it 
 is the end so is it the ultimate test, " By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." A candidate for 
 ordination, when asked for the doctrine of the 
 Anglican church on good works, replied with 
 commendable caution, " A few of them would 
 not do a man any harm." 
 
 At the same time the standard of work is a 
 very outside one to apply to such a subtle and 
 complex thing as life. After all, the quality 
 of perseverance is itself to some extent a gift 
 of temperament. It may also be the result of 
 a very poor ambition, due to the sordid desire 
 to get on in the world. By their fruits men 
 are known, but what are their fruits ? Not 
 
The Magic Door 125 
 
 surely only those things which we can see, and 
 touch, and speak about. The true test of life 
 is not outward — possessions, or gifts of brain, 
 or work, or results of any kind. In the region 
 of morals, motive counts for more than act. 
 True works must in the end spring from true 
 motive, because of course a man whose motives 
 are always right cannot be always wrong in 
 his actions. Good fruit will come from the 
 good tree, but we are often indifferent judges 
 of what constitutes good fruit. It is not al- 
 ways what is fair to the eye and pleasant to 
 the taste. 
 
 A life is judged by its ideal, not by what we 
 think its real. A man is judged by what he 
 aims at, rather than by what he achieves. A 
 life is judged by its intention, its bent, its 
 bias, its spirit. Not what are our works — for 
 these we are well paid otherwise, they do not 
 fail of their market value — but what is our 
 faith ? Not what we have done, but in what 
 spirit have we done it ? Not what we have 
 attained, but what have we attempted ? Not 
 what we grasp but what we have reached out 
 to, the quest not the conquest, the attempt not 
 
126 The Open Door 
 
 the attainment, the vision not the possession, 
 the dream not the fulfillment. 
 
 All instincts immature 
 
 All purposes unsure 
 
 Thoughts hardly to be packed 
 
 Into a narrow act, 
 
 Fancies that broke through language and 
 
 escaped ; 
 All I could never be, 
 All men ignored in me, 
 This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
 
 pitcher shaped. 
 
 The idealism of youth justifies itself by its re- 
 sults, and it is also in line with the truest phi- 
 losophy of life. It is the creative spirit of man, 
 which fashions the world and turns it into a 
 habitable home, compelling blind forces to go 
 our way and yield to our ends. Idealism holds 
 the key to the Magic Door. 
 
VI 
 The Lure of the Open Door 
 
The meagre, stale, forbidden ways 
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
 The attraction of a country in romance, 
 
 — Wordsworth* 
 
YI 
 THE LURE OF THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 HERE is an elusive quality in 
 life, which tempts us on to 
 essay some new venture. If 
 it were not for this, we would 
 rarely have courage to let go 
 accustomed moorings. The innate conserva- 
 tism of human nature and the natural inertia 
 of society hold us fast to the usual. It needs 
 a strong pull to drag us from the known to 
 face the unknown. Some of that pull comes 
 from the lure of the Open Door. Even our con- 
 stant desire to be safe and sane cannot always 
 resist the happy temptation to try our fortune 
 through the glimmering portals that invite us. 
 But for this the innovation would have less 
 chance than even it has, though the chance 
 sometimes seems slim enough as it is. Com- 
 monly we want to be let alone, and it is part 
 of our stock of wisdom to let well, and for that 
 
 part ill, alone. On the whole we comfort our- 
 
 129 
 
130 The Open Door 
 
 selves with our proverbs that it is wise to let 
 sleeping dogs lie. Our early interest and curi- 
 osity about the world soon gets dulled, and the 
 spirit of investigation gets blunted. The gen- 
 eral tendency is ever towards the static, if not 
 towards the stagnant. But for this other op- 
 posing force we would seldom have the courage 
 to shake off apathy and cut loose from custom. 
 Without it we might never venture, and would 
 never win. 
 
 Our attempts towards progress and our wel- 
 come of the new^ half-hearted enough as they 
 often are, do not give much cause for self-ela- 
 tion. They are not all due to any virtue in us, 
 but are also sometimes from necessity. The 
 world has a way of driving us, when we will 
 not be led. The nest gets rudely shaken, and 
 we are thrown out to find new shelter. The 
 sleek and smooth life dreams only of green pas- 
 tures and quiet waters, and would find no place 
 for any dark valley of shadow, but events will 
 not allow us secure possession of peace. When 
 change is forced on us, we sigh for rest and 
 protest against the whirling universe. We 
 find that we have no real security of tenure 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 131 
 
 and are open to the shock of storm and to the 
 stress of change. Life is kinder to us than we 
 would be ourselves; for the high things of 
 man's nature have been forced on him. 
 
 The sense of pilgrimage which man has ever 
 had was brought to him perforce, and the 
 deeper meaning of it was given through neces- 
 sity. It is part of the world's great debt to 
 the Jews that their history compelled the spir- 
 itual ideal which is now our possession. The 
 homeless, landless race, that in spite of exile 
 had ever the dream of home in their hearts, 
 had learned the bitterness of being uprooted 
 and transplanted. The people of all known to 
 history most devoted to one spot of earth, re- 
 fusing to call any other place home, most stub- 
 born in their geographical patriotism, seemed 
 to be the very people chosen by fate to be most 
 scattered over the face of the earth. It is the 
 satire of history, if there were not more than 
 satire in it. Through the homelessness, the 
 deeper truth of a larger home for the heart 
 of man was taught. It was to choice spirits 
 among these alien exiled Jews living as stran- 
 gers, scattered throughout the world, came the 
 
132 The Open Door 
 
 assurance of a country of the soul, a native 
 land of the spirit, safe from intruder and op- 
 pressor. A later writer of their race points 
 the contrast between their dispersed and home- 
 less state, and the possible inheritance incor- 
 ruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not 
 away. 
 
 It is a common enough thing to speak of life 
 as a pilgrimage. The shortness of life, its 
 changes, its fatalities, have ever impressed and 
 oppressed the heart of man. This at least is 
 forced in on the mind of all men who think, 
 that here we have no abiding city. Life is but 
 a pilgrimage, as of a wayfaring man, a stran- 
 ger in a strange land passing through — out of 
 the deep into the deep. " I depart from life," 
 said Cicero in De Senectute, " as from an inn, 
 not as from a house ; for nature has given us a 
 lodging wherein to tarry but not to dwell." It 
 is not a house but an inn, not a home but a 
 hotel, not an abiding place but a lodging place 
 of wayfaring men. This figure of the world 
 as an inn expresses the thought of pilgrimage, 
 and it is a figure not unknown to literature, as 
 in Omar Khayyam : 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 133 
 
 Think in this battered caravanserai, 
 Whose portals are alternate night and day, 
 How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp 
 Abode his destined hour, and went his way. 
 
 It was burnt into Israel by their history. 
 The sense of pilgrimage was in the life of all 
 their great and good men of old through sheer 
 necessity. Abraham went out from home and 
 kindred not knowing whither he went, and all 
 his life he was merely the heir of a promise. 
 He sojourned in the land of promise as in a 
 strange country, dwelling in tabernacles ; for 
 he looked for a city which hath foundations 
 whose builder and maker is God. Isaac and 
 Jacob lived and died heirs with him of the 
 same promise. They all died in faith, without 
 fulfillment, not having received the promises, 
 confessing that they were strangers and pil- 
 grims on the earth — ever seeking a country, 
 never finding it, but seeing it only afar off. 
 Moses was a stranger in the land of Midian, 
 not allowed to have roots even in Egypt, for- 
 eign country as it was. The race was homeless 
 for generations. The Promised Land was held 
 before their eyes as a dream and when at last 
 
134 The Open Door 
 
 it was attained it was only to find that in a 
 deeper and more spiritual sense the Promised 
 Land lay still in front. They were never al- 
 lowed to forget that they had been strangers 
 in the land of Egypt. The lees were ever 
 shaken. The nest was ever stirred and scat- 
 tered, and the fledglings thrown out. Could 
 they forget that they had only a house of pil- 
 grimage ? On the threshing-floor of Assyria 
 and Babylon they were threshed and thrown 
 up against a high wind and scattered. Chil- 
 dren of the Dispersion they have been ever 
 since. 
 
 It is the lesson of the elusiveness of life, a 
 parable in action of the world. Their experi- 
 ence became the heritage of man as a spiritual 
 being, and the heart responds to the appeal of 
 pilgrimage that the present is not our home, 
 only an inn, a battered Caravanserai, a lodging 
 place of wayfaring men : if we are not to be 
 homeless forever, we must desire a better coun- 
 try, look for a city that hath foundations. 
 Idealism which keeps the soul alive in us at- 
 tests the innate faith of man in his destiny. 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 135 
 
 The lure of the Open Door is part of the lure 
 of the future. A future of some kind is needed 
 for life ; for we are not only saved, we are kept 
 living by hope. For all real purposes life has 
 ceased when there has ceased to be a future. 
 To have no future, no to-morrow, is to empty 
 life of what makes it life. Existence may go 
 on, but living has ended. When the future 
 means merely the passage of time, days and 
 nights, it is death already. " Abandon hope " 
 is the motto over the entrance to the Inferno, 
 not over the entrance to any human habita- 
 tion. For the great purpose of the Exile to 
 which we have referred it was necessary that 
 the exiles should be sure that they had a future 
 and a hope. Otherwise they would have 
 dwindled away among the heathen and ceased 
 to be a distinctive people, giving up faith alto- 
 gether ; and the great education of Israel would 
 have been lost to the world. For the weary 
 years to come, as generation passed away after 
 generation, hope had to spring eternal in the 
 heart of the nation ; they had to keep believing 
 and to keep expecting, or the fate of the lost 
 tribes would be theirs, and the last chance for 
 
136 The Open Door 
 
 Israel would be gone. The spiritual life of the 
 Old Testament could not have gone on without 
 a future and a hope. 
 
 No life to be called life can go on without it. 
 
 To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. 
 
 When that is the tone and temper of life it is 
 nearing its end. Both for the individual and 
 for the race, hope is the inspiring force. It 
 may be illusion, the fraudulent scheme of nature 
 to achieve her own purposes, but at any rate it 
 is there, a light to lead men on. From the first 
 early days when the youth blows bubbles out 
 of soap and water and sees wonderful visions 
 in them, the future entices and allures. The 
 young man has a future, and if no longer the 
 child's dream of pleasures and palaces, a future 
 of power and influence. He will achieve some- 
 thing, get something, do something, be some- 
 thing. When he loses his dream he loses his 
 youth. 
 
 A future is necessary to a man in every 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 137 
 
 branch of activity. It is necessary not only 
 for success, but also for a reasonable existence 
 in that particular sphere. The business man 
 has a future : he has his legitimate business am- 
 bitions and hopes. The true scholar has a fu- 
 ture, in which greater knowledge will be gath- 
 ered, problems be solved and the world be bet- 
 tered by his knowledge : it is when he loses 
 sight of the future that he becomes a mere 
 repository of the dry bones of dead theories, 
 instead of the possessor of living knowledge. 
 The artist has a future, a vision of unrealized 
 beauty before his eyes, an ideal in his heart. 
 It may bring ever a haunting sense of pain ; it 
 may seem sometimes like the agony of a dumb 
 man to speak, but the highest things do not 
 bring unmixed bliss. It is when he ceases to 
 have his future that he can become an art-critic 
 by a prescribed rule of three, or a pot-boiler for 
 a Philistine market. 
 
 The man who has no to-morrow can become 
 a suicide, if he have a keen enough perception 
 of the fact that for him life has ended already. 
 At bottom everything depends on hope. Let a 
 man keep his expected end and he will labour 
 
138 The Open Door 
 
 and plan and think, and if need be scorn de- 
 lights and live laborious days. Kill hope in 
 man and his life loses coherence, meaning, pur- 
 pose. The mainspring of it is gone : the heart 
 is taken out of it, and true activity dies. "When 
 all else is taken away, all that men cherish and 
 desire, all the natural joy and light of life, 
 however dark it be in the present, if hope be 
 left, " there is a budding morrow in midnight." 
 The quality of the hope is the measure of the 
 life. We can accurately judge ourselves by the 
 colour our future takes to us, and by the kind 
 of lure to which we are responding. If we are 
 honest and sincere enough to acknowledge our 
 real ambitions and desires and declare to our- 
 selves the sort of hope which is the mainspring 
 of our action, we at last know ourselves. Our 
 ambitions may be unworthy not because they 
 are evil in themselves but because they are 
 inadequate. We are built on too big a scale to 
 be satisfied with little ends and petty hopes. 
 The tragedy of loving the world and what are 
 called the things of the world is not that the 
 world is evil but that it is transient. It does 
 not last ; it passes away and its lust and love. 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 139 
 
 To build the life wholly there is to build on 
 sand for a foundation. In the long run our 
 worth as men is a spiritual value. Anything 
 else is to make life a beggarly gathering of 
 husks, the husks that the swine do eat. The 
 true lure of the Open Door touches our future 
 with a light that never was on sea or land, so 
 that life is ennobled by high thoughts and great 
 passions and generous aspirations. 
 
 It may be that some readers may complain 
 of the figure of the Open Door as vague, and 
 may feel that the vagueness is not confined to 
 the title. There may be no real answer in 
 saying that it was chosen because it was vague, 
 but it is a true answer. It needs to be vague if 
 it is going to appeal to all of us with our varied 
 circumstances. It is purposely vague, that we 
 may translate it for our own needs and interpret 
 it for our own life. We make an idol of what 
 we call the practical, and think that all counsel 
 worth while must be in detail. The truth is 
 that the details never fit other situations ; 
 for life never duplicates itself. Life does not 
 run in straight lines but breaks through 
 
140 The Open Door 
 
 and over all our containing and confining 
 formulas. There is an appearance of great 
 lucidity in the treatment of some subjects 
 by division into neat little compartments under 
 four or five heads. That may be convenient 
 and useful, and no harm is done provided that 
 we do not assume that the subject is exhausted 
 by our analysis. 
 
 Another of our intellectual superstitions is 
 that to have proper definitions is the way to 
 concord and agreement. It is a commonplace 
 to say that, if we will only define our terms 
 and keep on defining them, there would be an 
 end to our intellectual squabbles, as there would 
 be nothing to fight about. It is strange that 
 we should think this, since it is the opposite of 
 all our experience. As a matter of fact it is 
 usually at the moment when we begin to define 
 that we begin to fight. Take for example the 
 Church, about which so much warfare has been 
 waged. We all know what the Church is as 
 the instrument for the coming of the Kingdom 
 on earth, and we can all praise and pray and 
 worship and work together on that general 
 basis. As soon as we begin to define it in our 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 141 
 
 creeds and stand by our high or low or broad 
 doctrine of it, the fight begins. In Union 
 Theological Seminary, New York, there are 
 more than twenty different denominations rep- 
 resented in the student body, studying to be 
 ministers of the various churches, and it is a 
 gracious sign of the times that this should be 
 possible. They have no difficulty in knowing 
 what the Church is, because they see it in the 
 mass and not as a logical definition. 
 
 All the great things in life are vague because 
 they are too big to be put in a definition. How 
 will we define truth, or honour, or love ? So 
 with the attitude of hope suggested by the 
 figure of the Open Door. We can translate it 
 for our own needs, and can apply it to our own 
 situation however special it may seem. It may 
 come as a word of hope and comfort at a time 
 when we are inclined to bemoan the past and 
 to be half afraid of the future. We may look 
 back with regret and remorse at what we have 
 missed and what we have lost and what we in 
 folly have thrown away, and the coming days 
 are dark before us. It is much to know that 
 we have new opportunity, and a fresh chance 
 
142 The Open Door 
 
 to redeem the time. We have been unprofitable 
 servants and faithless stewards, but we may 
 serve yet, and may still prove worthy. If the 
 thought of the past is a misery because of its 
 barrenness, there is a door out of the past with 
 all its failure and sorrow and sin. If we feel 
 hampered and limited so that we can hardly 
 believe that there can be for us a future worth 
 having, there is an escape from all that hinders 
 and entangles, a way out of all that narrow r s 
 and cramps. Life, like the world, is not static 
 but dynamic, and there are forces that liberate 
 and redeem. "We can interpret the promise by 
 our brightest hopes, leaving our figure in its 
 vague grandeur ; for it means hope and we are 
 saved by hope. There is a door out of the 
 dark into the light, out of the storm into peace, 
 out of fear into courage, out of bondage into 
 liberty, out of distress into joy. We need not 
 walk forever under a leaden sky and on a 
 sodden earth, shut in by an ever narrowing 
 horizon. We can translate it how we will, and 
 paint it as big and as broad and as glorious as 
 we like. There is a door into a spacious place, 
 into a fresh accession of pow r er, into the house 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 143 
 
 of our hearts, the place of our prayers and 
 aspirations. 
 
 Perhaps the objection of some is not that the 
 promise is vague and general, but that it con- 
 flicts with experience. They are growing 
 cautious and refuse to be lured on by idle 
 hopes. It will only be as before, and nothing 
 much comes of entering anywhere. They 
 never seem to get nearer the heart of things 
 and always seem to be outside, even when they 
 have gone through what looked like an open 
 door. The trouble here seems to be that so 
 many of us will insist on viewing life as some- 
 thing static. An experience is looked on as 
 something to have and to have done with. 
 The realization of a hope means to them reach- 
 ing a place where they can stay. Even religion 
 means getting something and then getting over 
 it. So, everywhere we find people trying to 
 live on some past experience. It is always 
 something that has been to them, not some- 
 thing that is, and is to be. They think only 
 of arriving and then remaining. All that is 
 vain endeavour in a world which is the product 
 
144 The Open Door 
 
 of ceaseless force and in life which never 
 remains. No wonder they always feel outside. 
 
 That is where we ought always to be, still 
 with something beyond us, something just 
 ahead of us. Nowhere does our static view 
 play such mischief as in the region of religion. 
 The very sacredness of the subject induces us 
 to think of it as fixed and permanent, as some- 
 thing which cannot be touched. It comes to 
 be a kind of impiety to criticize or to suggest 
 that at any one place it can be altered. Places 
 and days and creeds and books and institutions 
 become sacred, to be viewed with awe as things 
 apart. They may well be considered sacred in 
 the true sense, valued and used as enriched by 
 their gracious associations, but not with the 
 superstitious reverence which sets them out of 
 the stream of life. The fatal result is that 
 religion itself becomes a thing apart from real 
 life. 
 
 It is all part of the struggle between the life 
 and the institution which we see everywhere. 
 A great vision of liberty creates for a country 
 a noble constitution, which then gets on a 
 pedestal, and in time endangers the very liberty 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 145 
 
 which produced it. A deep sense of justice 
 creates laws, which may later minister often to 
 injustice. A great religious experience pro- 
 duces a literature fragrant with the dew of 
 living religion, and the literature can be used 
 to darken and depress all further experience. 
 Religious thought constructs a magnificent 
 creed which adequately represents the thinking 
 of its day, and then the creed can become an 
 instrument to throttle thought and chain the 
 mind of man. Eeligious life creates a church 
 with its offices and rites and forms, and the 
 church can become the enemy of true religion. 
 Life everywhere naturally and of necessity 
 embodies itself in institutions, but the institution 
 often tries to kill the life that bore it. All be- 
 cause we think in terms of statics and try to 
 stop short, when there is no stopping place at 
 all. 
 
 It is here that the lure of the Open Door is 
 so necessary. Life must be allowed to go on 
 creating the institutions needed now. For all 
 real purposes it has become death when we 
 refuse to let it change and alter according to its 
 needs. We can live for a time on our capital 
 
146 The Open Door 
 
 politically and morally and spiritually, but it is 
 only an uneasy semblance of real life. "We 
 can blunder along by the momentum of the 
 past, but we cannot even blunder far till the 
 machine breaks down. Our new thoughts of 
 freedom must reconstruct for us new forms for 
 government and for industry. Our new ideals 
 of justice and new compunctions about injustice 
 must embody themselves in juster laws and 
 fairer conditions. Our new vision must realize 
 itself in a social structure that will stand the 
 stress and strain better. Our vital religion 
 must revive and renew its institutions for the 
 living needs of our day. Timid conservative 
 souls dread change, but it is their only chance 
 for life that they be exposed to the full blast of 
 the spiritual forces that sweep through our 
 world. 
 
 So in the personal life it is no objection that 
 they never seem to attain when they have 
 moved forward once to the lure of the Open 
 Door, and that they are still outside. Of course 
 they are ; for that is where they should be. 
 The whole life of faith is a series of new be- 
 ginnings. We cannot live off last year's ex- 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 147 
 
 perience any more than off yesterday's dinner. 
 In religion we seem to think that it is enough 
 to have had one experience of forgiveness or 
 love or joy, and then we are done with it. We 
 even speak of getting religion as a man falls 
 into a fortune which he can now put out to 
 interest. Bather it is a series of new begin- 
 nings — new repentance, new hope, new faith, 
 new love, new insight, new obedience, new 
 service, accepting new opportunities. It is not 
 entering once for all through a door into rest 
 and peace, and quiescence of soul, and torpidity 
 of life. "Not as though I had attained, or 
 were already perfect, but I follow after," cried 
 Paul as he pressed towards still another open 
 door of faith and service. We can face the 
 future with bright hope, if we will accept the 
 primal faith that life has a genuine and gra- 
 cious meaning, and the world has at its heart a 
 purpose of good. If hopes may be dupes it is 
 also true that fears may be liars, and it is 
 better even to be duped with hope than to be- 
 come craven with fear. We can believe, and 
 can live out the faith, that there is a sphere 
 for us, and a discipline, and a place in the 
 
148 The Open Door 
 
 great purpose of love. By living out that 
 faith, we put it to the test of truth, and find 
 that it proves itself in life. 
 
 Our most imminent danger is to assume that 
 the elusive quality of life is merely illusion. 
 We do not want to be silly dupes, led blindly 
 to empty ends. "When we have responded to 
 the lure, we are tempted to be contemptuous of 
 our own foolishness in expecting too much. 
 We are disillusioned, and the whole moral tone 
 suffers from the shock. This exhaustion of 
 feeling with similar weakening of morale can 
 be easily parallelled, not only in the history of 
 nations, but in the experience of all of us who 
 have experienced anything. In times of exalta- 
 tion life is easy, and faith is natural in the 
 pleasant exercise of hope and joy. Nothing is 
 hard in such times when the meagre stale ways 
 of custom take the attraction of a country of 
 romance. In the first flush of triumph, in the 
 inspiration of a great resolve, in the glow of an 
 ardent consecration, it is easy to mount on 
 wings as eagles, to run and not be weary ; but 
 when the task pulls itself out in seemingly end- 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 149 
 
 less length, when the road winds up over the 
 rugged shoulder of the hill, when the glory of 
 the vision fades into the common light of day, 
 then comes the constant trial of endurance, and 
 it is hard even to walk and not faint. 
 
 It is common in history to find spasms of 
 great feeling succeeded by times of disillusion- 
 ment, as if emotion had spent itself. An age 
 of faith is often followed by an age of in- 
 difference, and after a period of reformation 
 men often lose heart as to the value of what 
 has been done. The road which led for a time 
 in the clear crisp air of the uplands comes down 
 again to the low levels. When a nation passes 
 through a great trial and a great triumph, en- 
 thusiasm runs high, but when the glow of the 
 triumph wears off and only the exhaustion of 
 the trial is left, the real time of difficulty 
 comes. Disappointment breeds doubt, or de- 
 spair. The uplifting inspiration is gone and 
 the experience seems only as a tale that is told. 
 
 In some directions this can be said of the 
 present time in which we live. Men to whom 
 a form was once living find that it no longer 
 expresses the same meaning to them, and yet 
 
150 The Open Door 
 
 they have not got it filled with new meaning. 
 They stick to the form in a lifeless way, or else, 
 it may be, they discard it altogether. To 
 many the Christian doctrines and worship 
 are meaningless because they have been dis- 
 illusioned. They find nothing in them com- 
 mensurate with the promise of religion. They 
 have lost faith all round, and the mood reflects 
 itself in every sphere of life. We no longer 
 believe with the simple faith of old, nor expect 
 such great things. Early faith has been 
 clouded and high effort paralyzed by the hard 
 facts of experience. 
 
 In political economy men, who began with an 
 implicit trust in the law of progress, see how 
 little has been effected by even a great reform. 
 They are disappointed by the small results, and 
 are easily tempted to cease striving for more. 
 In education men, who began with a complete 
 trust in the power of education to redeem life 
 from grossness, see how little change a genera- 
 tion of it has made in the life of the people, 
 and are no longer inspired with their first ideal. 
 In science men, who were fired with the hope 
 of all that might be done by extracting the 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 151 
 
 secrets of nature and harnessing her hidden 
 powers to the use of man, see how all the elec- 
 trical and mechanical inventions of our age can 
 leave human life in essence where it was, and 
 so they give themselves up to the material side 
 of science, looking upon their first ideal as a 
 day-dream. In religion men, who began with 
 the heavenly vision and a sense of high conse- 
 cration, learn how hard it is to keep the heights, 
 and are disillusioned as they slide slowly into 
 conformity with their environment. It is diffi- 
 cult to keep our faith in anything, and so the 
 worldly and careless life finds many and easy 
 victims. 
 
 The terrible disillusionment of life ! Is there 
 a sphere which escapes the lowering process, a 
 region of thought or work, a relationship, even 
 the holiest, where the degradation is not pos- 
 sible ? Business, religion, friendship, marriage, 
 personal honour, social service, in each separate 
 department of life, there can be deterioration 
 of ideal. Everywhere there are shipwrecks of 
 lives that seemed safe by the early vision. We 
 see high ardour quenched, blazing zeal grow 
 cold, early faith fail, enthusiasm dwindle, the 
 
152 The Open Door 
 
 glory die out of youthful eyes. We see once 
 eager recruits drop out of the ranks. We see 
 those who aimed at high emprise become con- 
 tent with commonplace ways. The young 
 man, whose heart has been filled with the pas- 
 sion of discipleship, cannot imagine himself in 
 this state of indifference, but it is well to warn 
 him that it may be so. The stage of something 
 like disillusionment seems almost inevitable. 
 
 The remedy is to see it as part of the dis- 
 cipline of life, and its purpose is to drive us to 
 a deeper kind of faith. When a vision fails, it 
 is because a truer and higher vision is possible. 
 It is a call, not to renounce the ideal, but to 
 make it nobler and larger. In spite of all the 
 disasters that overtake idealism, it is the root 
 of all human progress, in art and knowledge 
 and social living. At our peril it is true we 
 move to the lure of the Open Door, but at our 
 greater peril we refuse it. Divine discontent- 
 ment with what is, alone has saved the race 
 from stagnation and death. The very illusive- 
 ness of life is designed to tempt us on when we 
 would give up. 
 
 Much of the tragedy of life is that men give 
 
The Lure of the Open Door 153 
 
 up so soon and relinquish the long seeking. 
 We are content too easily with a state which 
 rebukes us and with conditions which we know 
 to be indefensible. Everywhere our broken 
 purposes of good have withered before the 
 fruitage. Everywhere work only begun or 
 only half done taunts us with our futility. 
 Better to have gone on and failed than to have 
 turned aside in weakness or despair. We do 
 not know when we might have made the great 
 discovery or achieved the great task, if only we 
 had gone on. We do not know at what turn 
 of the road the gleaming towers of the City of 
 God might have flashed on our eager eyes. 
 
 Now I hear it not, but loiter 
 
 Gaily as before. 
 
 Tet sometimes I think, and thinking 
 
 Makes the heart so sore — 
 
 Just a few steps more 
 
 And there might have dawned for me 
 
 Blue and infinite, the sea. 
 
VII 
 The Door of Opportunity 
 
Turning, for them who pass, the common dust 
 Of servile opportunity to gold. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
VII 
 THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY 
 
 N" a Greek city many centuries 
 ago there stood a statue, 
 which was called Opportu- 
 nity. The statue itself illus- 
 trates the old lesson that op- 
 portunity passes, for nothing remains of it, and 
 only the inscription is left to tell us what it 
 was like. The figure stood on its toes in the 
 very act of departing, with wings on its feet. 
 There was a large lock of hair on the forehead, 
 while the head was bald at the back. The 
 following conversation is supposed to take 
 place between it and the passer-by : 
 Statue, what is thy name ? 
 I am called Opportunity. 
 Who made thee ? 
 Lysippus. 
 
 Why standest thou on thy toes ? 
 Because I stay but a moment. 
 Why hast thou wings on thy feet ? 
 i57 
 
158 The Open Door 
 
 To show that I pass quickly. 
 
 Why is thy hair long on thy forehead ? 
 
 That men may seize me when they meet me. 
 
 Why, then, is thy head so bald behind ? 
 
 When I once have passed I cannot be caught. 
 
 It is of course part of the world's most 
 ancient wisdom that time is on the wing, and 
 that opportunity stays but a moment. Among 
 that ancient wisdom there is a sentence of Pliny 
 the Elder, " It is a maxim universally agreed 
 upon in agriculture that nothing must be done 
 too late : and again that everything must be 
 done at its proper season ; while there is a 
 third precept which reminds us that opportu- 
 nities lost can never be regained." 
 
 There may not be much help for life in such 
 wise saws, that in order to succeed a thing 
 must not be done too soon, or too late, and yet 
 must be done. We can take ourselves too seri- 
 ously, though perhaps we cannot be too serious 
 about life as a whole. It is a little like being 
 told that the perfect golf stroke is made by 
 hitting the middle of the ball with the middle 
 of the club at the middle of the swing. The 
 average man feels that these three things rarely 
 
The Door of Opportunity 159 
 
 come together at the same time, and when 
 they do it is by a happy fluke. If he gets too 
 nervous about the perfect timing, he probably 
 misses altogether. Some of the teaching about 
 opportunity only results in making some of us 
 nervous ; for we feel we have no chance with 
 a flying figure of winged feet, whose single 
 lock we must grasp on the hop. It only makes 
 us irresolute to be told that our chance comes 
 in a moment, and in a moment is gone. 
 
 It would be easier if we knew what was 
 opportunity. We cannot always recognize it 
 when we see it, and we have not the advantage 
 of being able to interrogate it and be sure of 
 its name. It is easy to be wise after the event, 
 and it is usually only after the event that we 
 can see what was the very crisis of the busi- 
 ness. We cannot afford to miss our opportuni- 
 ties, and we do not know what are our oppor- 
 tunities — that is the kind of fix in which life 
 puts us. Things do not come labelled and 
 named for our convenience, and it does not 
 help much, except to engender vain regret, to 
 be told that we missed the tide at its flood. 
 There is a tragic way of speaking about oppor- 
 
i6o The Open D 
 
 oor 
 
 tunity as if it came to us once disguised, and 
 then taunted us when we clawed vainly at the 
 bald head, not having been alert enough to 
 catch the hair on the forelock. 
 
 The tendency of some of the teaching is to 
 make some take very short views of life. The 
 moral to them of the fact that time is on the 
 wing is to snatch the day, and exhaust swiftly 
 all the experiences and pleasures possible. 
 Herrick's song, " To the Virgins to make much 
 of Time," is in line with that moral, 
 
 Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 
 Old Time is still a-flying, 
 And this same flower that smiles to-day 
 To-morrow will be dying. 
 
 Yet the copy-book moralists, who underline for 
 us the phrase to watch and seize opportunity, 
 would admit that this was a false application of 
 the counsel. The short views of life, which 
 sometimes seem so wise, are in the long run 
 convicted of folly. The same copy-book moral- 
 ists are largely to blame by interpreting op- 
 portunity in such an external way. Life itself 
 is our opportunity, and not just single incidents 
 in it and single phases of it. The incidents and 
 
The Door of Opportunity 161 
 
 the phases may obscure the whole, as we can 
 fail to see the wood because of the trees. Life 
 is short and art is long, but the art of life is 
 also long, and the artist is not made nor marred 
 in one trial. The learning and the mastery of 
 his art will last him his life long. It is not true 
 that everything is staked as on the cast of the 
 dice. We can take comfort from the thought 
 that even mistakes can be retrieved, and that 
 opportunities are renewed, and life is very 
 patient with her children. 
 
 The false teaching is responsible for much 
 unhappiness and for some despair. Hardly a 
 day passes but we hear of men and women, 
 sometimes even the young, giving up the un- 
 equal struggle of life on account of some 
 blunder or some disappointment. They lose 
 heart because they think it irremediable, and 
 believe that they have forfeited the one and 
 only chance. Life has nothing further to offer 
 them and the door is shut in their face. They 
 collapse before the black thought that the true 
 end has come, now that they have failed in the 
 crisis. A business reverse, a disappointment in 
 
162 The Open Door 
 
 love, a sudden weakness in the hour of tempta- 
 tion, an unexpected defeat, a blight of ambi- 
 tion, even a social gaucherie, will darken the 
 whole world and convince them that all is lost. 
 It is caused by a false perspective, and rightly- 
 viewed some of the things that brought despair 
 would be laughed at. A little humour, espe- 
 cially the humour that sees the comedy of some 
 of our tragedy, is a valuable quality to en- 
 courage. All is not lost, even if that particular 
 occasion be lost. The bald head of that flying 
 figure can pass into space, but the rich proces- 
 sion of life has not stopped. Other junctures 
 emerge, and other occasions arise, and other 
 doors open, and other opportunities offer. 
 
 It is true that there are critical times in 
 every life and points of special significance. 
 Men sometimes look back and see where the 
 tide turned, and where their venture was won 
 or lost. Even so, they did not know it at the 
 time, and only see it afterwards. The impor- 
 tant thing is our attitude to life in general, and 
 not how we met a special occasion. That was 
 only part of the whole, and the general atti- 
 tude to life settled the particular case. Much of 
 
The Door of Opportunity 163 
 
 the importance of single steps is due to an illu- 
 sion, caused by distance as we look back. Other 
 and different steps would probably have taken 
 us to pretty much the same place, being such 
 persons as we are. Successful merchants love 
 to recall the turning point of their career, and 
 tell the world how the way they used the first 
 thousand dollars which they earned settled 
 everything. It is difficult for us to see how 
 with their capacity for acquisition they could 
 ever have failed to become what they are. 
 Some of the lesser mortals who have not 
 achieved such shining success never could 
 follow in their footsteps, some because they 
 would never want, others because they have 
 a different conception of opportunity altogether. 
 They may well refuse to be judged by that 
 standard of success. 
 
 It makes for courage and hope to realize that 
 opportunity is not one thing that comes but 
 once, to tantalize us with the vision of its bald 
 head departing. We are never without op- 
 portunities while we draw breath, and our 
 biggest opportunity is our general view of life. 
 If no man should presume on the assumption 
 
164 The Open Door 
 
 that nothing matters one way or the other, 
 no man need despair because he has missed 
 chances which others have grasped. All is 
 lost, only if hope be lost, and hope remains as 
 life opens her doors and beckons us to enter. 
 There is lavish supply for all the deep human 
 needs, and our share awaits us. It only needs 
 courage to face life manfully, and courage is 
 but another name for faith — the primal faith 
 that life is supremely worth while and is an 
 arena for high thought and noble action. 
 When he comes up to the House Beautiful lions 
 growl and frighten the poor timid pilgrim, but 
 when he takes heart of grace and comes right 
 up, he sees that the lions are chained and the 
 door is open with a gracious welcome. 
 
 All the doors of the world are open to every 
 son of man in his measure. All life's great 
 things are cheap, to be had for the asking. 
 Another man may own the land, but he cannot 
 own the landscape — sometimes he is almost the 
 only person who does not know that there is a 
 landscape. I have known a man who spent 
 lavishly on making a beautiful garden, which 
 
The Door of Opportunity 165 
 
 was enjoyed by every one except himself. He 
 merely did it, because it was the thing to do, 
 and he had the wherewithal to do it. The 
 beauty of earth and the glory of sky are there 
 for all who have eyes to see. The pleasures of 
 memory and imagination and affection can be 
 indulged in by all. Flowers and birds and 
 little children delight all who have the heart 
 to enjoy. The strength of friendship and the 
 joy of comradehood are not confined to the 
 rich, indeed are rarely found there in their 
 fairest flower. Even the limited democracy 
 we now have has made it possible for most to 
 enter into the joys opened by reading and 
 music, and the greatest art of the world after 
 all is open to the public, and all great artists 
 have really worked for the public. Complete 
 democracy when it comes will still further 
 open wide all the doors into the richest possi- 
 bilities of human life. 
 
 It is the vision of that future which alone 
 enlists the support of many high souls to all 
 popular causes. There are conditions to-day 
 born of the greed and selfishness and stupidity 
 of men, which shut many of the doors of oppor- 
 
166 The Open Door 
 
 trinity on the mass. There is a labour which 
 brutalizes, though even then we cannot forget 
 that there is an idleness and luxury which rot 
 out the soul more surely than any hard lot of 
 undue toil. The one is perdition, while the 
 other is only deprivation. We do not forget 
 that pathways to true opportunity are blocked 
 to many jaded workers, and above all to many 
 victims of our present muddled social state. 
 Even some who are not classed with the " un- 
 der dog " of modern industry are impoverished 
 by the exacting nature of much modern busi- 
 ness, and think themselves too tired by the 
 strain of work to enter into the heritage of hu- 
 man joy. But it is true that, even with things 
 as they are, all of us have more open doors of 
 real opportunity than we ever enter. Charles 
 Lamb, who complained for himself of the dry 
 drudgery at the desk's dead wood and declared 
 that it was Sabbathless Satan who first in- 
 vented work, cannot be said to have been de- 
 prived of life's best chances. "We think of his 
 rich nature, and happy friendships, and intel- 
 lectual joys, and sweet spirit of sacrifice. 
 When at last he was relieved from the bondage 
 
The Door of Opportunity 167 
 
 of his office desk, he confessed he was at loose 
 ends, and did not much enlarge his opportuni- 
 ties for the deeper and higher life. 
 
 Toil may be unsevered from tranquillity, and 
 may only give zest to the pursuit of all that is 
 best in the world. I once knew a Scottish me- 
 chanic in a factory town who had so developed 
 his interest in the flora and fauna of the district 
 that what looked to me a common ditch weed 
 told to him its beautiful story, so that every 
 country walk he took was a source of unfailing 
 delight. The copy-book moralists tell us to 
 look out for opportunities, as if life were only 
 a scramble in the great game of beggar-my- 
 neighbour. Whatever happens to outward 
 social conditions, it will always remain true 
 that we must look in for our real opportunities. 
 All life's great things are cheap, to be had by 
 all who seek. We cannot buy love, nor sell it, 
 though we try too often in our pitiful fashion. 
 There is no purchase price for peace in the 
 world's coin. We may pay for distractions 
 and pleasures, but never for joy and lasting 
 happiness. Nobody can shut and lock the door 
 in our face. 
 
168 The Open Door 
 
 There is a great opportunity before man in 
 society to-day, created by causes too complex 
 to trace in detail, by the fierce revolt of the 
 dispossessed, by the general unrest of some 
 classes, by the compunction of some of the 
 favoured, and by the inspiring vision of re- 
 ligion in some. "We are being forced to admit 
 the failure of our civilization. We are com- 
 pelled to open our eyes to some of the plague 
 spots in our cities, and to acknowledge that 
 there exist conditions that taint human life at 
 its source. There is a cry for justice stronger 
 than any appeal for charity has ever been. 
 There is a demand for redress of wrongs and 
 for the removal of the disabling conditions, that 
 hamper the poor and that blight the young. 
 The demand is that society must be so ordered 
 that every one shall have a chance of realizing 
 his self and living an unmaimed human life. 
 There is much preventable pain, and consolable 
 sorrow, and remediable wrong. There are 
 many, among those who feel themselves en- 
 tangled by the machinery of the present order, 
 who would welcome any change that promises 
 abatement of existing evil. 
 
The Door of Opportunity 169 
 
 The social opportunity will not be adequately- 
 met if we merely think of a material Utopia, a 
 secular society whose sole ideal is an ample 
 sufficiency of " bread and games." It would 
 warrant Carlyle's taunt about the lubberland of 
 bliss and the reformers who think only of a 
 millennium of ease and never of a millennium of 
 holiness. Man will never live, to be called 
 living, by bread alone. There will remain 
 immedicable pain, and sorrow that man cannot 
 assuage, and hunger that earth cannot satisfy. 
 There will still remain the visions of his high 
 heart that can never be fulfilled on that material 
 plane. Of course some may have an ideal of 
 life which makes this seem absurd, and they 
 cannot imagine what a man needs more than to 
 be rich and increased with goods and have 
 need of nothing ; and cannot see what more a 
 bird needs than to have a gilded cage with 
 hempseed plentiful and water sure. But that 
 ideal has never yet sufficed for man, whatever 
 it may be for canaries ! " What man knoweth 
 the things of a man save the spirit of man which 
 is in him ? " To know the things of a man you 
 have to look below the smiling surface of cir- 
 
170 The Open Door 
 
 cumstance ; and when you see below, it is as a 
 soul in prison. 
 
 We will miss some of our social opportunity 
 if we fail to aim high enough, and think only 
 of the economic side of life. There are times 
 in history when we see that the world has lost 
 some of its opportunity when in the spasm of 
 change. The French Revolution, which took 
 to devouring its own children, is a case in point. 
 It disappointed its best friends, and though in 
 some things it liberated man from bondage, in 
 other things it fastened the chains more securely 
 and hindered true freedom. Some of the ultra- 
 conservatism imbedded in the Constitution and 
 the institutions of the United States came from 
 the dismay at the fundamental failure of the 
 French Revolution. The world's redemption, 
 which demands the frank and fearless change 
 of social and industrial order, needs something 
 more profound than only material reconstruc- 
 tion. It needs enlightenment of conscience, 
 and restoration of soul, and renewal of moral 
 life. Mr. H. G. Wells says, perhaps with some 
 sadness but certainly with great insight, " I 
 recognize quite clearly that with people just as 
 
The Door of Opportunity 171 
 
 they are with their prejudices, ignorances, 
 misapprehensions, their unchecked vanities, 
 greeds and jealousies, their crude and miscon- 
 structed instincts, their irrational traditions, no 
 Socialist state can exist, no better state can 
 exist than the one you have now with all its 
 squalor and cruelty." We ought not blindly to 
 let ourselves suffer the certain disillusionment 
 that must follow, if our thought of a new social 
 order is only economic. 
 
 This does not alter the fact that the oppor- 
 tunity is before us, and the only point at issue 
 is whether we will miss our chance of being 
 pathfinders for the world. America has been 
 so favoured that she might have tried out more 
 fundamental experiments, instead of only 
 duplicating the conditions and problems of the 
 old world. "We have built our life on the same 
 model, and the same difficulties confront us 
 to-day — the same privileged classes, the same 
 labour strife, the same social maladjustment, the 
 same rampant individualism, the same city 
 slums, and all the old brood. Already we are 
 outdistanced by radical experiments elsewhere 
 in social legislation. Static conditions all over 
 
172 The Open Door 
 
 the world are breaking down, and new forces are 
 at work. The only question is whether intellect 
 and heart and spirit here will face the situation 
 and reach the solution we need, or whether other 
 instruments will be found. Other hands will 
 stretch to the work ; other hearts will bend to 
 the burden and be crowned by the glory. 
 There are others ready when the nerveless 
 hands let go their grip. It is well to bear this 
 in mind in this our time of pride and of proba- 
 tion as a nation. We are not essential. What 
 is essential is that righteousness should be done, 
 and that the highest interests of the world 
 should be conserved and advanced. 
 
 In Scotland years ago I used to look to 
 America with her wonderful opportunities to 
 solve some of the problems of life. She has 
 done something to help on international peace, 
 though nothing like so much as might have 
 been expected with her historical and geo- 
 graphical advantages. She has helped a little 
 to break down some racial barriers, especially 
 between the East and the West, though she 
 has not lived up to one tithe of her own great 
 profession, as is amply testified by the common 
 
The Door of Opportunity 173 
 
 sentiment about the Japanese. But what has 
 she done to protect the weak and the poor 
 from corporate greed, and to put social and 
 industrial life on a rational and just basis ? It 
 is true that America has offered advantages to 
 countless people to better their condition, but 
 the chief credit is again geographical. "With a 
 continent to exploit and the untold riches of a 
 bountiful nature to gather, America might well 
 be called the Country of Opportunity, but 
 surely there is a higher kind of opportunity 
 which was before her and still is hers — to 
 work out a nobler type of life, and to build a 
 juster state of society, and to bless the whole 
 world with her polity. Many a time I have 
 thrilled to the thought and the courage of the 
 lines of an American poet, who has always 
 been better appreciated in England than in his 
 own country, 
 
 Have the elder races halted ? 
 
 Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over 
 
 there beyond the seas ? 
 We take up the task eternal and the burden and 
 
 the lesson, 
 Pioneers, O pioneers. 
 
174 The Open Door 
 
 Are the pioneers themselves to halt, as the 
 elder races with new courage address them- 
 selves to the work ? Are the pioneers to be 
 the first to weary, and to think they have ex- 
 hausted opportunity by merely extracting the 
 wealth of a virgin continent ? 
 
 In our individual life also there come oppor- 
 tunities, which we may miss because we have 
 such false standards by which we judge things. 
 We wait for the great event and for the great 
 occasion, and we call that great which makes 
 a big splash in the world. Or, when the trial 
 comes we shrink from it through false modesty, 
 saying to ourselves that some other more 
 worthy instrument should be chosen. If our 
 general attitude were right, we would see the 
 meaning of all that is called opportunity. We 
 are not alive to the gracious possibilities of the 
 unregarded chances of every day. We need a 
 more solemn sense of responsibility, a more 
 serious view of the ever-constant junctures that 
 occur. There is no great or small in life in 
 view of the future. Who knoweth what is to 
 turn out great or small to us ? Who knoweth 
 
The Door of Opportunity 175 
 
 whether this seemingly trivial turning-point is 
 not after all the very crisis of our fate ? Who 
 knoweth whether this time when we are 
 tempted to turn aside from the path of duty 
 is not the very fruition of life for us, the one 
 great golden opportunity which we barter for 
 soulless ease or sell for a mess of pottage, or 
 lose without even the pottage for a recom- 
 pense ? 
 
 That there are critical times in the lives of 
 all we know, but we cannot easily put our 
 finger on the point when we took time by the 
 forelock and refused to let it go unblessed, or 
 when we lost the occasion and must go to our 
 graves the poorer for it. We cannot afford to 
 miss our opportunities, and we cannot tell what 
 are our opportunities. All life is our oppor- 
 tunity. Every change, every discipline, every 
 call of duty, every burden of responsibility, 
 every leading of providence, every token of 
 grace, every human relationship, every divine 
 prompting, every voice of conscience, all these 
 are open doors which lead out into the light. 
 Life is poor and petty to many of us, a thing 
 of routine : 
 
176 The Open Door 
 
 The dull mechanic pacing to and fro. 
 The set gray life, the apathetic end. 
 
 We do not see the glory in the grayness. We 
 miss the beauty in the dust, the music in the 
 din, and fail to catch the great meaning of the 
 whole. We do not see that the world can be- 
 come to us one great revelation, and life one 
 great opportunity for service. We think life 
 mean and prosaic, when it is fraught with 
 eternal consequences, and burdened with infi- 
 nite possibilities. Fools and blind and slow of 
 heart to believe, the whole world is vocal with 
 music, life is fragrant with the divine, time is 
 freighted with eternity, every human relation- 
 ship recalls us to our higher relationship, every 
 discipline is full to the brim of possible bless- 
 ing, every loss carries a gain in its bosom, every 
 duty is a privilege, every responsibility is an 
 opportunity. It is our attitude to life in the 
 mass that is important; for when we have 
 that, the particular case will be met aright. 
 
 For all of us in our measure the door of 
 truth opens, which is something bigger than 
 knowledge. Some doors of special knowledge 
 are shut to many through circumstances. 
 
The Door of Opportunity 177 
 
 They cannot expect to rival the opportunities 
 of men who through leisure and training are 
 scholars and investigators. But truth, though 
 it is fed by knowledge, is something to be, 
 rather than to know. It is more an ethical 
 than a mental possession. We can cultivate 
 intellectual veracity and moral courage, which 
 will enable us to see and think straight, to act 
 and will truly. We need this in affairs of 
 church and state, in personal and social life. 
 
 Among other things it helps to open the 
 door also into peace. Peace of mind and con- 
 science and heart depends largely on loyalty 
 to truth. There is the peace of a good con- 
 science which no one can pilfer from us, the 
 peace that comes from a heart at rest. There 
 are times when religion and ethics and the 
 highest purpose of a man's life are seen, not 
 as three different points of view, but as one. 
 They are fused into one bright light. It is 
 not in moments of mystic ecstasy or of subli- 
 mated feeling that this is best seen, but when 
 a man sees duty clear, and feels himself in line 
 with the great power that controls the uni- 
 verse. Such times we see in the life and work 
 
178 The Open Door 
 
 of Abraham Lincoln. To the casual eye he 
 often appeared a mere opportunist, and Amer- 
 ican public opinion sometimes condemned him 
 as such, but there was an inward consistence 
 which saved him from ever being a time-server 
 in any sense. He knew the purity of his pur- 
 pose, and believed with all his soul that his 
 purpose was somehow in keeping with the 
 great power in the world that makes for 
 righteousness. So he could speak quite simply 
 and humbly yet confidently of being on the 
 side of God. 
 
 There is a door into love which is open to 
 all. The secret is not to get love but to give 
 it, to cultivate sympathy and a spirit of good- 
 will. Nearly all the happiness of life comes 
 through our relations with others, and if these 
 are right our felicity is assured. We are bound 
 up in a bundle of life and everything depends 
 on how we accept our social intercourse. In 
 the home life, in friendship, in the varied 
 associations with others for all sorts of pur- 
 poses, we find true satisfaction of our nature. 
 Without this no personal success can avail. 
 Failure in the one region of the family will 
 
The Door of Opportunity 179 
 
 embitter and cloud the fairest prospect. This 
 common source of happiness is independent of 
 many other gifts of fortune ; indeed the most 
 tragic failures arq often noted in circles of 
 great wealth. In the groups also which com- 
 pose social life, the associations with others in 
 work and play, in the pursuit of common pur- 
 poses whether intellectual or political or re- 
 ligious, a right attitude is of immense impor- 
 tance. Happiness is the fruit of our whole re- 
 action to life, and the problem is not merely a 
 bread and butter one. Much of our uneasiness 
 and distress come from false relations with 
 others, offenses against the spirit of good- will, 
 failure to play our part rightly in social life. 
 We alone can permanently and completely 
 shut the door of opportunity against ourselves. 
 For all of us also there stands a great and 
 effectual door of service. Without this the 
 way into love might be only a way into a 
 subtle selfishness, which in the long run would 
 defeat its end. The good-will that nowhere 
 issues in service is mere sentimentalism. In 
 the exercise of love, in the outflow of good-will, 
 we find the source of our best joy. The reason 
 
180 The Open Door 
 
 is not far to seek. Happiness comes from ac- 
 tivity, the outgoing of energy, and is really 
 not a matter of income but of output. Mere 
 passive enjoyment passes very swiftly into the 
 dreariest and deadliest weariness. Happiness 
 is related to the purpose of a life, and the 
 bigger the purpose the more chance for its 
 permanence. This is why the pursuit of a 
 great religious purpose that transcends personal 
 ends fills a life with undiminishing joy. On 
 every side lie opportunities to take our share 
 of service, and to give some contribution to 
 the world. No life is so humble, and no gifts 
 so meagre, and no lot so narrow, that they do 
 not afford play for the exercise of this ideal. 
 A man is judged by his spirit, and the spirit 
 is known by its fruits. The test of a life is 
 its love, and love is measured by service. The 
 door is open. 
 
VIII 
 The Adventure of the Open Door 
 
Why should a man whose blood is warm within 
 Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? 
 
 — Shakespeare. 
 
VIII 
 THE ADVENTURE OF THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 HEEE are some attractive fig- 
 ures, who walk through life 
 with the freedom and grace 
 born of high courage. They 
 keep to the end the fresh zest 
 of living, meeting experience with a gay and 
 even joyous air. They seem to be filled with 
 love of life, and yet are without fear of death. 
 They never seem to lose the sense of adventure, 
 and they meet life as a Knight of chivalry 
 sought danger to display his courage. The 
 very precarious tenure by which life is held 
 only seems to be a spur to put them on their 
 mettle. The uncertainty of the future acts as 
 a tonic, nerving them to joyful effort. The 
 first early thrill of wonder at the strange beauty 
 of the world is never deadened. They do not 
 want to shirk all that is coming to them, and 
 they take the hard knocks as smilingly as the 
 successes. They are ready even to venture the 
 
 183 
 
184 The Open Door 
 
 ? 
 
 certain for the uncertain, like Shakespeare's 
 schoolboy, who when he had lost one shaft 
 shot another to find it, " and by adventuring 
 both I oft found both." There may sometimes 
 be a little of the gambler's spirit in this, but 
 the gambler's spirit is only a true one perverted. 
 Such debonair figures are too rarely seen; 
 for most of us too soon lose the expectant air 
 and forget the early rapture. The light passes 
 too soon into dull commonplace ; and we travel 
 little in the uplands. The sense of adventure 
 is lost without regret ; for we prefer to play 
 safe. The precarious tenure of our hold on life 
 is a subject which we do not desire to think of 
 more than we can help. "When we are com- 
 pelled to consider it, we view it with a deep 
 dismay, and are intimidated at the thought of 
 the possible perils and nameless evils that may 
 be met. We feel that the best plan is to move 
 cautiously and avoid all needless risks. It is 
 better to be safe than sorry. " There is a 
 strong feeling in favour of cowardly and pru- 
 dential proverbs," says Robert Louis Steven- 
 son. "The sentiments of a man while he is 
 full of ardour and hope are to be received, it is 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 185 
 
 supposed, with some qualification. But when 
 the same person has ignominiously failed and 
 begins to eat up his words, he should be listened 
 to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom 
 is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to 
 discourage them from ambitious attempts, and 
 generally console them in their mediocrity." 
 
 Stevenson is himself a good illustration of 
 the type, who look on life with adventurous 
 eye. He had little use for what Whitman calls 
 the literature of woe, and as little for the puling 
 and whining at our lot or at our age. He was 
 always ready to say a good word for life, and 
 thought our little poets with their doleful music 
 should be sent to look at the ploughman and 
 learn wisdom. The common sources of human 
 happiness remain, and the wonderful pageant 
 of consciousness is richer than ever, and life de- 
 serves to be faced with a brave vivacious note 
 of courage. He proved his theory by his prac- 
 tice, and bore out in life what he held in creed. 
 It was not the breezy thoughtless optimism of 
 the broad-chested squire who never knew the 
 temptation to sickly sentimentalism. He did 
 more than a man's work under disabilities of 
 
186 The Open Door 
 
 physical weakness, sometimes of disabling pain, 
 in exile far from many things he loved best, all 
 without any pose as a martyr or a hero. He 
 simply acted his own creed that it is better to 
 live and be done with it, than to die daily in 
 the sick-room. He preferred the brave and 
 spirited termination to a miserly hoarding of 
 the last few gasps. He fought with courage 
 against hard odds, and gave some of his own 
 brave cheer to others. Even if death were 
 near, he thought that life would go down with 
 better grace "foaming in full body over a 
 precipice, than miserably straggling to an end 
 in sandy deltas. " 
 
 To take life with full confidence that it is 
 worth while, to put the whole weight upon the 
 assumption that it is worth while, to try that 
 faith out to its conclusion, is what in essence 
 we mean by the adventure of the Open Door. 
 The real alternatives are not faith or unfaith — 
 it is faith anyway. Another may if he likes 
 put the weight of his life on the opposite as- 
 sumption that what looks like meaning and 
 value and purpose are only delusion. But that 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 187 
 
 attitude is just as much faith as the other. 
 There is no profound intellectual quality about 
 that to warrant the superior air. As a fact it 
 often means a craven refusal to take life at its 
 highest pitch. It is just as much a venture of 
 faith as the other, only it is faith in the value 
 of the doubts and disillusions instead of the 
 instincts and the first welcoming trust of the 
 soul. The grace and truth and beauty and 
 goodness of our experience are all supposed to 
 be hiding some treachery for the man who is 
 taken in by them. They will play him false, 
 if he trusts them too blandly. 
 
 Over against that faith, which seems born of 
 spiritual fatigue, is the faith in the real value 
 of life. It is however not something to be pas- 
 sively accepted and enjoyed, but something to 
 be achieved and attained, so that victory may 
 be snatched even from the jaws of defeat. Life 
 gives us back what we bring to it. It mirrors 
 back to us the very attitude with which we 
 approach it. There is no map of life with all 
 its continents surveyed, and all its peaks scaled, 
 and all its valleys measured, and all the shoals 
 and depths of its seas sounded. That map will 
 
188 The Open Door 
 
 never be made ; for it would only be possible if 
 life were static — and then it would not be life. 
 Thus, the true temper to meet it is in a spirit 
 of adventure, not as a gamble, but believing in 
 the worth of experience. 
 
 This faith, like anything else, proves itself 
 by being put to the test. The everlasting spirit 
 of youth — das Ewigjungendliche — seems to suit 
 the situation and to be at home among the 
 facts. The world is so rich, with such infinite 
 variety of scene and incident and appearance. 
 It appeals to constant curiosity, and incites 
 new interest on every hand. Life clothes itself 
 in endless forms. The earth and sky and sea 
 are full of marvels. The childish thought that 
 " the world is so full of a number of things " 
 becomes truer with ever increasing knowledge 
 and experience. Anything may happen in such 
 a universe. 
 
 Human life too is rich with its wonderful 
 procession of experience. Even for an observer 
 of the cities and the ways of men there is 
 spread out a drama and a spectacle such as 
 never have been staged ; while for a partic- 
 ipant, who knows himself an actor in the 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 189 
 
 drama, there is no end of interest. The actors 
 have no set pieces to speak and arranged scenes 
 to fill, and have even many parts to play. In 
 faithless moods men may sometimes say that 
 there is nothing new under the sun, though we 
 know as fact that there is nothing but the new. 
 In prosaic moods we may say with Dr. 
 Johnson that a blade of grass is always a blade 
 of grass whether in one country or another, 
 though we know that there are no two blades 
 of grass alike even in the same field. Romance 
 has not said 'farewell to the haunts of men. 
 Life speaks to us with many voices, and not one 
 of them without signification. It speaks to us 
 in the world without and in the world within, 
 by the infinitely little and the infinitely great. 
 The human comedy appeals to laughter and 
 tears, pity and pride ; and above all calls to us 
 to be more than mere spectators. We too are 
 in the play, and must make our part in it as it 
 goes along unrehearsed. 
 
 By faith the human mind makes its venture 
 on the world for knowledge, and by faith the 
 soul makes its venture on life. The true heart 
 is not afraid to make either venture, and tastes 
 
190 The Open Door 
 
 the relish of living. Last generation used to 
 discuss solemnly and tragically the great ques- 
 tion whether life is worth living, and wrote 
 books and articles and poems on the theme. 
 The only answer of any value was that of the 
 wag, who replied that it all depended on the 
 liver. The jaundiced eye will see everything 
 blurred in a haze of yellow. The value of life 
 will only be known by living, and the expe- 
 riencing nature has at least all the chance there 
 is. The temper therefore does not need justi- 
 fication which accepts gleefully the adventure 
 of the Open Door. Indeed herein lies the chief 
 difference among men, in their attitude to new 
 knowledge and deeper tracts of feeling and 
 higher levels of experience. 
 
 We pass it off as merely a matter of temper- 
 ament, that one is constitutionally timid and 
 another is by nature daring, that some are 
 melancholy at the slightest excuse and others 
 are sanguine. It is true that we cannot always 
 control our moods and our feelings, any more 
 than we can always control circumstances. 
 We cannot live ever on one high plane. But 
 we can cultivate even a mood, and can make it 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 191 
 
 a habitude of mind. Still more when it is not 
 a question of a mere mood, but of a central 
 faith. Our life follows the fortunes of our 
 faith, and one brave push of trust will lead 
 out into large and spacious ways. The cow- 
 ardly proverbs that are current, asking any- 
 thing for a quiet life, are answered by the 
 bolder sayings which tell us that if we never 
 venture we can never win. They wave the 
 flag of adventure in the eyes of youth, and at 
 least suggest a better ideal than the world's 
 stale wisdom of stodgy respectability and cau- 
 tious prudence. 
 
 What qualities should mark this attitude of 
 adventure towards life and especially towards 
 new experience ? In deference to the world's 
 rather sad wisdom, we will begin by saying 
 that it should be marked by seriousness, though 
 perhaps the solemn tone is more natural to the 
 spectator than to the actor. When we move 
 in a new direction meeting the future in un- 
 tried ways, the uncertainty makes us serious, 
 or at any rate makes our well-wishers serious. 
 When the lad who has grown in thoughtless 
 
192 The Open Door 
 
 serenity under the shelter of the home leaves 
 it to build up his own life after his own design, 
 it is an anxious time for all who love him. 
 Many a tragic story gives ground for the anx- 
 iety. The novelty of the new manner of life 
 may enchant the youthful mind, and he may 
 meet the future in gay unconcern or even with 
 eager greeting. He is going to learn some- 
 thing of the world and its ways. New faces 
 have their attraction, and fresh scenes their 
 fascination. The past is forgotten in the ardent 
 longing for the future, and the present is the 
 disagreeable interval which keeps him from 
 the golden joys beyond. To walk along an 
 untrodden path, to try what unknown fortune 
 has in store, to reach out towards a new ad- 
 venture, to fill the life with unfelt experiences 
 — such prospect charms the heart of youth. 
 Youth would take the plunge gaily, would 
 dash through the river anyhow into the Prom- 
 ised Land. Time goes too slowly to suit the 
 vaulting thoughts of youth. It creeps; it 
 crawls; it has no hot blood in its sluggish 
 veins. Youth does not like the space which 
 is put between it and the Promised Land, a 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 193 
 
 tantalizing distance to a heart impatient with 
 desire. 
 
 We do not live very long till we come to see 
 the value of a breathing-space. After a little 
 we do not court the future so rapturously. 
 We are even glad of every chance we can get 
 to know something of the way by which we 
 must go. We may not fear the unknown, but 
 our welcome of it is not so boisterous. We 
 learn that a new opportunity is a new respon- 
 sibility. The future no longer thrills us with 
 desire, but calms us with solemnity. A new 
 enterprise is not to be entered on lightly. 
 There is much in it to make us serious, how- 
 ever much there may be to make us expectant. 
 The Promised Land will have its dangers as 
 well as the Desert. The future will have its 
 trials and sorrows as well as the past. It is 
 well that a little of the Present which bridges 
 the gulf between the Past and the Future 
 should be given to serious consideration. 
 
 The same is true, only on a larger scale, in 
 the history of nations as of men. Many a time 
 a nation has entered on great changes light- 
 heartedly, which have killed its best sons in 
 
194 The Open Door 
 
 the effort to undo the evil ; or it has embarked 
 on great schemes without counting the cost, 
 and the cost has been its own national exist- 
 ence ; or it has begun with hallelujahs a war 
 which has ended with wails. A great nation 
 must have learned seriousness, must not play 
 with destiny ; and while not afraid of any new 
 undertaking to which it is called meets it 
 calmly and thoughtfully, knowing it to be 
 fraught with danger. We make our own his- 
 tory as nations and as men. We also make 
 our own destiny. The true reading of history 
 and of destiny does not consist of the events 
 that have happened and will happen, but of 
 the manner in which they are met, the spirit 
 which pervades the meeting of them, the re- 
 sults they produce on character and life. 
 
 The seriousness, however, ought not to be al- 
 lowed to rob us of resolution, but should only 
 brace us to a firmer courage. Of course an ex- 
 periment has elements of doubt, and nobody 
 knows how a thing will work till it has been 
 tried. The man who never made a mistake 
 never made anything. The society that never 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 195 
 
 dared anything never did anything. We can 
 tail along living off the experiences and the 
 venturesome experiments of others, but if we 
 lost nothing else we would lose the thrill of the 
 wonder and the joy of discovery. The brass 
 band may not be the whole procession, but at 
 least they usually get more out of it than their 
 tame followers. Adventure is the true scien- 
 tific attitude towards life ; for science only ad- 
 vances by experiment. It is true that there 
 are risks, but because a chemist will sometimes 
 blow himself up by a novel chemical composi- 
 tion does not stop experiments in chemistry. 
 An experiment in social life may also go wrong 
 by a wrong mixture of ingredients, but if we 
 could not learn from our mistakes we could not 
 learn at all. Any open door into the unknown 
 is adventure, and adventure asks for courage. 
 We will never know how anything will work 
 until we put it to the test. Mankind is held 
 in ancient grooves often through cowardice. 
 Work passes into drudgery, because the dull 
 mind does not see its broadening relations to 
 the whole of man's life. Art grows sterile for 
 lack of the creative spirit that will not be con- 
 
196 The Open Door 
 
 tent with repetitions. Religion becomes con- 
 vention, and instead of being never-ending in- 
 spiration imprisons the soul in routine. 
 
 If the adventure of life calls for seriousness 
 and courage, it demands above all decision. 
 We let our chances pass through sheer irreso- 
 lution. We cannot make up our minds, and 
 this is not always a sign of cowardice, nor al- 
 ways a mark of levity. However it comes, it 
 explains much of the futility of life to most of 
 us. The same parts are played over again with 
 painful iteration on every stage of human his- 
 tory. Every attempt at reform, social, polit- 
 ical, and religious, makes the same lines of 
 cleavage. On the one side there is the passion 
 of reform, and on the other side the passion of 
 opposition ; and in between the colourless im- 
 mobile mass that are neither for nor against, 
 and can be either. On every question, at every 
 crisis, there are the ineffective, those who halt, 
 are lame on both sides, and are of use to none, 
 at least so far as active support is concerned. 
 And it is not confined to great questions that 
 only emerge at intervals. We see this temper 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 197 
 
 of indecision every day coming out in the char- 
 acters of men, in a feckless inconclusiveness of 
 life, meaning nothing in particular, seeing noth- 
 ing clearly, from childhood to old age unre- 
 solved about the most serious things of life, 
 always at a loss what to make of it when any 
 occasion for choice occurs. 
 
 This infirmity of purpose, this irresolute halt- 
 ing ever between two opinions, is perhaps the 
 most pernicious flaw of character possible, mak- 
 ing the whole life futile. The faults open to 
 the warm-blooded generous nature are serious 
 enough, but for abiding mischief are not to be 
 compared to the calculating selfishness which 
 is ever tremulous to be on the strong side, or 
 the weak vacillation revealing a grain of nature 
 on which a fine character cannot possibly be 
 cut. You can make nothing of mere negation. 
 A ship can sail against wind and tide ; but a 
 log is as the surf of the sea itself, driven with 
 the wind and tossed. A man of undecisive 
 character loses what vital force he has, and is 
 at the mercy of any outside influence that 
 touches him. John Foster in his Essay on De- 
 cision of Character describes this helplessness 
 
198 The Open Door 
 
 with his own fine keen quality of style, "A 
 man without decision belongs to whatever can 
 capture him ; and one thing after another vin- 
 dicates its right to him, by arresting him while 
 he is trying to go on ; as twigs and chips, float- 
 ing near the edge of a river, are intercepted 
 by every weed, and whirled in every little 
 eddy." 
 
 This again we put down to temperament, our 
 common refuge to-day from every burden of 
 responsibility. There is much in temperament ; 
 and what is easy conquest to one is to another 
 arduous toil. But not thus can we pass away 
 from the subject of decision, and the opportu- 
 nities which present themselves to us. That is 
 to submit to be victims, and not the masters of 
 our fate. Here as elsewhere our conduct affects 
 our character, and indeed makes it, so far as we 
 have the making of it in our own hands. A 
 mean mind is made so by constant meannesses. 
 A foul mind feeds itself on foulness. A selfish 
 life becomes so by selfishness. A generous 
 heart grows large by the exercise of itself. A 
 strong character attains strength by continual 
 decisions ; as a child learns to walk by walking. 
 
Adventure of the Open D oor 199 
 
 Nay, for the final cause of want of determina- 
 tion, and halting between two opinions, we 
 must look to a deeper source than the excuse 
 of temperament. 
 
 Indecision seems a special temptation of this 
 age ; since scientific method has affected all our 
 thinking. Science demands proof, and is willing 
 to wait any length of time for proof. There 
 are some subjects about which the true attitude 
 is one of balance of judgment. From the great 
 increase of knowledge in our time we have got 
 accustomed to holding our minds in suspense. 
 So much depends on research and slow proc- 
 esses of discovery. Even on the subject of 
 religion there are many things which do not 
 press for an immediate decision. Many ques- 
 tions of creed and worship and church govern- 
 ment, which so divide the Church, can stand. 
 A man is quite within his rights if he suspends 
 judgment on many questions both of scholar- 
 ship and of theology, when no spiritual issue 
 depends on them. But this legitimate and even 
 necessary indecision has affected the greater 
 matters of the law ; and we have even an 
 affectation of indecision, which is supposed to 
 
2oo The Open Door 
 
 be the correct and scientific attitude about both 
 religion and life. Indeed we seem to be in a 
 period of indifference, in politics and literature, 
 and religion, and all the things about which 
 men used to feel intensely. Enthusiasm is 
 discounted amongst us ; passion is despised ; 
 and the ideal seems to a languid tolerance, 
 which plays at great realities, and which will 
 neither assert nor deny. Such an attitude if 
 persisted in is the ruin of all character, and an 
 end to all true dignity of life. A lower depth 
 than blatant unfaith is the moral apathy that 
 makes light of distinctions. 
 
 The clue out of the difficulties about the 
 things on which it is wise to exercise suspense 
 of judgment is a simple one. There is always 
 need for caution in things of intellect ; but it is 
 fatal policy in things of conscience. This is 
 why religion demands decision, and gets it, 
 whether we consciously decide or not ; for it is 
 in the first instance not a matter of intellectual 
 conviction, but of moral will. It is not specu- 
 lation, which can wait : it is life. All men 
 mean to face up to the great questions of life 
 before they die. But meantime there are things 
 
Adventure of the Open Door 201 
 
 of primary importance which they will secure 
 first, and afterwards they will think of the 
 other, when they have leisure and security of 
 tenure. Men dream of a time when things will 
 be easier for them, when the strain will be re- 
 lieved, and they can get breathing-space to come 
 to some definite decisions. As they are securing 
 the means of living, life itself is slipping away 
 from them. Those who halt, standing first on 
 one foot and then on the other, do not really 
 count in the game. The trimmers, the sitters 
 on fences, the spectators do not count. The 
 greatest question ever asked of man was, What 
 shall it profit to gain the whole world and lose 
 the soul ? But men are everywhere losing the 
 soul and not even getting the world. It is 
 worse than tragedy, it is farce ! 
 
 There are great things to be done in life, 
 great decisions to be made, a great adventure to 
 follow. Surely the poorest fate is to let judg- 
 ment go against us by default. The way of 
 courage is the way of faith, which declares for 
 the worth of all human experience, which accepts 
 a divine purpose, and is willing to stake all on 
 
202 The Open Door 
 
 the hazard. There are two points in the adven- 
 ture of the diver, 
 
 One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge 
 One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl. 
 
 To stand shivering on the brink of the great 
 human experiences, to let doubt unnerve or fear 
 daunt us, so that we refuse to cherish man's 
 noblest hopes would be as futile as a diver who 
 would never make a plunge. If we believe 
 that life has pearls of truth and beauty and 
 love and goodness, it is the part of wisdom to 
 seek them. We will at least know the thrill of 
 the adventure of the diver as we plunge. 
 
IX 
 
 The Last Open Door 
 
Now I saw in my dream that these two men went in 
 at the gate : and lo, as they entered, they were trans- 
 figured. 
 
 — Bunyan. 
 
IX 
 THE LAST OPEN DOOR 
 
 HAT have we to say about the 
 last open door which stands 
 for all men? Have we the 
 same right to approach it 
 with hope and expectancy? 
 Does it too spell opportunity for the enlarge- 
 ment of life? It certainly differs from some 
 others in this, that there is no choice given us, 
 but we must enter whether we will or not. 
 We are not offered an alternative ; we are not 
 asked whether we will consent to die. There 
 are, however, alternatives as to how we meet 
 it, and as to what it means for life. We may 
 view it as a door leading to the end of all 
 things, or as a new beginning. We may think 
 of it with dread and unspeakable fear, or it 
 may inspire in us hope. The thought of it 
 may be like a death's head at the feast, spoil- 
 ing the present, and weakening the future when 
 it does come. Or the thought may bring peace, 
 
 if not eager expectation. 
 
 205 
 
206 The Open Door 
 
 It is natural to associate fear with death, 
 which has been ever the background of life. 
 When we look steadily at life we always see 
 it against that background. Men are often 
 able to forget it and are able sometimes to 
 neglect it, simply leaving it out of account, 
 but not forever. Sooner or later we come 
 close to it and are compelled to consider it. 
 Some day in the sunshine we are shocked with 
 the sudden news of calamity. Somewhere in 
 the music there sounds the deep tragic note. 
 The first natural reaction is a shrinking as from 
 a ruthless foe. A French writer says, " They 
 call me a master because of some magic in my 
 speech and thoughts, but I am a frightened 
 child in the presence of death." 
 
 "We may refuse to think of it, but one day 
 we stand beside an open door, and the question 
 again forces itself on us. We read and hear 
 daily of catastrophes which are far off and do 
 not touch us closely, until at last it comes so 
 near that it touches us on our flesh and pierces 
 to the quick. Even then we count on our own 
 luck, and get back into life, shaking it off like 
 a nightmare. But however delayed is the 
 
The Last Open Door 207 
 
 personal problem, we know that at last we too 
 must reach the place where we look out into the 
 dark, and only one open door remains, which no 
 human skill or art can avoid. All other ways 
 are blocked, and when we pass through, the 
 door is shut behind us which no man openeth. 
 
 The greatest fact of life is the fact of death. 
 Yet on a surface view nothing seems to have 
 less influence on actual conduct. We make 
 our plans and lay out our projects without 
 taking it into account. We go from a funeral 
 to a feast without sense of incongruity. We 
 transact our business on the assumption that 
 we will be on the premises to-morrow or next 
 week or next year. At the back of our head 
 is the knowledge that at any moment it may 
 be our turn to be singled out, but that possi- 
 bility is never allowed to affect this day's pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 Some small moralists have denounced us for 
 levity or high-handed defiance because of this. 
 But this common trait of human life justifies 
 itself. It is not merely that life must go on, 
 and the needs of life remain ; but also it is 
 
2o8 "The Open D 
 
 oor 
 
 true natural philosophy. Endless precautions 
 about contingencies, constant presentiments of 
 possible evil would simply cut the nerve of 
 living. In self-defense, if nothing else, man 
 must walk boldly and attend to the affairs of 
 life. All the more if life is to us an open door 
 of opportunity and is a glorious adventure, the 
 fit and proper attitude is the brave carriage 
 that makes light of odds. Prudence alone 
 would leave us a pretty dismal world. 
 
 At the same time the fact taken by itself 
 does not do justice to the whole situation. It 
 is merely a surface view, and we cannot as- 
 sume that death has no real influence on men 
 and that therefore we need take no account of 
 it in our complete view. Death is always 
 there as the background of life. It colours the 
 whole environment. That is why our attitude 
 to it is so important. In the long run what 
 we have to say about it will determine even 
 conduct. Death is the greatest adventure in 
 life, and to have faced it and settled how it 
 must be met is the largest part of our total 
 attitude. A good deal of the ostentatious neg- 
 lect of the subject in ordinary life is really 
 
The Last Open Door 209 
 
 due to the distaste and fear men really have 
 for it. It is not brazen defiance and high- 
 handed impiety that makes men go on as if 
 there were no such thing as death. It is often 
 the shrinking from even thinking of a fact 
 which causes fear and disgust. Because of 
 this life is really weakened and maimed. 
 
 Part of the dread comes from false associa- 
 tions. We have never looked death squarely 
 in the face and made up our minds as to what 
 it actually means for us. Our evasion causes 
 the whole subject to be disguised, so that we 
 never see it robbed of its adventitious associa- 
 tions. We confuse the event itself with the 
 manner of its happening. Many when they 
 think of death think of it as the last agony, 
 which is like thinking of life only in terms 
 of the circumstances of birth. Or death is 
 pictured as a ghastly figure with the horrid 
 shears who slits the thin-spun life, a weird and 
 horrid something that puts an end to life. It 
 is associated with suffering and memories of 
 irremediable loss. The imagination morbidly 
 plays round the scenery of the act. Further, 
 
2i o The Open Door 
 
 the future after death is thought of as blank 
 homeless darkness, or as the cold horror of the 
 grave. It is a step into the abyss with name- 
 less unimaginable evils, or thought fastens on 
 the gruesome processes that disintegrate the 
 body of clay. 
 
 Our common ways of depicting death daunt 
 our courage, so that we never see the fact truth- 
 fully. It is no wonder that the whole question 
 is tabooed as much as possible and dismissed 
 from consideration ; nor is it wonder that when 
 it must be noted it causes a shudder of distaste 
 and a panic of fear. These common associations 
 have no essential place in the real meaning of 
 the event. The subject is also confused by the 
 age-old questions it raises. We may ask in- 
 soluble questions here as elsewhere, but we are 
 not called to answer them. We can assume a 
 definite attitude to life without being able to 
 solve all or any of its enigmas. Indeed the 
 thing of chief importance is our general atti- 
 tude, and not our failure to answer the ques- 
 tions. So here the chief thing is our attitude, 
 which does not depend on how we attempt to 
 explain the final problems raised by death. 
 
The Last Open Door 211 
 
 The first fact about the last open door is that 
 through it we are ushered into the unknown. 
 All our futile speculations, and crude theories, 
 and pictures of prosaic imagination, and detailed 
 faiths, and denials, leave us precisely as we 
 were. As before, we are still facing the un- 
 known. We know no more about the future 
 after death than the unborn babe knows of the 
 future after birth. The great inevitable expe- 
 rience is an experience of the unknown. This 
 is the chief fact about death, and not the 
 accidental associations with which we usually 
 clothe it. If then this is the one important 
 fact, how it will affect us when we calmly con- 
 sider it is settled by our usual attitude towards 
 the unknown. If we have learned to dread 
 the unknown, if we have given up the long 
 passion of man and turned back from his 
 endless search, if we have let life harden 
 down to custom and contentment with the 
 usual, we can only view such a radical ven- 
 ture with alarm and dismay. A desperate 
 plunge into the depths of the unknown brings 
 a shudder at the very thought. We cannot 
 conceive of ourselves even for one moment 
 
212 The Open Door 
 
 treasuring a mood which could let us greet the 
 unseen with a cheer. When life itself never 
 attracts us as an adventure, we can only be 
 appalled at the adventure of death. 
 
 But if the unknown is welcomed rather than 
 dreaded, if the lesson of the Open Door has 
 been taken to heart by us, the thought of some 
 further unknown does not in itself bring dis- 
 tress. The real distress does not lie for us 
 there at all, but in the breaches it creates in 
 love and fellowship, in the wounds of affection, 
 the end it brings to other hopes and ambitions. 
 The sore distress of death has to do with the 
 old life and with the breaking up of the known. 
 As for the new unknown with which it comes, 
 that has no terrors for the man who courts the 
 unknown. It may be even viewed as the 
 beginning of a new and glorious adventure. It 
 sets wide an entrance into a way where we 
 have not passed heretofore. The one solemn 
 fact is that we can return henceforth no more 
 that way. The bridges are burned. 
 
 Death, as we know it, exists for life. One 
 of the arguments for death in the world as we 
 see it is to make room for life, and to keep life 
 
The Last Open Door 213 
 
 from the static, which would be death in life. 
 Even in the region of man's common en- 
 deavours we sometimes say that progress will 
 only come when we have had a few first class 
 funerals. That of course only means that we 
 see some value in death for the sake of other 
 life. May we not go further and believe that 
 there may be meaning and value in death for 
 the life itself that dies? An end in time is 
 nothing in human life. It is the end in purpose 
 that really counts. If the end in purpose is that 
 man should reach ever higher results in char- 
 acter and in all that makes him man, we may 
 well believe that in every sense death exists for 
 life. 
 
 This leads us to what may sound like a para- 
 dox that life exists for death. The end crowns 
 the work. Without the further experience 
 that we call death, the previous experience of 
 life would be aimless and wasted. Men 
 through religious faith have been able to view 
 death with tranquil eyes, because it was to 
 them the gate into larger life. It is the ves- 
 tibule of the House of "Many Mansions. But 
 meanwhile, without dealing with that larger 
 
214 The Open Door 
 
 and richer faith, we can say that even from 
 the point of view of an inevitable adventure, 
 death may lose some of its terrors, which are 
 really the terrors only of the unknown. We 
 judge a thing by what it leads up to. It is 
 foolish to judge a process by its beginning. A 
 consideration of origins will never give the 
 value of an evolving force. So the thing of 
 importance is not where life came from, but 
 where it issues. The value of life is that it is 
 the only road, which leads to the open door of 
 the new mystery. We need life, that it may 
 usher us to death as to another birth. 
 
 Is this too high a note ? If we can strike 
 it and hold it, one effect at any rate will be 
 to weaken the fear with which death grips us. 
 Even speaking of death, as we have hitherto 
 been doing, as merely the unknown, without 
 the light of faith on it or the special colour of 
 hope, the king of terrors loses some of his ter- 
 rifying aspect. As part of the whole adven- 
 ture of man, it should be met, and can be met, 
 in the same temper as the rest. Death ought 
 to be viewed exactly as life itself is viewed. 
 
The hast Open Door 215 
 
 We do not know what lies ahead. That is its 
 charm and its lure, unless we are craven and 
 give up in the presence of any unknown. The 
 universe has not exhausted, and never can ex- 
 haust, its experiments ; and life has not made 
 an end of its experiences. This last open door 
 comes to us with the same lure as any other, 
 and it ought not to stop our breath with dismay. 
 If we carry also our fundamental faith in 
 life and apply it here, we are only doing what 
 is our right. True we cannot answer the in- 
 soluble questions which we ourselves raise, bat 
 even answering the questions would not be 
 the same thing as living through them. Here 
 in death as in the rest of life, it is enough to 
 stake our all on the only intelligent hazard 
 that the world means something and that 
 something good. It becomes more and more 
 incredible that the universe is casual, some- 
 thing that has just happened. All science 
 builds on the assumption that the cosmic order 
 is rational, and in practice science agrees with 
 Darwin's judgment that if we consider the 
 whole universe the mind refuses to look at it 
 as the outcome of chance. It is incredible that 
 
216 The Open Door 
 
 the universe is diabolic. It might be non- 
 moral, caring neither the one way nor the 
 other for what we call goodness and righteous- 
 ness and truth, but that it can be evilly dis- 
 posed is incredible. If we can say that the 
 universe may be unmoral and cares not for 
 what man calls good, it must be because 
 it cares for something bigger, a good higher 
 than our poor conception of it. It is incred- 
 ible that it could have for its end something 
 less than its own creature. " I will not be- 
 lieve," says Sir Oliver Lodge, " that it is given 
 to man to have thoughts nobler and loftier 
 than the real truth of things." If this is our 
 fundamental faith in life, it must remain our 
 faith in what is the universal experience of life 
 which we call death. We stake our all on the 
 only intelligent hazard we know, namely, that 
 it too has at its heart the highest purpose. 
 
 If so we can meet the great adventure with 
 calm courage, if not with glad amaze. We 
 can carry life through to its end in a temper 
 finer than any stoical endurance. There is 
 something heartening about any kind of cour- 
 age, even the courage which would rather " die 
 
The Last Open Door 217 
 
 game " than go to pieces in weakness. Steven- 
 son in his essay JEs Triplex strikes this virile 
 note when he declares that even if death catch 
 people like an open pitfall in mid career as 
 they are laying out vast projects, there is some- 
 thing brave and spirited in such a termination. 
 " When the Greeks made their fine saying that 
 those whom the gods love die young, I cannot 
 help believing they had this sort of death also 
 in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it 
 overtakes the man, this is to die young. Death 
 has not been suffered to take so much as an 
 illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, 
 a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes 
 at a bound on the other side. The noise of the 
 mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the 
 trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, 
 trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy- 
 starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spir- 
 itual land." 
 
 When the courage has deeper roots in faith, 
 it comes to even finer flower. When the 
 happy-starred full-blooded spirit builds his life 
 on a world, where he feels sure that the highest 
 
218 The Open D 
 
 oor 
 
 spiritual values cannot perish, where he believes 
 that the things he counts most precious are 
 precious to God, he makes not only great dying 
 but great living. This faith is the seed-plot of 
 immortality. It ceases to be mere hypothesis ; 
 for it has the verification of actual test. It 
 works in life, creating the greatest thing which 
 we know on earth, personality / producing the 
 most permanent thing of which we have ex- 
 perience, character / and giving authority to the 
 highest purpose to which we bow, the service 
 that can even command sacrifice. The faith 
 confirms itself by its results, as the tree is 
 known by its fruits. The essence of the Chris- 
 tian position is that human life is the fruit of 
 purpose, and that it is a purpose of love, a pur- 
 pose to redeem. Standing on that we find 
 courage, and know peace, and have a foretaste 
 even of joy. We can believe that the future 
 will only contain what eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, and what it hath not entered into 
 the heart of man to conceive. 
 
 The belief that the last adventure has an 
 issue may find support in many quarters, but 
 has its real seat in a living faith in spiritual 
 
The Last Open Door 219 
 
 values. It does not depend on scientific doc- 
 trines and lines of proof and scientific analogies. 
 It does not rest on philosophical arguments, 
 such as the fact of personality ; nor does it hang 
 on moral arguments, such as the passion for 
 justice which lies deep in the hot heart of man ; 
 nor does it trust to any or all of the facts of 
 life which call for a future. All that scientific 
 arguments can do is to show that there is no 
 abstract impossibility of the soul surviving the 
 shock of bodily death. All that the other ar- 
 guments do is to make immortality reasonable, 
 or desirable, or probable. But it really rests 
 on the facts of the spiritual life, facts which 
 have made the faith universal, and have made 
 it persist through all the crises of doubt and 
 denial. Men attained it by a necessity of their 
 moral and spiritual history, and cannot give it 
 up without giving up all their past and all their 
 future. 
 
 We do not know the real truth of things, 
 but we can without difficulty affirm that our 
 thoughts cannot be nobler and loftier than 
 the real truth itself. We can easily conceive 
 that the real truth is vastly different from our 
 
220 The Open Door 
 
 petty conceptions, but not that it is grossly in- 
 ferior. We throw ourselves on that assurance 
 with courage and hope. Whatever the real 
 truth is, however it transcends expectation, it 
 is not only better than our poor imagining — it 
 is the best ! Before the last open door, as be- 
 fore any other we have known, we are sure 
 that the fact is more wonderful than our 
 thought of it. In this attitude we trust life, 
 and in it we trust death. For lack of this we 
 are weak where we might be strong, and timid 
 where courage should inspire us. It is not be- 
 fore death alone that we find men waver and 
 falter. There are possibly more people afflicted 
 by the fear of life than by any fear of death. 
 They are oppressed by the dread of nameless 
 ills, full of anxiety about the future, dismayed 
 before any prospect of change. Indeed often 
 we find men so tired of life, so afraid of its pos- 
 sibilities, that they lose all fear of the last great 
 enemy and welcome it as a happy release. The 
 last adventure is only the last of a series, and 
 it can be met in the same spirit as the rest. If 
 we have learned to trust life, we can trust its 
 future issue. 
 
The Last Open Door 221 
 
 Everything therefore depends on our funda- 
 mental faith. This may be something other 
 than the items of our professed creed. It 
 means the things by which we are really liv- 
 ing, and represents the solid ground on which 
 we stand. It is not a metaphysical statement 
 of our belief, but our practical outlook on life. 
 Our faith can be known and tested by what we 
 actually believe about ourselves as easily as by 
 what we believe about the world and God. 
 This at least can be said with certainty that 
 man cannot be merely the child of time if he 
 stands to God in the relation which Jesus as- 
 serted. We come to faith in a future life, not 
 by a process of reasoning on so-called scientific 
 analogies, but by accepting that relation. 
 
 This further narrows the question down to 
 our view of the essential features of human 
 nature. If we have a mean conception of our 
 own real nature, we can also deny a future 
 life. These two subjects are sides of the same 
 thing. The absolutely convincing ground of 
 our great faith is that we accept ourselves at 
 our highest, when we feel it to be natural and 
 inevitable that the eternal within us should 
 
222 The Open Door 
 
 claim kinship with the eternal outside us. If 
 in spite of appearing to be, in Hamlet's words, 
 noble in reason and infinite in faculty, this 
 paragon of animal be but a quintessence of 
 dust, if all our moral and spiritual intuitions 
 be but foolish dreams and all our moral and 
 spiritual history be a vain imagination, then 
 we can calmly acquiesce in the doom of anni- 
 hilation. Nothing else is fit for such a futile 
 and petty being. But if we accept the essen- 
 tial dignity of human nature in spite of all the 
 flaws and sins, we are compelled to believe in 
 eternal life. It is the only adequate sphere for 
 such powers and capacities as man possesses. 
 The very flaws and imperfections become 
 prophecies of a true and full realization. 
 
 Man the spirit, with his aspirations and ideals 
 and deep feelings and fluttering hopes and all 
 the high possibilities of character and intellect 
 and holiness, cannot die. Did the world after 
 great travail make us what we are, touching us 
 to infinite longings after knowledge, after 
 progress, after love, after beauty, move us 
 even with hunger and thirst after righteous- 
 ness — only to mock us at the last ? Does life 
 
The Last Open Door 223 
 
 take a man, endowing him with inchoate 
 capacities, opening vistas of thought and 
 wonder, giving him memory and imagination, 
 planting in him keenest sensibilities and death- 
 less hopes, lighting his torch from the light of 
 eternal truth, quickening in him high thoughts 
 and noble passions, dowering his heart with 
 the love of love itself, luring him with visions 
 of perfect spiritual communion — only to plunge 
 him at the last in extinction, as a candle gutters 
 itself out in an empty socket ? After the age- 
 long progress and the long story which we 
 dimly trace, we cannot believe that it will go for 
 nothing and be swept over like a child's house 
 of cards. If there be no goodness at the heart 
 of the universe, it is hard to see how anything 
 we can call goodness could have arisen in man. 
 
 The general attitude to life, suggested by 
 the figure of the Open Door, is plain. Of all 
 the needs of man the biggest need is that he 
 should be sure that there is a place for him in 
 God's purpose, that there is a sphere of service 
 for his life, and meaning in all that he is and 
 does. With this he has not only a dignified 
 
224 The Open Door 
 
 present but also a sure future. He is nowhere 
 being led into a blind alley. Without this as- 
 sured hope, life at any time can become mean- 
 ingless, cut off with its ragged edge left. Our 
 poor little lives need to be related to the 
 great life of the world, and our petty personal 
 purposes need to be related to a great purpose. 
 The greatest purpose we know, both for our 
 personal character and for our social future, is 
 summed up in the ideal the Kingdom of God, 
 as it filled the heart of our Master. The door 
 into that Kingdom is open to every son and 
 daughter of man. To make submission of 
 heart and life here is the demand of religion, 
 and the result is enlargement beyond all ex- 
 pectation. Men sometimes have thought of re- 
 ligion as something to be gained at long last 
 and at great cost. They have thought that 
 they might squeeze through a door at the end 
 and enter in with the gasp of a struggling soul, 
 falling prostrate at the threshold. All the 
 time the door stands open wide, into liberty 
 and love and peace and truth, and a great and 
 effectual door of service. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
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