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'tl^K^! ^* J-°-nf. ^' ^o '% '"Htm-' # cj, ^mi^* '> ^ % '^"^ -^u^^^- . ^0^ .'"J^'". ^. a9> .^•'. ■*. e N a .^ ^^^ ^ -*^v^ ^ ^-u^^^^' ay The Fortune of the Republic WORKS OF NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC STUDIES, NATIONAL AND PATRIOTIC ON AMERICA OF TO- DAY AND TO-MORROW i2ino, cloth, gilt top, ^1.20, net GREAT BOOKS AS LIFE-TEACHERS STUDIES OF CHARACTER, REAL AND IDEAL i2mo, cloth, gilt top, ^1.50 THE INVESTMENT OF INFLUENCE A STUDY OF SOCIAL SYMPATHY AND SERVICE i2mo, vellum, gilt top, ^1.25 A MAN'S VALUE TO SOCIETY STUDIES IN SELF-CULTURE AND CHARACTER 121110, vellum, gilt top, $1.25 FAITH AND CHARACTER lamo, vellum, gilt top, net, 75 cents FORETOKENS OF IMMORTALITY STUDIES FOR "THE HOUR WHEN THE IMMORTAL HOPE BURNS LOW IN THE HEART " Long i6mo, 50 cents DAVID THE POET AND KING 8vo, two colors, deckel edges, 75 cents HOW THE INNER LIGHT FAILED A STUDY OF THE ATROPHY OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE i8mo, cloth, 25 cents RIGHT LIVING AS A FINE ART A STUDY OF CHANNING'S SYMPHONY i2mo, boards, 35 cents THE MASTER OF THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING i2mo,^boardSj 35 cents, net ACROSS THE CONTINENT OF THE YEARS i6mo, old English boards, 25 cents, net THE SCHOOL IN THE HOME Net, 50 cents FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Publishers The Fortune of the Republic And Other Addresses Upon the America of To- Day and To-Morrow By Newell Dwight Hillis New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London AND Edinburgh Copyright, 1906, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY LIBRARY «f CONGRESS Two Copies Received NOV 14 1906 Copyright Entry cuss a. xxc, No. COPY B. New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street Contents I. The Forces Making for Na- tional Unity ... 9 n. The Passing of Sectionalism in the New South and North 42 III The Institutions of the Ee- puBLio AND Their Fitness FOR New Peoples ... 67 IV. The Schools of Our Eepublio AND the Education of Our EULERS 101 V. Individual Excellence, the Secret of National Prog- ress 120 VI. The Crime of Stirring up Class- Hatred . . . 151 VII. National Decay and Growth 177 VIII. Christian Unity and Church Consolidation in the Eepub- lio 195 IX. The True Solution of Social Problems .... 216 Contents X. The Message OF Puritanism . 241 XI. The Universal Note of Chris- tianity 263 XII. The New Ideal Commonwealth 282 XIII. ^'One Man Soweth, and An- other Eeapeth " . . . 299 Index 323 FOREWORD Several years ago I wrote the outline of this book and promised to publish it the fol- lowing autumn. Before going to press I de- cided to spend the summer in the interest of some first hand information as to the problems and people of the republic. Having lectured some thirty times in various cities on the Pacific Slope, I discovered that events had changed so rapidly that I must restate my po- sition. I therefore decided to see as much as I could within three years of every great indus- try in every state and territory of the Union. Including summer lectures before the Chau- tauquas and summer schools, and winter ad- dresses before the lyceums, I have lectured some three hundred times in as many cities, and gone through the shop, the factory, the public institution, the mine or special industry that was the pride of the community. In the hope of finding out what the men who are doing things, think about their country and its institutions, I have talked with thousands of men of all classes, and accumulated note- books that would make half a dozen volumes Foreword like this book. The result of this attempt to secure first hand information is, that I am an out and out optimist. If one can trust one's own eyes and ears, there is not the shadow of a shade of a reason for pessimism as to the people and institutions of this country. Once a few people bought books, now all the people read books and magazines. Once a few towns had lecture courses, now at the very time when some people think the lyceum is dead, the lecture courses are so popular that if a man could lecture three times a day every day in the year, it would take him five years to make the round of lecture courses in this coun- try. As for education, and interest in general culture, once Athens gave three days each year to the dramatist, the poet and the orator; this summer witnessed in the Middle West the setting up of a hundred and forty temporary auditoriums, that seated from two to ten thou- sand people, and to these centers came the peo- ple, crowding and thronging, to listen to lec- tures, political discussions, concerts, and the unfolding of the highest religious themes, and during ten days sixty great entertainments were given for several millions of people. As for property, if the rich are growing rich slowly through a falling rate of interest, the Foreword working people are growing rich rapidly- through a swiftly rising wage. As for morals, it is enough to say that the surety companies for bank clerks and men of position tell us that for three years the losses through dishonest clerks have been steadily falling, while the Conscience Fund in Wash- ington has been steadily rising. In the reli- gious world there have never been so many men going to church. And having preached in fac- tory towns and large cities, from New York to San Francisco and preached every day in the week, I have found that the people will crowd any theater, any church, any hall, at any hour from nine o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, to hear straight sermons. Many men are discouraged because of the daily exposure of graft and corruption in busi- ness. But all these exposures, so far from justifying pessimism, are signs of progress. When the measles come out in great blotches on the face the patient looks badly, but the real danger appears when the measles strike in and disappear, leaving the skin smooth and the blood foul. Up in New England when the autumn leaves fall, the farmer cleans out the great spring on the hillside. Lifting his spade above that spring, the farmer looks upon water Foreword that is clear to the eye, but that holds within its depth the decay of leaves. When an hour has passed, and the exposure of mud is over, the water is roily and the child thinks the spring is ruined forever. But all the time, the water that comes down out of the mountain and gushes through some cleft is pure and sparkling, and once the surface mouth is cleaned the spring runs sweet and pure toward the house and on into the sea that awaits it. Everywhere men are saying that the country is besotted, that men are sodden in materialism, that every man has his price, that graft is uni- versal, and yet, at this very hour, the country is passing through the greatest moral and in- tellectual awakening it has ever known. Never were there so many honest merchants and manufacturers; never so many honest finan- ciers and railroad men; never were working men so intelligent, upright and disinterested. Any darkness there is on the horizon is morn- ing twilight and not evening twilight. This book is written, therefore, not from the viewpoint of the pessimist, but from the view- point of one who has been forced into optim- ism by much travel and by the pressure of events. Many times during the last summer I have given the substance of these chapters on Foreword the lecture platform, and have published others in various magazines and reviews. Mr. John R. Howard has done me the kindness to read these pages and prepare them for the press, and I gladly make recognition of my indebtedness to Mr. Howard for many helpful suggestions. Nev^^ell Dwight Hillis. The Forces Making for National Unity The republic of to-day and to-morrow is u theme that appeals to every patriot who loves his country, and looks forward to the time when America shall become the teacher of the world in liberty and free institutions. The historian gives us the America of yesterday ; the student of events gives the America of to-day ; the prophet and the man of vision beholds far off and future things and discerns the America of to-morrow. The task of the historian is by comparison a simple task. Looking back upon the rise and growth of a nation, the historian finds it easy to show how climate, food, seacoast and mountain range have modified a racial stock, and given a people its place among the nations of the earth. But a backward look upon the forces that have shaped the republic of yesterday is one thing and, the outlook upon the America of to-morrow is 9 The Fortune of the Republic quite another. Looking back on the rain- bow that stood on yesterday's horizon, the scientist finds it easy to show that the rain- drops were prisms releasing the beams of red and blue, but no scientist, by studying rain- drops and sunbeams can tell us when the next rainbow will stand on the horizon. One thing, however, can be done by the patriot who is interested in the fortune of the republic. He can make a careful analysis of the intellectual and political, the economic and moral conditions that have always preceded the golden age of cities like Athens and Florence, of countries like France, Holland, and England, and then he can ask whether or not conditions like to these are found to-day in American society. The con- dition of the Italian people during the era prior to the Kenaissance in Italy was strik- ingly like the conditions existing prior to the Elizabethan Era in England. In our own country also, as some believe, there exist the conditions that justify the hope of a great intellectual awakening. The watch- man of the night, who waits for the coming of the morning, knows when the dawn rises, and the student of affairs to-day knows when the horizon is ablaze with light. In a gen- 10 The Forces Making for National Unity eral way these are the conditions that in- dicate a unique intellectual movement and a golden age for the republic. The uni- versal diffusion of knowledge ; the increase of tools, that has redeemed the people from drudgery, and given our brightest sons and daughters the leisure to grow ripe and the opportunity to become wise ; the wakening of the sense of individual worth in several million newcomers, who, in the atmosphere of liberty have been roused to a con- sciousness of manhood, and have shaken off the fetters of old-world institutions as a youth shakes the leaves of autumn from his coat ; the widening effect of a war that has united the North and the South, broad- ened our horizon and made the republic a world-power ; the ethical awakening that has quickened the conscience, and is bringing about the transformation of the market-place, the street and the forum ; thus revolutionizing our corporations and commerce; the utter breakdown of unprincipled political and financial leaders, who yesterday were all but omnipotent and to-day are the slain giants of a dying regime; the emergence of moral considerations, in the political and financial world. But to all these influences must II The Fortune of the Republic be added the forces that are bringing about a hitherto unexampled unity among the eighty millions of our people. For the Golden Age has already come to any nation that is homogeneous, compact, one in its language, its commerce, its morals and its ideals for the future. Perhaps the most hopeful characteristic of our era is this increase of unity, this dis- solving of sectionalism, the breaking down of the barriers that once divided the JSTorth and the South, and more recently separated classes and nationalities. The time was when we had a Southern vote, a IS'orthern vote, an Irish vote, a German vote, and when the barriers between the labourers and the capitalists was as high as the wall of mountains that separates Austria from Italy. Be the reasons what they may to- day, the Irish vote and the German vote have disappeared and no longer disturb the welfare of the great cities. The national committees of our political parties no longer have to consider the German vote in New York or Chicago, or the Swedish vote in St. Paul and Minneapolis. To-day also, the solid South is breaking up, and so is the solid North. Sectionalism is like an iceberg, 12 The Forces Making for National Unity caught in the Gulf Stream. Gnawed by the sun at the top and the tropic currents at the bottom, the ice is disappearing and soon will lend itself to the universal ocean. Once Germany represented a score of states of different languages, different customs, di- verse dialects, but in that era Germany was weak. No architect of genius ever builds an Italian room, a French room, a Colonial room, a Japanese room, with a dozen other apartments representing as many different types of architecture and then tries to unite these rooms by putting over them a common roof. For three hundred years Germany found it impossible to throw a common government over twenty provinces repre- senting as many diverse people, dialects and languages. The task that confronts Kussia's statesmen to-day is the task of unifying wise people and ignorant people, patrician land- holders and peasant wanderers, people who hold the Greek faith and those who are Hebrews in their religion. Kussia's territory includes a score of climates, running be- tween the tropic atmosphere, with the fig, the olive and the lemon, and the Arctic steppes of Siberia, where pine and oak have chilled into the dimensions of dwarfed 13 The Fortune of the Republic shrubs, and mountain moss. Eussia's peo- ples are strangers, the one to another, diverse in blood, some with the tresses of the brunette, some with yellow hair and blue eyes, some the children of the plain, with many tribes representing sturdy moun- taineers. The task of making these warring enemies dwell together as friends, is a task for statesmen of genius all compact. Once our republic fronted similar problems ; now it seems to have solved these problems and secured a national unity. For the first time in the history of the world, the sun looks down upon nearly one hun- dred millions of people who have be- come homogeneous, with well-mixed blood, with the common enthusiasm for their country and its institutions, with a common pride in its past, and a common hope for its future. A consideration of the forces work- ing towards unity of sentiment in American life and thought is a theme worthy of re- flection, most fruitful and suggestive. The disappearance of dialects proves the victory of the forces that make for intellec- tual unity. Nothing unites people like a com- mon language. So long as the men on one side of the mountain use a different dialect 14 The Forces Making for National Unity from the people on the other side, there can be no real unity in thought and life. The time was when New England had its dialect, and Virginia her dialect. The whole South had its own peculiar rhythmic speech, while California had a dialect rich in staccato effects. But our great cities have become intellectual centres that have spread culture, and a common speech ; universal travel, also, assisted by commerce, are melting the dialects into one language. Out of the linguistic chaos there is slowly coming a rich and glorious cosmos. It is as if the eighty millions were being assembled in one vast whispering-gallery. Standing in the dome of St. Peter's the speaker finds his voice taken up and repeated until the slight- est word of invitation or alarm is heard at the remotest point of that gallery of sweet sound. IS'ot otherwise is the city becoming one racial sounding board, that sends the message of the statesman or the orator into the remotest corner of the land. Here and there, indeed, there is an occasional attempt to keep up the Old World language or dialect. Eecently several thousand Italians settled in one city. When two or three years had passed by, the fathers and mothers 15 The Fortune of the Republic were troubled because their children knew nothing about Italian. They therefore asked the priests to use Italian in the parish school and Italian in the Church service. But the boys and girls and the young men and women promptly struck. They insisted that they were Americans ; that in coming to this New World the Old World language had been left behind, with other foreign customs. When the sound of war died out and the smoke of battle cleared away, the sun looked down upon a body of youth who were American to their finger-tips. Doubt- less there will be other attempts to revive Old World dialects, just as there is an occa- sional dark cloud that lingers in the sky after the power of the storm has broken and the heavens are rapidly clearing themselves of clouds. Language has become a great dis- solvant. Unless our novelists do their work quickly, the dialect novel will soon be an impossibility. There can never be another Bret Harte, nor another Mary Wilkins, nor another story of Huckleberry Finn, for the dialects are passing. Atlanta, San Francisco, and New York are beginning to speak the same language, and the people of the re- public are becoming a solid nation, unified, i6 The Forces Making for National Unity compact, organized, one in thought and speech. Another force that is unifying the people of the republic, is to be found in the press. Forty years ago there were many newspaper centres. Then every large city had its metropolitan daily and its World News and its Foreign Despatches. Now, there are three or four newspaper centres from which the costly world-despatches are radiated through many neighbouring States. New York's morning papers carry the Associated Press despatches with all foreign and national news to half a score of States. Slowly the papers in the cities of these States are be- coming local and family papers, discussing community interests in the evening, and leav- ing news of the world to the expensive morning paper. Chicago makes a similar radiating centre for ten or fifteen other States, as do Denver, San Francisco, and Atlanta. But these national and foreign despatches, published in these five centres, in the interests of the people of forty-five States, are one and the same despatches. Every morning, therefore, we have the amazing spectacle of eighty millions of peo- ple discussing at the breakfast table the 17 The Fortune of the Republic news of the Dreyfus decision in Paris, the oration of a peasant orator in the Douma of St. Petersburg, plans for the transcontinental railroad across Africa, the sailing of com- missioners from Pekin in search of a new constitution for China, a full account of the arguments on the railway rate bill in Wash- ington, with extracts from the orations and addresses before the various colleges, clubs and political conventions in the various States. The themes that are considered are national and world themes. The local news- paper brings to the household news and events that are purely local in character. To-day also, the rural postal delivery takes the metro- politan morning daily to every distant farm- house. The press is sowing the whole land with the good seed of universal knowledge. With amazing rapidity our people are becom- ing homogeneous. Historians account for the outbreak of genius in Athens by the homogeneity and compactness of that people, just as students of literature explain the Elizabethan Age by the oneness of the fifteen millions that thrilled to the voice of Beaumont and Fletcher, Marlow and Shake- speare. But our republic now stands on the threshold of a similar era of national i8 The Forces Making for National Unity unity in things intellectual. To-day, the orator and statesman can be sure that the voice that sounds out in Washington or 'New York will echo in the back seats of the top gallery in the Sierra Mountains. Whatever appeals to the intelligence and pa- triotism of the banker and merchant and working man of New York, or Phila- delphia, makes a similar appeal to the same classes in Galveston, Los Angeles and Seattle. Never before has the sun looked down upon the spectacle of eighty millions dwelling together in common in- tellectual unity, through a press that every morning asks all these millions to ponder the same national facts and world interests that relate to the progress of the family of man. To a degree hitherto unexampled, also, commerce and trade are now working towards the unity of the republic. Twenty centuries ago Plato called the ships of Phoenicia and of Greece travelling couriers for their respective cities and civilizations. With a similar conception in mind Sir Walter Ealeigh set sail to spread the power and influence of Queen Elizabeth through- out the world. But neither the philosopher 19 The Fortune of the Republic of Athens nor England's intrepid hero had the remotest realization of the power of the modern commercial traveller, or of the in- fluence of travel upon men who dwell in rural communities, through their repeated journeys to the cities. It is a proverb that trade follows the flag, but we know the flag generally follows the commercial traveller. No sooner is a new loom, a new plough, in- vented, a new comfort or convenience for the household developed, than a traveller sets forth, to spread the new object of use or beauty through the Middle States and the great West. Scarcely has the improved sewing machine-appeared in Hartford before it reappears in San Francisco. Long ago, edu- cation, through the public schools, became a contagion. We believe in knowledge for all the millions. We have given the suf- frage to the millions. We believe in relig- ious liberty for the millions, but now has come an era when the comforts and con- veniences of life must be diffused among the millions. Does some great artist paint an inspiring canvas? Straightway it is reproduced in colour, and trade scatters it to the multitudes. The printing-press carries the new poem to the millions ; the The Forces Making for National Unity factory carries the new shuttle to the mil- lions ; the loom carries the mercerized cotton to the millions; the factory makes a fountain pen for the millions. Every Monday a hundred thousand commercial travellers pack their trunks, and start out to unify the eighty millions of the American people through trade and commerce. Any comfort and convenience that is developed in a northern city spreads like a concentric wave towards the cites of the Gulf and of the Pacific. The cable has brought London within a stone's throw of JSTew York, and anchored Yokohama just outside the harbour of San Francisco. The railways and tele- phones have made Chicago and St. Louis suburbs of JSTew York. There is a Chicago gentleman who has commutation tickets to New York. He lives on the shores of Lake Michigan but does business in Wall Street. And every day travel, trade, commerce, the telephone and telegraph, the automobile, the canal boats, and the ships, serve as shuttles, that are weaving the industrial, intel- lectual and commercial threads that make up the texture of American civilization, cloth of gold and purple whose beads and pearls are towns and cities. This tex- The Fortune of the Republic ture of civilization that lies across our land fulfills blind Homer's words, "it is the golden garb of God." The influence of political campaigns and the discussing of public questions, work for national unity. In the very nature of the case, once every four years, the whole nation is turned into a political debating society. For two months, eighty millions of people rise up early and sit up late to consider public questions raised by the two political parties ; What is financial truth ? What is the truth about a high tariff ? and free trade ? What is money ? How do silver and gold serve as the mechanism of exchange ? Why do railroads pool their rates to destroy competition ? What is the best method of controlling the railroad and compelling it to serve as a common carrier for manufacturer and farmer alike? If a foreigner were to take the train at the Atlantic, start towards the Pacific in the autumn of any presidential election, at twilight he would find the little country schoolhouse lighted up, and all the farmers assembled, to listen to a political debate between a Kepublican and a Democratic orator. He would find crowded theatres in 22 The Forces Making for National Unity the cities, the halls of the smaller towns packed with the multitudes ; he would listen to reviews of the history of the two par- ties, to analyses of the character and career of the different candidates; he would find the eighty millions separating the wheat of ar- gument from the chaff, tossed about by the orators. Athens once had her week for the Olympian Games when the whole city assembled to watch the contests for one day ; afterwards for six days they listened to the orators and dramatists. But never before has the world witnessed a two months' festival for the discussion of social problems. What a university of politics is opened for 80,000,000 of people, once every four years ! Never before was there such a debating so- ciety in the history of the human race; never so open a field for the orator and the youth ambitious of office and political honour, l^ever was the highway of ambi- tion so clear of barriers for eager aspirants. The temple of political fame stands open by day and by night, and he who can carry the confidence of the people may enter it. Monarchies and empires represent govern- ment by the few. It is therefore, a very sim- 23 The Fortune of the Republic pie thing for these select hereditary leaders to come together and canvass the economic, financial and civic issues before the empire ; but a thousandfold more of majesty and dignity attaches to the spectacle of eighty millions of citizens, entering a sixty days' school, for the study of the problems of the government. Let the critics say all they will about the fume and fever of selfish politicians, and scheming candidates for of- fice, it still remains true that the political campaigns of the republic put the whole nation to school in finance, reform and poli- tics. We read with reverence the story of that scene when eleven disciples cast lots for an apostle who should take the place of the traitor Judas, but if there is any one scene more inspiring than another, it is the sublime spectacle of eighty millions of people coming together to consider the in- terests of free institutions, and to select leaders and counsellors who shall guide the people to their destiny. It may not be easy for skeptical minds to conceive of the infi- nite God, drawing near to the solitary indi- vidual who works in shop, factory, or farm, but certainly, the spectacle of eighty mil- lions of people, casting lots in the interests 24 The Forces Making for National Unity of justice, liberty, equal rights, for all, is a spectacle that would justify the entrance of an infinite God into the scene. But a new force, making for the unity of our people has now appeared in the diffusion of the beautiful among the millions. The time was when the beautiful was confined to the palaces of the rich men of Athens or Italy, to the temples and cathedrals, and later, to castles and mansions. But the poor people of Athens and Rome, Venice and Florence, lived in rude huts, wore leather garments, walked on dirt floors, knew ugli- ness and squalor. Now, the beautiful is dif- fused through the common life. Art is organized : It has taken wings and feet to itself. Not content with dwelling in the palace and mansion it has entered the cottage and farmhouse. Art to-day has touched the dining-room table and sprin- kled beauty over knife and fork, and linen. Beauty has lent loveliness to the paper on the wall and the ceiling. Beauty adorns the hall that welcomes the stranger, the parlour, for hospitality, and the library for wisdom. Leaving the ox-cart behind, man's day- coaches have become palace-cars. It is no longer enough that the magazine or book 25 The Fortune of the Republic holds wisdom; the frontispiece must be beautiful also, and the margins must be decorated. Clothing has become artistic; the woman's coat must have lovely lines, and the colours of the garment must be harmonious. Living, itself, has become a fine art. After centuries of ugly architecture and monstrous house-building, cities are appointing com- missions to study landscape-gardening, to limit the height of buildings, to unify the sky- line on the streets. The daily press and mag- azines also, through photography and the lithographer's art, have reproduced the great masterpieces of genius, with pictures of castles and cathedrals, and public buildings, and the portraits of great men and women. For ^ve cents, the working man through his newspaper can secure a coloured photo- graph with which his little children may adorn the walls of the room until the poor man's house becomes a bower of beauty. One may find apartments in tenement- houses of any city whose walls are more beautiful through prints than the walls of the rooms in Kenil worth Castle, where Queen Elizabeth was entertained by Lord Dudley. And little by little, this diffusion 26 The Forces Making for National Unity of the beautiful is creating a common standard of taste among the millions. Al- ready, we have in Paris some ten thou- sand young Americans studying painting, architecture, music, sculpture, and decora- tion of books and magazines. These young men and women will design furniture for houses and plans for wall-paper and ceil- ings. These thousands will return to their native land to revolutionize the art and architecture, and the streets, of the republic. The City Beautiful is already being set up on earth. The musician does not want a broken string on his harp. The organist does not want a discordant pipe in his instru- ment. Of necessity the beautiful is now be- ginning to exert an influence upon the morals of the people. The drunkard is a broken string on the national harp. The criminal is a discord in the racial song. The poor- house and the jail are blots on the national canvas. The whole nation is striving to- wards racial beauty, harmony, and symme- try. And when the great scene is com- plete, it will be found that art and beauty are working as magicians to unify the mil- lions and make them one in their love of beauty and of truth, expressed through 27 The Fortune of the Republic their pictures, magazines, raiment, cars, houses, parks, cities and civilizations. Reform, also, has become a minister of unity. The root idea of reform is social sympathy. Sympathy is solicitude for the millions who are unfortunate. Sympathy is the soul rushing forth to see how- events go with one's fellows. The sym- bol of sympathy is a flaming heart. The name of this sympathetic one is Great Heart as opposed to the Great Mind. Arnold Toynbee found his opportunity for sympathy in the sorrows of the people who lived in Whitechapel, the scene of ghastly murders. The hundreds of social settlers in the many university settlements in our great American cities, find their opportu- nity for sympathy in the tenement-house regions of the Bowery or Halstead Street in Chicago. The sorrow^s and wrongs of little children of ten to twelve years of age, working in the glass-factories, the cotton- mills and the shops, offer an opportunity to lovers of the poor. The revelations of hor- rible conditions in certain food industries, the wrongs worked upon the multitudes through rebates given to corporations, the evils incident to unjust taxation, represent 28 The Forces Making for National Unity reform moveraents affecting millions, worked out through editors of magazines, through different authors and their books, and through the addresses of representa- tives in legislature and in congress. These reforms tell the people that the injury of one citizen or class of workers is the injury of all. The story of the sorrows of men and women in one industry — whether in the sweat-shops of the city, the factories of Xew England, the mines of Pennsylvania, or among the children of the South — sets all hearts vibrating with sympathy and thrill- ing with pain. Men cannot eat their feast in happiness while others are famishing. They cannot enjoy their furs while others shiver. So sensitive are men becoming to the wrongs of their kind, that while the news of San Francisco's sorrow was still hot upon the wires, in hundreds of cities calls were sent out for public meetings ; and scarcely had the wires stopped vibrating the story of need, when the same wires began to thrill with the transfer of gold and bread to the people of the stricken city. Eighty millions of people became good Samaritans for one day. The sor- row of one city was the sorrow of all 29 The Fortune of the Republic cities ; the desolation of one State was the desolation of the whole land. The American heart is becoming as sensitive as an ^olian harp. To-day the faintest sigh of suffering stirs a movement on the strings. The reason is very simple ; at last we have become a solid people. There are no sections, and racial barriers have dissolved like walls of ice. We have one mind, through the news- papers and schools, and we have one heart, through the reforms and religions. The old Greek myth tells us how Prometheus brought fire from heaven. When the god beheld the sons of men shivering in the winter, he wanted to diffuse the gifts that belonged to the gods. In his solicitude for the sons of men he stole the divine fire and went forth with his sacred torch. That god of sympathy entered the peasant's hut, and lighted the fire on a stone hearth, and left huddled and shivering savages happy and singing with delight about a warm hearth. He found the traveller lost in the night, and gave him a torch. He searched out the mother, at midnight, crooning over the sick child and gave her a lamp, in whose 30 The Forces Making for National Unity rays she fulfilled the task of bringing cure for pain. For the multitudes going through the wilderness, with groans and tears, he kindled the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night. How beautiful the myth of Prometheus, telling us how sympathy can transform a world, and how reform can unify the millions until the}^ laugh with those who laugh, and weep with those who weep, in sorrow and social distress. Yerily, if the press and the school are bringing unity through a common intellectual life, reforms are unifying our eighty millions through sympathy and social service. More important still is the influence of the schools and colleges as unifying forces. What the press, politics, art, commerce and religion are doing to make the adult millions homogeneous in thought and life, is being done for childhood and youth by the schools of the republic. Take them all in all, our educators have become the greatest single intellectual force in the land. No words can describe the debt of the republic to its teachers, who now make up the fourth pro- fession, not less honourable than the other three, called the law, the ministry and 31 The Fortune of the Republic medicine. Great has been the change in public sentiment. After a century of neglect of the teacher in that he has been paid the least of all the public servants, at last the educator is coming to his own. Al- ready college presidents have become the outstanding figures, and the nation owes it to the teaching profession to make some one of these educators president of the republic. Influenced by the new enthusiasm for education, the most gifted youth in our universities are passing by other callings, to become teachers. During the last ten years the percent- age of college students entering the law, medicine and commerce has decreased, but the teaching profession has gained, at the expense of all the other three. The public school system grew out of a singular neces- sity. The Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans were picked men. They had enjoyed every opportunity in England, through fathers who believed that the higher education was essential to a life that was inbreathed of God. To live in God's world assumed a knowledge of God's laws. To live happily in God's world assumed the practice of obe- dience to the laws of God's world. To 32 The Forces Making for National Unity teach their children these laws the fathers rose up early and sat up late, to drill their children in the great facts of Nature^ his- tory, government, and religion. But when the fathers began their career in this new world, they were confronted with a thou- sand problems, incident to subduing the soil, sowing the harvests, planting vineyards and orchards, bridging streams, building farm- houses and villages. Through pressure of work the fathers found it impossible to be- come specialists in educating their own chil- dren. In their emergency they came to- gether and forty fathers agreed to cast lots, and select one man who should educate the children of thirty-nine other homes. They decided also to tax themselves to support this teacher, and to found a college. They cherished the ideal of making every boy and girl a scholar. They baptized the whole life with the spirit of religion and of education. They exalted the educator to the level of the magistrate and the minister. One of their descendants gave to his State and nation the proverb, " A schoolhouse on every hilltop and no saloon in the valley." Little by little, the State became an educa- tional parent, fostering these schools, and 33 The Fortune of the Republic strengthening by gifts of land and gold the college and the university. Government in other nations is largely material in its laws. Certain Parliaments can be men- tioned that are mere boards of trade. They legislate to deepen rivers, and to build war- ships to float on the tide. Our government believes that the best way to take care of a river is to educate the people on the banks, and so to diffuse wisdom, through the arts, sciences and literatures. The real superior- ity of the American working-man rests upon the public school system, and the high average of American education. So intel- ligent have our people become that they handle the most expensive material in the factories without wasting it. Through the high average of education our working peo- ple manufacture the most complex articles, use delicate mechanisms, create costly fab- rics. It is this high average of the intelli- gence, also, that encourages the hope of a great intellectual monument during the next generation. We ripen our oranges and figs only in a genial atmosphere. Great painters, poets, musicians, inventors of genius are the after-fruits, ripened in the warm at- mosphere of universal intelligence. All in- 34 The Forces Making for National Unity tellectual giants stand on the shoulders of their fathers and the common people. The signs of a new intellectual outburst are not wanting on the horizon. Already the whole sky is ablaze with light. If we do not see our great men it is because you cannot see the trees for the thickness of the forest. The common schools are unifying the peo- ple. Death removes the first generation of foreigners, but the schoolhouse makes their children genuinely American, while all the races are becoming one race, because all are scholars as well as patriots — intelli- gent, with hungry minds, alert, hospitable to every new truth and interest that con- cerns the people of the republic. Students of the signs of the times are pro- foundly moved by the wave of enthusiasm for education that is now sweeping over the working-people and farmers of the land. History holds the story of no similar ren- aissance. Fifty years ago Emerson, Wen- dell Phillips, Gough, Beecher, Curtis, Chapin, journeyed up and down the land, as lec- turers. Every little city had its lyceum and lecture course. But in its palmiest days the lyceum of fifty years ago was never as popular as the lecture-course of to-day. 35 The Fortune of the Republic Within the past five years save in cities where the drama holds the field, there has been a revival of interest in lectures. Men who have the art of putting things, and have skill to instruct the people, could fill, if they had them, a thousand nights a year. There are single towns, of five thousand people, in distant States in the Mississippi Yalley, that pay $2,000 a winter for their twelve lectures. Even in the summer, when men are busiest, in an agricultural state like Iowa, there are fifty summer Chautauquas, each lasting from ten days to three weeks. Thousands of people assemble in a great tent or amphitheatre. Men and women, who have left behind forever the schoolroom and the college halls, give ten days and nights to the intellectual life. The work begins at nine o'clock in the morning, with lectures on politics, history, reform, literature, art, science, with one great concert every day, one illustrated lecture a day, and one public discussion. In some of these summer schools at the same hour, there are many different classes of work, with many instructors. And what is going on for the adults of the rural districts is going on for the denizens of the 36 The Forces Making for National Unity city through the opening of the public school buildings at night, that mature men and women may enjoy something of the higher education. Our colleges and uni- versities belong to less than half a million people of twenty years of age, but there are scores of millions busied in the factory and store who never have had and never can have years of leisure, yet who want and believe that they may have, something that is equivalent to the college education open to their children. Nothing is more certain than this, — the next generation is to found night colleges for adults, where men and women, from thirty to seventy, will, in eight or ten years of study during the evenings, get the heart of a col- lege education that hitherto has belonged to youth alone. One college like this, with its classes for working-men and women has grown up in Philadelphia, whose enrollment has increased to more than four thousand students. Best of all, these working people's colleges are self-supporting. Every man pays his fee when he comes in to the even- ing lecture. If the professor of political institutions lacks either the knowledge or the skill to make the subject clear to his 37 The Fortune of the Republic one hundred men, they desert him, and automatically secure his resignation, — a method that offers suggestion to the trustees of many an American college, who are con- sidering whether it is right to chloroform inefficient instructors. The duty of the hour is the opening of ail the school-build- ings of the country for lectures in the even- ing for the parents, even as they have been open in the daytime for the instruction of the children. The next step after that must be the founding of working-men's "colleges in the large cities. Our life has become so complex, our institutions so highly developed, that every worker must be a scholar. Coincident with the necessity, has come this enthusiasm for education, that witnesses to the ever-increasing intellectual unity of the adult population of the re- public. More striking even than the spread of mental training, is the influence of moral instruction upon national unity. One of the most caustic, witty, and successful of the playwrights of our day has just an- nounced that he intends to write a relig- ious play, because Americans are interested in nothing except politics and religion. 38 The Forces Making for National Unity But long ago every department of Ameri- can life became a schoolroom in morals. It is highly significant that one of our great mercantile firms announces that it will take back all goods that are found to be something other than they were represented. Manufac- turers have learned that their best advertise- ment is a reputation for absolute honesty in the goods they make and the tools they sell. Business has become a school of manhood, where industry, application, patience, stead- fastness, courage, self-reliance are the in- direct resultants. But the Church, Protes- tant and Catholic, still remains the teacher of morals. The Sunday is still the library-day for brooding and reflection, the day for the family, the day for song and worship, the day for replenishing of the ideals, the day whitened by the songs and penitence and prayer of earth's greatest souls for genera- tions. The old emphasis of man-made state- ments and creeds is gone. John Huss and John Calvin, John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, those sons of thunder, like the first John in his first estate, have been relegated to their place as great men, but have ceased to eclipse the name of Jesus Christ. All these have become mere candles 39 The Fortune of the Republic while the teacher of Bethlehem and Cal- vary stands forth, the one untroubled sun. The golden hour of instruction on Sunday has become too rich and precious for wast- ing a single moment in discussions about the amount of water in baptism, or some theologian's ideas about fate and free will. Valuable beyond all words, these few mo- ments that must be kept for the great sim- plicities of the evangel of God's love, the good news of Jesus Christ. The three out- standing words in the modern pulpit are Jus- tice — the love of the Eternal Yea and jN'ay ; Philanthropy — the love of Christ's poor and weak; Piety — the love of God, the soul's Maker and Father and Guide. Christian- ity has become the science of saving the soul from temptation and sin, and the art of manufacturing a fine quality of manhood. Passions and sins have become as foolish as thorns and thistles and burrs in a wheat- field, or rose-garden. The virtues of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Christian life have become as natural, as beautiful and alluring as lilies in the garden-bed, as purple clusters on the vine, or fruit upon the bough. One result is that if President Dwight found 40 The Forces Making for National Unity- one or two men in Yale College who were Christians, in an era of atheism, now the overwhelming majority of young men in the colleges and universities are openly Christian, having pledged them- selves to clean living, to justice, to right- eousness and sympathy, and good will. Through this emphasis of the great simplic- ities the churches are drawing together. Because the people in the pews have become one, the leaders and bishops and moderators are coming out for church unity. Most significant, that last conference on Arbitration and Peace at Lake Mohonk, where Cardinal Gibbons led the devotions one morning. Dr. Lyman Abbott the next day, Bishop McYickar the third, while a distinguished Quaker gentleman, Mr. Albert Smiley, presided over all. Once, speaking discord and hate, men were confused at the Tower of Babel. Later, at Pentecost, peo- ple of forty languages were unified through a common truth and love. At last has dawned a golden age when eighty millions of people are with one accord, with one spirit, a solid nation — assembled in school- house, market-place, art-gallery, and in the temples of science, beauty and religion, 41 II The Passing of Sectionalism in the New South and North Nearly half a century has passed since the clash of arms resounded on Yirginian fields, and opened the most destructive and momen- tous conflict of modern times. The interven- ing years have been many and long, but neither time nor events have availed to diminish the importance of that struggle or to lessen the value of its results. Bitter was the conflict, for the great Kebellion was perhaps the fiercest war that has ever shaken the earth. Long ago God's grass healed over the scars that cannon-balls had made, but still the Southern hillsides are billowy with our country's dead. Among our people, the month of May is dedicated to the memory of fallen heroes, and we do well to recall their struggle and to celebrate their victories. In retrospect its events hang on the walls of memory like the shields of valorous enemies. Nothing educates like emergencies, and the memory thereof. The 42 The Passing of Sectionalism measure of a nation's wealth is the number of just battles it has fought, and the right- eous victories it has won. That nation is greatest that has the greatest number of events to celebrate. Savages have no Fourth of July, because they had no strug- gle with tyranny. Indians have no Wash- ington's Birthday, because they have no power to create a hero. They have no decoration of graves, because they have never had a host of patriots struggling unto blood in behalf of their convictions. History assembles the soul-treasures of the republic, as a great exposition gathers its material riches. Walking through some World's Fair, like the one at Paris or St. Louis, one gazes with admiration and amazement at the riches collected. What architecture ! What art ! What books, and what wisdom in them ! What looms, and presses ! What ships, and engines ! It seems as if all the manufactures, all the rich silken stuffs, all the grain and fruits, had taken feet unto themselves and journeyed to one strategic spot. The genius of all inventive minds has been swept together in a single city. And not otherwise is it with the history of our Civil War I That crisis 43 The Fortune of the Republic produced great men. Emergencies put men on their mettle, and led forth all their latent resources. That war, that filled the whole horizon with the smoke of battle, gave the world two of its six greatest soldiers of history ; gave us one of the world's six great statesmen, Abraham Lincoln ; gave us three of the greatest inspirational orators the republic has produced. If some historian were to call the roll of one hun- dred men whose names lend distinction to the pages of our history during the past three hundred years, perhaps one-half of these illustrious names would belong to the epoch that culminated with the war. Im- portant, therefore, these national anniver- saries, recalling the past, and giving con- tinuity to our history. They make us touch hands with a generation of heroes. It was said of the German patriots who fell on a certain battle-field, that always on the anniversary of that victory their spirits returned to the scenes where they fell. Do our founders and fathers ever think of their children ? Do the heroes and patriots ever return to the scenes of their struggles and victory? Do the noble dead ever draw near to the heavenly battlements, and look 44 The Passing of Sectionalism down upon these noisy streets in which we, their children, are fulfilling our appointed tasks ? Hope hears their footsteps and Love is stirred by the rustle of their garments. Let us believe that we are not forgotten, that they live, understand, and can never forget. For the torch that burns for our guidance was lighted upon altars they built and standing in front of these altars, in thought, we celebrate their valour, their loyalty, and their devotion to duty. Great battles and wars, like mountains, need perspective. To small events distance may lend enchantment ; to large events, it lends proportion. We never understand the Alps until we leave Switzerland behind and approach the frontiers of Germany. Then looking back towards the Bernese Oberland, the pilgrim for the first time appreciates the wall of granite and iron with the bastion and tower at one end, named Mont Blanc, and the granite peaks of the Matterhorn at the other, safeguard- ing the rich valleys at their feet. And now that forty years have passed we are far enough away to understand the message and meaning of the great war. At the time, what patriot could understand the 45 The Fortune of the Republic reason for the long, long conflict ? What waste of human lifel What needless de- struction of towns and cities I Has man no better use for his brother man than to run him through with iron and cover him with earth? At first the tide ran against the Federal cause at Bull Run, and the North cried out, " Hath God forgotten the cause of the poor and weak — the cause of the slave?" At Gettysburg Meade turned back Lee's victorious host, and thenceforth the wave of battle, flecked with fire, rolled southwards. For four long years the struggle went on, but now at last we have the perspective. The smoke has cleared and the mountain peaks stand forth. We begin to understand things that once were hidden. Perhaps the long contest was necessary. Perhaps slavery as an economic mistake and indus- trial sin was a cancer that had fastened it- self into the very vitals of Southern life. Perhaps it was necessary for God to anoint the surgeon of war with oil that was dark, that with knife made sharp and cautery of flame the stern surgeon might cut out the disease that threatened the national life it- self. Perhaps, also, the North was a young 46 The Passing of Sectionalism giant, growing coarse, materialistic and over- strong. What if a nation needs to be made perfect in suffering, like the Great Captain of our Salvation Himself? And perhaps, too, that notable war focalized the thought of the Old World monarchies upon the young republic. Prior to the attack on Fort Sum- ter, the English or German newspapers scarcely ever had a line about American affairs. The Old World scoffed at our ideas of liberty. Despotic peoples are ignorant. Now, suddenly, all nations of the earth compete for our favour. Old nations imitate us. Students from other capitals come to our shores to study our institutions. All the world is going to school to the republic to learn liberty. But it was the great war that first caught and held the attention of monarchies for four years. In letters of fire God wrote the lessons of the republic so large that peoples across the sea could read our message of liberty. Long ago the Austrian Emperor visited Innsbruck. Above that little city rise the mountains of the Tyrol Alps. Climbing the steep mountainside, the people hewed down the forest, and piled the trees in the shape of letters. One dark night at ten 47 The Fortune of the Republic o'clock, the Emperor's suite arrived in Inns- briick. And suddenly, across the mountain- side, there flamed forth these words, " Wel- come to our Emperor," written in letters of fire. So, when the Providence of God would fix the eyes of foreign nations upon the republic. He needed a large canvas. He wrote the lesson of liberty in letters of flame that reached from Bull Kun to Yicks- burg. "What a canvas was that, involving in a battle-field a thousand miles long, a million men in arms ! But time also has taught us another les- son, as to how God has overruled the events of the war. The battle-fires burned all barriers away between the South and the North. The Southern people had been drilled by Calhoun for thirty years in the doctrine of State sovereignty, as Webster drilled our fathers in the doctrine of the Nation's sovereignty. Stonewall Jackson believed in his cause with the ardour and enthusiasm with which the crusaders fought for the tomb in Jerusalem. When his sol- diers were encamped on the rough banks of the Rappahannock, it was like one camp- meeting, and great revivals swept through the Southern army. They committed their 48 The Passing of Sectionalism cause to God. When Providence decided against State sovereignty, and for I^ation's sovereignty, they said, " It is the will of God," and they accepted the arbitrament of war. Go into the South to-day, and you find the same fidelity to the republic that you find in the North. Do not think that New York has a monopoly of patriotism and love for this republic, above Atlanta or New Orleans ! Do not cherish hatred and anger in your old age against your Southern foe. Are not forty years long enough for forgiveness? Is it the part of chivalry and magnanimity for members of the Grand Army to refuse to march with Confederate soldiers in the city of New York ? All true patriots, I deeply deplore the unseemly rekindling of old is- sues. What God forgives, man should forget. Not to forgive as we are forgiven, is ignoble. A Northern veteran, who fought and still hates his foe, is less honourable than a South- ern veteran who fought and accepted the issue of events, and then gave in his adher- ence to the republic and its flag. It is my fortune to know many Southern soldiers, and if every man and woman of the North were stricken down by pestilence, this re- 49 The Fortune of the Republic public would be safeguarded by the South. If some foreign foe were to send battleships hither, and every member of the Grand Army of the Kepublic were to perish, these Confederate soldiers and their sons would rise up as one solid band to protect the in- stitutions of this country, and stand for the flag of their forefathers and ours. Not one institution of this land would be permitted to suffer while their right hands are strong enough to draw a sword. The North is full of patriots, but so are these Southern States, where, in ten thousand homes, soldiers with their chivalry and women with their af- fection are rearing sons and daughters in the love of the home land, in the faith of the founders and fathers, and in devotion to the old Declaration, and the old flag that is still the banner of hope for the nations of the earth. At last, thank Godl the time has fully come for the reign of brotherly love between the North and the South. Superficial minds may think that the reunions and recollection of the past minis- ter to vanity and pride. But wise men know that they nourish patriotism, stir civic pride and feed the sentiments of loyalty and devo- tion to duty. Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, 50 The Passing of Sectionalism that Patriotism is the last resort of a scoun- drel. Dr. Johnson was a great maker of dictionaries, but in this case he knew little about the meaning of words. His sentiment is as false as it is foolish. Hypocrisy is the compliment that falsehood pays to religion. A counterfeit is the compliment paid to honest coin, and the affectation of patriotism is the recognition of the value of love of one's country. Whenever patriotism has de- clined, the nation has already entered upon the beginning of the end. Contrariwise, the rise of patriotism, sweeping over the land like an advancing flood, has always been fol- lowed by an outburst of genius and material prosperity. The Old World is full of ruined heaps that once were great cities. But when the historian stands beside a broken column in what was once Carthage, and questions the past, the night wind becomes the voice of the dead city, as it whispers, " My people did not love me ; therefore am I dead." For countries, coming events cast their shadows before. Shortly before the fall of Jerusalem had left not one stone of the Tem- ple upon another, a true patriot left the hills of Galilee behind Him, and stood on the 51 The Fortune of the Republic Mount of Olives looking down upon the city. It was the capital for the country of His soul. It was His city, His Father's city, the city of Mount Zion, intended to be the joy of the whole earth. But priests, and Phari- sees, and rulers loved not their country, but themselves. One patriot was left in the land, the carpenter of E"azareth. Standing under the olive-trees, He stretched out His hand towards the walls, the towers, and the glorious Temple, while He cried out, " Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not I " For lack of patriotism, that city be- came a heap and a ruin. When enthusiasm for one's country wanes, death hath already set in. The cynic, the spoilsman, the greedy politician, the predatory merchants, the ban- dits of the corporation — these spoil the city and their institutions, because patriotism is dead within them, and they no longer love their country. Every consideration of national prosperity, therefore, is an argument for patriotism, and its development and nurture. Perhaps patriotism begins with pride in the resources of one's country. Association may 52 The Passing of Sectionalism make little lands dear to the people therein. But the vastness and the richness of our country compels pride. Of its physical re- sources we can only say, God hath not dealt so with any other nation. Ours is a verita- ble wonderland. It is fitted to be the home of three hundred millions of people. So vast is our country that many of us who have lived here a lifetime cannot compre- hend its extent, because we have not travelled over it. Think of the achievements of Ger- many, the history of France, the glories of Italy I Here we have a single State named Texas into which the greater part of Ger- many, France and Italy could be swept. Simply to understand that vast State, you must take the cars and travel all day long through wide forests. Then take the cars and travel another day through the rich rice fields. The third day will carry you across the pastures and meadows, covered with herds and flocks. Yet that State but faintly images the country as a whole. Other peo- ple are proud of their country and its prin- cipal river. Englishmen are very proud of their lovely little Thames. The Italians are also proud of their little yellow Tiber, which could be dropped into the 53 The Fortune of the Republic yellow Missouri without making a splash or raising the " Big Muddy " a half -inch in flood tide. The Seine is a long stream — that is, measured by a Frenchman's yard- stick. But we have a river named the Yukon that would stretch from Hudson's Bay on the north to New Orleans on the south. What treasures in this land as yet undeveloped! Four-fifths of all the fresh water on the globe are in our lake system. A country with a river and canal system in the Mississippi Yalley running out to the right and the left, like the keel and the ribs of a ship, turning the whole interior into a system of canals and water- ways for commerce ; wood enough to house the world ; coal enough to warm the world; iron enough to tool the world ; wheat enough to feed the world ; cotton enough to clothe the world ; gold and silver enough to finance the world. Another ground for love of the republic is found in the institutions of our country. The test of a nation's value is the kind of man it produces. Some one has said that " The first business of a nation is the manu- facture of souls of a good quality." Without fear of contradiction, we boldly affirm that 54 The Passing of Sectionalism the institutions of the republic have built men of good quality. Turn your eyes to- wards the East, to Russia. What reverses she has suffered ! Every time she fronts a foe, she fails. Her soldiers lost every charge they made; her sailors lost every ship they took into battle. They would not fight. Why should they ? They had noth- ing to lose or gain — the aristocrats had all. Plainly, despotism turns strong men into feeblings. But the republic has taken these feeblings, and in a generation turned them into giants. Despotism has dried up the springs of genius until a man like Tol- stoi or Maxim Gorky is as solitary as a palm-tree in an infinite desert. This repub- lic turns an intellectual waste into a garden, feeds all the springs of intellect, fills all the land with men of force. The despotism may declare that there are no great men in this country. The answer is that in the republic all are to become great through the diffusion of intelligence and opportunity. Despotism thinks that it is unsafe to trust liberty to the common people. The republic cures all ills by giving more liberty, more, and still more liberty. Ye shall know governments by their fruits. The despotism of Russia has 55 The Fortune of the Republic produced 95,000,000 who can neither read nor write, out of a population of 130,000,000. But what are the soul-fruits of the re- public? Can our institutions make poor boys to be strong men ? The republic took a blacksmith, named Elihu Burritt, and made him an accomplished scholar ; took a boy husking corn in Kentucky, and made Henry Clay to be a great orator and senator ; took one boy driving a mule along a tow- path, and another boy living in a log shack in the woods of Indiana, and led Garfield and Lincoln towards the White House. How glorious the history of our self-made men ! How romantic the rise and victory of poor boys ! How many widows' sons have en- tered the halls of eternal fame ? Ye shall know them by their fruits. And the fruit- age of manhood in the republic is a unique order of manhood, that includes soldiers, statesmen, inventors, merchants, heroes, sav- iours of the people. If despotisms have with- ered manhood, and shrunken souls, it would seem as if the whole family of man must go over to free institutions, because of the qual- ity of manhood that liberty has produced. More wondrous still the regenerative power of our institutions. Last year nearly S6t The Passing of Sectionalism a million immigrants came to our shores, and nearly one-half million have come al- ready this year. For every eighty people we now have, one new man will come. This year is to be most fruitful ; the outlook for the shocks and sheaves is most promisinq*. Cotton and sugar and rice are to bring rich returns ; the herds and flocks are increasing, but our biggest crop is — immigrants. One million of them, including two hundred thousand men — each man is equal to a fac- tory worth ten thousand dollars, bringing in hwe hundred dollars, at a five per cent. rate. What if Europe had offered us 200,000 Baldwin locomotives each costing $10,000? That is, two billions of dollars added to the nation's wealth. These new peoples rep- resent the best that the Old World has. Only the strong, the courageous, the self-re- liant venture far from home, and dare. Some who have not stopped to consider are alarmed. They say these immigrants will produce slums ; but the greatest slum district in the world is in London, and the Whitechapel slum district of London is ninety-eight per cent. English. There are few immigrants there. The next slum dis- trict is in a little section in Glasgow, 57 The Fortune of the Republic Scotland, and this slum centre is pure Scotch, with no dilution of immigrants. The next slum centre is South Ireland — pure Irish. Why these three slum districts, do you ask? Why, because the strong son and daughter emigrated from those regions to our country. You say immigrants will dilute the blood, that they are poorly fed and half starved ? Well, a youth who was starved and poorly fed, landed here some forty years ago. You would have turned him back. But he has gained all he could eat, and all he needed to wear, for our Presi- dent says that he is Kew York's most useful citizen, and you call him Jacob Eiis. And do you think that this young Dane diluted your blood ! Well, a little rich blood like his is what your poor blood needs ! Herbert Spencer saw with instant vision that the coming of the finest and bravest of these foreign peoples here, would, through the mix- ture of the bloods, give a new order of man- hood. Can we safely trust our institutions to these multitudes to whom Washington's name means nothing and Lincoln's name is unknown ? Our language is not their lan- guage, our heroes are not their heroes, our battle-flag is not their banner, our revolutions 58 The Passing of Sectionalism are not wars in which their fathers had a part. Is it true that " when the ox eats grass the ox does not become grass, but the grass becomes ox"? Already Boston and ISTew York are the largest Irish cities in the world. Manhattan is now the capital of the Hebrew race. The time was when Eome was the greatest Italian city, but now it is Brooklyn and New York. Sweden's king finds that the largest half of his people are in the re- public. One million came from old Europe last year, another million and more will come this year. But the newcomers are picked young men and women. It takes courage, nerve, and confidence in one's physical and mental re- sources, to leave your native land. Stand on the dock and watch the Italian family that is bidding farewell to the emigrants who are about to sail from Naples to New York. It is the biggest, bravest boy that leaves his native land. This emigration of the best young Irish boys and girls is what gave us the Irish problem, because most of those who stayed behind were of infirm health not equal to the perils of a new world. England has just waked up to discover that she has an Eng- lish problem, with three million paupers, 59 The Fortune of the Republic and other millions needing out-of-door relief. It could not be otherwise, when she has been sending her brawniest and healthiest sons of each family to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Western Canada. There will always be room for the picked youths of the old world so long as we have the ter- ritory to support them. As yet we are not crowded. Why, you can put all France into New York, New England and Ohio. You can drop Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, with Switzerland and Portugal, into the states east of the Mississippi. Then you can put China into the states north of the Red Eiver and west of the Mississippi. Texas will swal- low Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Hol- land and Belgium. Now drop Japan into California, like a stone splashing in a lake. Oregon and Washington will be left for any chance nation in Christendom that we may have forgotten ; and then Alaska will open her capacious arms and offer to take them all in again. We need ten millions of these people to irrigate the great mountain States. We need twenty millions of them for Texas and the Pacific States, and they also need the opportunities of the republic. Thank God, they are all bitten with land- 60 The Passing of Sectionalism hunger. Four out of five of our immigrants make their way to the farms within two years after landing in New York. So plastic and teachable are they that when one generation has passed over these new peoples, lo, they have shed all their Old World customs. Quickly they become Americans to the last drop of blood in their fingers. If possible, their patriotism is more intense than that of the native-born Americans. The reason is very simple. They " know the pit from whence they were digged." Liberty is very sweet to men who have been in a dungeon. It is hunger that makes bread so good to the taste. After the long darkness of oppression, the light of liberty is good to the eyes. Did any of you hear that Italian citizen when he told us why he came to this new land ? " Why ? Do you ask me, why did I come to your country ? Was it because your skies were bluer than Naples ? Your cathedrals grander ? Your statues more beautiful ? Your art more precious ? Oh, no ! One night, sleeping in my Italian home, I saw a vision, and in my dream I beheld Liberty, God's dear child, come down to the sands of your seashore. Standing there, she stood 6i The Fortune of the Republic with her beautiful face looking eastward to- wards my land, and stretching out her white arms, she whispered, ' Yenite 1 Yenite ! ' *Come, come my dear children I ' Obedient to Liberty's command, lo, all these Italiansare here." Those of you who heard that apos- trophe know that eloquence is not yet dead. Nor can it die so long as these people cherish such unbounded enthusiasm towards the re- public that already they call it " My Coun- try." All those rich forms of soul called home, liberty, industry, education, religion, rest back upon and are created by the institu- tions of the Land. Whatever therefore in- jures the ideals of republic, injures all its citizens. When the summer suffers, all the grains and fruits suffer with it. Once the canker goes to the heart of the na- tion, the individual citizens begin to decline, just as any injury done to the root of the tree means that the leaves will shrivel. The vines that cling to the trunk must fall when the tree comes crashing down. History is full of the epitaphs of dead cities, states and empires. Yesterday holds the ruins of as many perished nations as Greenwood holds separate graves. And once the nation 63 The Passing of Sectionalism begins to decay, we may know that the man- hood has decayed also. The measure of any government is the number and fitness of its institutions to nourish and support manhood. Exterior forces, commerce, navies, literature, government, cannot found or support a mighty commonwealth. As for war, France once won a hundred victories, and yet she has steadily declined into the rank of second- class power. As for commerce, Venice once sent red ships into every sea, but there was a canker at the heart of the people. As for the fine arts, Florence once was the flower of cities, but social corruption and political in- justice pulled her down. All wise men know that there are clouds on the horizon of our nation. But observant men ought also to recognize that there is not a virtue that has built other nations up that is not being taken into the national life of to- day and to-morrow, while there is not a vice that injured the nations of yesterday that we are not to-day trying to expel from our cities and states. In his Birmingham address, James Russell Lowell affirmed that democ- racy was still an experiment. Perhaps that depends upon what Mr. Lowell meant. In- tellectual democracy is certainly not an ex- 63 The Fortune of the Republic periment, for the opening of the public and high schools alike to every rank and class of society has justified itself in the citizens pro- duced. Ecclesiastical democracy has not failed, for the contrast between the manhood produced by autocracy in Spain and the type of manhood produced in this republic, where every man is free to be his own bishop and potentate, is a contrast that speaks for itself. Industrial democracy has not failed I Wit- ness the increase in the comforts, conveniences and wealth of the working classes, since the free-contract system was adopted. It re- mains therefore to say that Lowell must have meant that political democracy is still an experiment, by reason of the breakdown of government in the great cities. To all of which the sufficient answer is found in the civic revolution that is sweeping over the land, during these days, when our best citizens, who have achieved distinction in some realm of life, are being exalted to offices, aldermen, leaders of the primary, mayor, and rulers of the city. Our gener- ation stands at the beginning of a new day, when our best and noblest men are to resume their ancient civic rights, and govern them- selves. 64 The Passing of Sectionalism To-day we are surrounded with a great cloud of invisible workers ; inventors who gave us these tools ; soldiers who crimsoned our country's flag ; merchants who have filled may a storehouse and shop and gran- ary. These are the leaders who smote the rocks that they might gush with fountains ; these are the patriots and prophets who called down manna from heaven ; these are our intrepid fathers who guided the multi- tude in the wilderness march. Many of this great band have gone. Oh, what golden suns of genius and patriotism have already set ! What orbs of moral and mental glory have fallen forever beneath the horizon I Wide and generous that gate through which the great souls depart. Sometimes it seems as if the great who go, are more than the leaders who come, to this generation. But the fathers who have gone have left the charge of that intrepid hero of the old chiv- alry, who plunged into the thick of the :6ght, calling back, " Follow my white plume I " And it is for us, recalling the faith of the fathers, and the institutions they have achieved for us, to swear fidelity to their principles and to hand their institutions on unimpaired to our children's children. 65 The Fortune of the Republic Have faith in God and in your institu- tions. Open anew the history of your coun- try. Eead again the story of the great war. Look long and reverently into the face of Abraham Lincoln. Swear fealty to your country. Be no partisan, but a patriot. Get wealth, but never get a dollar through the bribery of city officials, that makes you an enemy of the republic. Eeraember that the heroic dead have made vows and given pledges for you. Great were our soldiers, and their blood is in your veins. Eloquent the orators and wise the statesmen, and you are their sons and daugh- ters. Heroic were our martyrs, and at their graves you should dedicate yourself to the cause which they loved. Here and now, in the heart, build out of the memories of the past, the monument to the nation's dead, the Fathers and Founders — mav their mem- ory never fail ! Our brave men young and old — may their number never lessen ; our re- public with its institutions of liberty — may it outlive them all 1 66 Ill The Institutions of the Republic and Their Fitness for New Peoples Tkadition tells us that our Pilgrim Fathers claimed the promise of God to Abraham as the sanction of their voyage, their quest of a new world, and their dream of an ideal commonwealth. Obedient to a divine command, following an invisible leader, they forsook country and kindred, and went forth unto a land that was hidden beyond the horizon. On the morning that they were to set sail from the harbour of Delft Haven, the Pilgrim Fathers formed a solemn procession. After the sermon had been preached, and Robinson had told them that " more truth and light were yet to break out of God's word," the procession formed in front of the church and marched down to the seashore. As they marched, John Robinson carried on his hands an open Bible. Above all the sound of the marching there rose the voice of the heroic leader, reading aloud these words : " Get thee out 67 The Fortune of the Republic of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation ; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." In that hour, these heroic men who were the builders of states, and to be the founders of the new commonwealth, claimed this com- mand of God to Abraham, and His promise to the father of the faithful, as a pledge vouchsafed unto them, and to their children after them. A sublimer scene the pages of history do not hold I A more glorious promise to men was never given to any, save to Him whose ISTame was above every name. And now that nearly three hundred years have passed, behold how literally the prom- ise has been fulfilled. What Old World monarchy has not gone to school to this republic, to learn free institutions ? How strangely through the Pilgrim Fathers, in the reforms of Japan, have the families of the world been blessed ! Falling upon the sands of the seashore, in sight of the little Sjpeedwell^ the Pilgrim Fathers sang a solemn song. The women's voices were full of sobs; the men's eyes 68 The Institutions of the RepubHc were dim with tears. Their leader com- mended to the providence of God all these who were to go down into the sea in a little ship. When weeks had passed, they dropped anchor in the harbour of Plymouth ; in the midst of a driving snow-storm the men waded ashore, carrying the women and children through the icy surf; they built their cabins, they made the church to be in the centre of the public square, towards which all streets converged ; the building that on Sunday was used as a school of morals and conscience, on Monday became the school of intellect and education. Then they founded their town meeting, and grouped their towns into a commonwealth, with laws governing the associated villages. And at last, out of the free school, the free church, and the free institutions, they de- veloped the seed-principles that ripened into our free institutions. That was the heroic age in our history. Yerily, there were giants in the world in those days. Then New England grew great men. " The world will soon forget what we say here, but the world can never forget w^hat they did here." We trace all our republican facilities, the American home, the American school and 69 The Fortune of the Republic college and university, the freedom of our press, all our political institutions, back to those early days, when our fathers hammered out their ideas of liberty on the anvil of ad- versity and struck off those ideas that were finally gathered up in our Constitution; which Mr. Gladstone called " the greatest political instrument ever struck off by the unaided mind of man." The formative period of the republic ended with the Constitution in 1789, and then the period of testing began. The re- public included three million people. The fundamental institutions of liberty were fully developed, in that the people of the town had charge, through their elected officials, of matters that belonged to the Council; while the State took charge of those interests that were common to all the various towns ; and the Federal government received authority over the things that belonged in common to all the States. All this made up a political engine, at once the simplest and the most complex that has ever been developed. Free institutions assume intelligence and moral culture, l^o youth is fitted to inherit an institution, whose fore- head is not on a level with the inventor 70 The Institutions of the Republic thereof. To create wealth requires great in- telligence ; intelligence is also needed to ad- minister wealth. Stephenson's locomotive incarnates his genius. But no man is fitted to be engineer whose intelligence is not equal to the amount of intelligence that Stephenson put in his locomotive, plus the intelligence that makes the engineer equal to the possible accidents of the engine. In like manner, our political institutions incar- nate the genius of the father and founders of our republic, Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson. But no youth is fitted to lay hands upon the civic mechanism who has not carried his brain and conscience up to the level of Washington and Franklin, and the forefathers, at the hour when they in- vented these political instruments. To give a throbbing locomotive into the hands of a child is a crime as well as a peril. Our fathers believed they had, in the free church, the free school and the Christian college, with the right of suffrage, instru- ments that would make and keep all Ameri- cans to be scholars towards the intellect, Christians towards the church, patriots towards the republic. To their praise be it confessed that for 71 The Fortune of the Republic nearly two hundred years their educational institutions justified the hopes of their founders. In that far-off day every citizen in the New England community was intelli- gent, patriotic and Christian. History tells of New England towns where men had no locks upon the doors ; where theft was un- known ; where, in a hundred years, a divorce was never heard of; w^here illiteracy was all but unthinkable. In those days there was no civic corruption. On election morning the citizens formed a procession, marched to a church, listened to a sermon, and then the elector went forth to vote, as in the sight of God, with no reference to self-interest. In those days a man would no more have used his ballot for personal aggrandizement, or against the interest of the community, than he would have put his hand in the fire. Those were glorious days for the republic. The roots and boughs were then being compacted that finally ripened into the rich fruitage of genius repre- sented in the Concord group. "When we celebrate Emerson's one hundredth anniver- sary, we must not forget the eight genera- tions of clergymen that were back of him ; and when we find that thirty-eight per cent, 72 The Institutions of the Republic of the men mentioned in biographical dic- tionaries are the sons or grandsons of clergy- men, we remember what these Christian in- stitutions did for the laws and the literature and the liberties of the republic. The first epoch in the republic, therefore, was the formative one, when the institutions were developed, and the second epoch includes those years when these institutions were tested and tempered and proven through the character of the men they produced. The third great epoch for the republic began with the era of expansion, when Puritan New England heard the com- mand: "Get thee out from thy country and thy kindred into a land beyond the Alleghanies that I will show thee." One day a traveller stopped his horse on the sum- mit of the mountains of what is now Western New York or Pennsylvania. Put- ting his hand to his ear, he stood in a listen- ing attitude. " What do you hear ? " whispered his guide, fearing lest the painted Indians were in ambush near by. Then uncovering his head, the orator an- swered, " I am listening to the tramp of coming millions." These travellers, return- ing from the West, brought marvellous tales 73 The Fortune of the Republic about the riches of the valley of the Ohio ; about the forests of Indiana and Illinois ; about the black soil of the Mississippi. A strange impulse fell upon all the people. It was such an impulse as fell upon Abraham, that emigrant who made his way to the country of the Jordan ; it was such an im- pulse as fell upon the three million emigrants who followed Moses through their desert into their Promised Land ; it was such an impulse as fell upon the Huns and the Goths, when they left the steep cliffs of Northwestern Europe, and marched to the southwest towards sunny Italy. In the olden time the spirit of God moved upon the face of the dark w^aters. And in 1780 to 1790 the spirit of God was abroad, moving upon our fathers. For nearly two hundred years they had been toiling upon their ideals of the home, the college, the church, the press, with ideals of political liberty. God had shut them up in that little, barren, rugged land, sur- rounded by the sea on the one hand and the forests on the other. In the olden time. He shut the Jewish people in between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and left jbhem to grow their prophets, their martyrs^ 74 The Institutions of the Republic their teachers, their apostles. Then, when the flood of life-giving waters was piled high, the obstruction was swept away, and the command was to go into all the world and carry forth the evangel of peace. When God wants to make a man or a nation great, He puts them in prison. He shuts Homer in by blindness ; He shuts Dante in by exile; He shuts Bunyan in by prison walls ; He shuts Socrates in a jail for thirty days, that he may make a statement about immortality ; He shuts Greece up between the sea and the mountains ; He shuts Rom- ulus in upon a little tongue of land named Eome ; He shuts the Swiss people in between the Bernese Oberland and the Jura-Simplon ; He shuts England in upon a little isle ; He shuts the Dutchman between the hungry waves of the North Sea and the Spanish forts ; He shuts the Pilgrim Fathers in be- tween the Atlantic and the great forest and the savage beasts and still more savage men. But at last our fathers had developed their message and were ready for their world movement. In 1789 the barriers went down, and our fathers became the evangels of national liberty, and their sons became 75 The Fortune of the Republic evangelists to a new nation. One day Manasseh Cutler assembled his people in a Congregational Church at Ipswich. The morning was Monday. A strange proces- sion was formed in the streets. Men in hunters' garb, boys carrying their guns, woodsmen with axes, pack-horses heavily laden — all these made up a strange proces- sion when they marched to the church. A third time a preacher opened a service with these words ; " Get thee out from thy country and thy kindred, into a land that I will show thee. And I will bless thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Then began another marvellous movement to puritanize the entire continent. Our fathers founded the Western Keserve in Ohio, and gave us the great ordinance of 1Y89, that Daniel Webster thought was the barrier against slavery. Home missionaries went into Illinois. Then the Andover band went into Iowa and founded Iowa Col- lege, Tabor, and two academies. Groups of theological students banded themselves together. They determined to take the great West for higher education. These groups of men were picked men, the finest scholars of their era, graduates of our best 76 The Institutions of the Republic colleges. They were men of means also — some of them among the richest men in New England. They were statesmen ; wit- ness the fight that they and their sons made for liberty. They were out upon no quest of the Golden Fleece, they were out to spread American manhood. And never was a promise given to emigrants more gloriously fulfilled. The Christian home, the Christian church, the free school, the Christian college, were instruments fitted for the development of manhood. What towns they founded ! What colleges they built up ! He who goes through these new Western communities exclaims, What vine- yards ! What orchards ! What bridging of mighty rivers I What tunneling of moun- tains ! What cities springing up as it were in a night ! How does the land hum with industry and tremble with the stroke of the locomotive and the trip-hammer. The story of the influence of the Christian educators and missionaries in the great West is the most thrilling story in the history of civilization. And we can never forget that our Pilgrim Fathers, having puritanized New England, through their sons went forth to New Englandize the 77 The Fortune of the Repubhc Middle States. So on through the home, the church, the school, and the library, they New Englandized the great West also. When the shock of the Civil War came, it was the Puritan spirit that shotted the guns against slavery, and the watchwords of the Pilgrim Fathers finally battered down the defenses of slavery. Take it all in all, what page in history is so enthralling as the story of these Christian teachers and preachers and educators who Americanized the new peoples of the great West ! Of late, the institutions for Americanizing and Christianizing our population have been strained to the uttermost. However rap- idly it may become so, the population is not now homogeneous, and we have not di- gested the new peoples as rapidly as they have come. Certain great crises in the his- tory of the country explain this fact in part. In retrospect, we perceive that the crises were three. The first one came in 1845. It grew out of the annexation of Texas. Our people became greedy of territory. We identified national bigness with national greatness. Many of our great leaders were opposed to national avarice and theft. In the conflict Senator Corwin said that if he 78 The Institutions of the Republic was a Mexican or a Texan he would welcome the American soldiers with bloody hands to hospitable graves. Every evil, however, can be overruled for good, and this event has apparently been overruled for the Republic's good. But the new territory, with the new raw peoples, represented an enormous task. And the American church and the American school and the American home did not as- similate the people as rapidly as they poured in. Then came the great crisis on the Pa- cific Slope, in 1847. One day a man discov- ered a little yellow metal in a pile of sand, and the lustre and glint made his heart beat wildly. In a few months ships crowded with adventurers sailed from Liverpool around Cape Horn, and from France and Portugal, from IRew York and Boston and New Orleans. A long column of gold-seek- ers crept slowly across the American desert. A new nation was born in a day beyond the Rockies. Crime was rampant. Drunken- ness and robbery were all but universal. The era of lawlessness was followed by the era of the vigilance committee. There was no Sunday, no Bible, and it looked as if God had never crossed the Missouri River. Try 79 The Fortune of the Republic as the church would, Christian preachers and Christian educators found it impossible to begin their work until the community and institutions had begun to harden. Whoever has spent a Sunday on the Pacific coast under- stands that the four institutions for com- pletely assimilating and Christianizing our new populations have not yet caught up with their task. What is the fascination that belongs to the pages of Bret Harte ? It is the sharp contrast between the JS'ew Eng- land ideals and the wild lawless life of the old regime of California. The third great strain came with the in- flux of the foreigners from the Old World. Allured by the story of the industrial wealth of the great interior, they poured in by blocks of a half-million per year. This year alone, the immigrants will number probably one million. We have already some twenty million foreigners or children of foreign- born parents. They are German, Bohemian, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, French, Eussian, Hebrew ; they are Spanish, Portu- guese, Italian, Syrian. And still, like the descent of the Huns on Rome for its de- struction, they come in upon the republic for our help and salvation. There are many 80 The Institutions of the Republic pessimists who are alarmed at the invasion. But let us take no counsel of crouching fear. If we do our duty, our free institutions will Americanize and Christianize them, and after the bloods have been well mixed, there will stand forth in this republic the finest type of man, physical, that the world has ever seen. Why should you despise the Hun, and count him the dirt and off-scour- ing of the earth ? Out of the Hun God made John Huss. Why do you despise the Italian ? Out of some Italian dust God made Dante and Savonarola, and Garibaldi and Mazzini. Why do you despise the Poles ? Out of some Polish dust He made Kossuth, just as out of a German He made Martin Luther, and out of a Jew He made Paul. What ? Afraid of the new peoples ? This is like a farmer being alarmed lest the golden wheat be too heavy for his sickle. This is like a miner being terrified lest there be too much gold in the veins. This is like a cotton manufacturer being afraid of the news that the cotton bales are coming in so fast as to overwhelm his factory. When the Kiver Nile overflows its banks, and mud is scattered all over Egypt, the deeper the mud, the more the farmers rejoice. For the 8i The Fortune of the Republic deposit of dirt means fertilization, and the richer rice. And if we back up with our sympathy and our gifts our home mission- aries and our Christian educators, if we stand for the American home and the American school and the American church and the American Sunday, if we bring these great influences of God and His divine word to bear upon men's conduct and character, these new populations will lend strength to the arm and foot of the republic, and its brain and mind and heart ; but if we allow the people to go unchristianized and un- Americanized, we do so at our peril. And we shall play false to our fathers, just in so far as we are faithless to this task of spread- ing Christian manhood in every part of our country. Beholding the bridges across the chasms, and tunnels through the mountains, the superficial mind may think that to contrast the work of the intellectual and moral teacher with the builders of the towns and cities is to compare small things with large. But investigation may do away with the criticism, and possibly the moral teacher may stand forth a striking figure, unique and even preeminent in the influence that abides. 82 The Institutions of the Republic Indeed, if history tells us anything, it insists that the moral teacher has always been a builder of states, and a founder of common- wealths. Our generation makes much of men who equip the state, who clothe the state, and feed the state ; it is in danger of overlook- ing those who instruct the state, who inspire, exalt and refine the moral sentiments of all the people. If we go backwards through the centuries, where shall we find a great commonwealth, that was not founded by a moral teacher ? Witness the Hebrew com- monwealth, founded by that pioneer and immigrant named Abraham. Witness the redemption of the noble Jewish race, and the establishment of the theocracy in the Prom- ised Land, — the achievements of a moral teacher named Moses. Witness the found- ing of the Grecian cities, for even in their legends they trace the beginning of each city back to a man who stands for wisdom and morals. Back of modern Germany stands the pulpit of Martin Luther. Back of Holland stand the two great religious teachers. Behind the Pilgrim Fathers be- hold the form of preacher John Eobinson. When Fiske tells us that the influence of ^3 The Fortune of the Republic Connecticut on our free institutions was preeminent, he traces Connecticut's democ- racy to that minister, Thomas Hooker. And what shall we say of the settlement of the great West, save this, that a minister led the first group of pilgrims across the Alleghanies. Daniel Webster insists that the ordinance of 1787, that safeguarded from slavery all the States north of the Ohio, was outlined, not by jurists or statesmen, but by a moral teacher named Manasseh Cutler. Not less striking the influence of the moral preacher in the other Western commonwealths. Faneuil Hall is famous for Wendell Phil- lips' speech on the death of Lovejoy. But Wendell Phillips could speak well in safe Boston, because a minister named Owen Lovejoy first lived heroically in perilous Illinois. Having lived for liberty and the printing-press, the minister died for them also, and his death made easy an hour's speech in the Boston hall. The story of Iowa and the other Western states is one story with the other commonwealths. Twenty-five home-missionaries led twenty- five different bands of colonists out of New England, to settle that great commonwealth 84 The Institutions of the Republic between the Mississippi and the Missouri Kivers. The founding of their churches was only the beginning of their work. They hastened on to new forms of labour, for the home, the schoolhouse, the academy and the college. Kead the history of the " under- ground railway" movements in the great West. The stations of this railway for es- caping slaves were always in the town where dwelt some member of the old Iowa band of missionaries. When the war broke out these missionaries became recruiting ofl&cers, and during those four awful years the home- missionary churches were without teachers, for their pastors were either chaplains at the front, or carrying muskets. Nor must we forget their work in the interests of the lyceums of the great West, or their influ- ence on the wide-spread temperance cam- paign, furthering sobriety and prudence. Time forbids any rehearsal of the history of the Eocky Mountain States, unless we add that the history of Marcus Whitman is the history of the saving of Washington and Oregon. Like Moses, these home-missionaries went out from the land of their fathers, enduring, by the sight of Him who is invisible. In an 85 The Fortune of the Republic old poem, the peasant sits in his hut, dream- ing. While he dreams, the hut rises into the dimensions of an abbey, the little win- dows become large, arched, and full of rich glass. The low ceiling rises up and be- comes the vast dome, covered with the faces of angels and seraphs. The low rafters are exalted into the dignity of splendid towers and pinnacles. His children, dead, reappear as celestial beings who hover in the air above him, and cast treasure down upon his broken life. It is a German poem, familiar to you all, but it tells the story of the rude West, once covered with wandering bands of Indians, with trappers and hunters, and now the centre of vast states, a region abounding in towns and cities and shops and factories. There is that great valley of the Mississippi, of which Mr. Gladstone said, it will be the home of many a Leeds and Man- chester, many a Sheffield and Birmingham, and when some time has passed, will clothe, feed and supply the world. And we must always remember that the names of the founders of these commonwealths are the names of the moral teachers who crossed the Alleghanies and led their colonists into their promised land. 86 The Institutions of the Republic In all generations Christianity has kept good company. For it is as true of an ethical system as it is of a man, that it is " known by the company it keeps." In those far oif countries, Christianity maintained a warm friendship with the fine arts. It was found much in the company of noble music, the Glorias, the Te Deums, and the oratorios. Christianity has always lingered long under the roof where Liberty hath her dwelling place, and made friends with the Law alsa Not less striking, its relation to the higher education. In the far-off yesterdays, the Christian leaders founded universities, to consider great themes, like the nature of the soul, the government of God, the ground of right, the meaning of con- science, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of immortality. During the last century also, the church has maintained its interest in the higher education. If we were to mention the names of the colleges between the Atlantic and the Pacific, how few of them were not founded by home-mission- aries I Here in New York, Union and Ham- ilton ; in Ohio, Oberlin on the north, and Marietta on the south, not to mention a score of others. In Illinois, there are Knox 87 The Fortune of the RepubUc and Lake Forest, and thirty more, large and small. In Iowa that historic Iowa band founded two colleges at Grinnell and Tabor, and two academies, before they had people enough to act as trustees and professors. And history holds no finer example of faith. What is the result ? Well, they have reared many leaders. You have often been told that as goes New York so goes the country. People never tire of telling us that Eome makes Italy, Paris shapes France, London controls England, New York rules America. But the statement is chiefly interesting for this reason — it is not true. Sometimes one wishes it were true that this splendid city by the sea, including within its limits some of the wisest, and noblest and best men that any genera- tion has ever known, did possess unique pre- eminence and control of the nation. Great is the power of New York. Wonderful its financial influence. Not less wonderful its newspapers and publishing-houses and churches, and banks and railways ! But where do the men who control this city come from ? Startling as the fact is, we must con- fess that three-fourths of them come from the rural districts, and one-half of them from 8S The Institutions of the Republic the great West. The other day an editor commented upon certain eminent positions representing enormous interests scattered over the country, and chiefly owned in New York. What men were selected as presidents of railways or heads of these great financial and industrial systems ? Eight of the ten men were brought in from the far West, because they had been trained on the ground, knew the system at first hand, and had the physique demanded. That is why one some- times feels that if you want to profoundly influence New York you had better start for Oregon. A reading of the catalogues of our schools of law, medicine and theology, tells us that nearly all of the students come from the middle West. The large, rich universities no longer control the Eepublic. Our great colleges are largely endowed and perhaps over-supplied with luxurious ap- pointments. In these institutions the stu- dent spends from $1,000 to $5,000 a year. His dormitory, built by some rich alumnus, cost a half-million, and the man who built it would never have done so had he dreamed that he was erecting a luxurious intellectual sleeping-car. Meanwhile, the little Western college also does its work. Now and then an 89 The Fortune of the Republic Eastern man from a doubtful state like New York is nominated for the presidency of the Nation, but four times out of five, the nom- inee for the presidency has been a graduate of a little Western college, and trained beyond the Alleghanies. It is a good thing to believe in ourselves. Self-depre- ciation is no virtue. Contrariwise, egotism is a great fault; but one thing is certain, the surest corrective to egotism, on the part of our notable leaders in things material, is a page or two of history, con- cerning the place that the home-missionary and Western educators have had in rearing the great men who have influenced this re- public. Here and now, therefore, let us remember the Western colleges. Simple justice demands our confession of the Na- tion's debt to them. Grateful to our in- ventors, to our merchants and our railroad- builders, we can never forget the debt we owe our educators. Among the most useful men in the republic are these home-missionaries, who have toiled tirelessly to found schools, build academies, erect libraries, endow col- leges and turn the children of the church towards the path that leads to the Temple of Wisdom and Knowledge. 90 The Institutions of the Republic Only recently has the story of the West- ern commonwealths been written. And how rich are these pages in tales of hero- ism ! If Thomas Carlyle were living he would now add a new chapter to his '' Hero Worship," and if the pulpit ever wears out by much preaching the eleventh chapter of He- brews, we can find a new roll-call of heroes in the record of missions. Nor is there any volume on chivalry or knight errantry in your libraries that will surpass these wondrous volumes. Cynics say that hero- ism is dead. The blase rich, living in their silken palaces, sneer at tales of heroism as forms of cheap martyrdom. Our own city abounds in men who have sacrificed everything that is admirable in character to pile millions innumerable upon other millions, and the revelations in the maga- zines of the past summer have made us all but ashamed of our time, in that wild beasts of the jungle have a higher code of ethics than these men who have all but made the name of man to be a reproach. In such an era we find the corrective of pessimism, the tonic to braver living, in the history of these heroes. Open the history of Western Pennsylvania 91 The Fortune of the Republic and refresh yourself with the story of the Moravian, Christian Frederic Post. He was the first missionary ever sent over the Alle- ghanies, during the time when England and France were struggling for the possession of this continent. Having served the river men on the Ohio, he turned to the Indians of the forest. He penetrated to the banks of the Wabash ; he taught the Indians how to improve their tents, how to increase their corn, how to guard against filth-diseases, how to keep pure the springs and water- brooks, and opened to them the evangel of God's love and man's need. After ten years he, too, fell a victim to the Indian scourge, consumption, and recrossed the Al- leghanies, returning home to die. E'ow be- cause the English colonists were strong in Pennsylvania and were spreading energet- ically westward, the French officers at Detroit went through the forests, stirring up the Indians to war. They told the chiefs about the great victory over Brad- dock, but a few years before ; they assembled some say forty and some say sixty thousand Indians, and were preparing to cross the mountains and descend upon Central Penn- sylvania. In that hour fear journeyed on 92 The Institutions of the Repubhc the wings of the wind. Pennsylvania was in a tumult of alarm. When the news came, Christian Post asked his friends to lift him upon his horse, and with a friend to lead the animal, hurried over the mountains to the place where the Indians were assembled. One night he came to the camp, where is now Beaver. He assembled some three hundred chiefs. The French leaders were furious^ the young braves were set on war; but the dying missionary pleaded for peace. To the old chief in command. Christian Post ad- dressed himself. '* For years I have served you. Living in the forest, I have taught your children and tended your sick and buried your dead. The Great Spirit does not want your people to kill my people. Let the English and French fight their own battles. Will you devastate these homes and murder these women and chil- dren ? These women are my sisters, these children are my children. I am dying. I have never asked aught of you. 1 now ask the lives of my people." When day broke the old chief dissolved the council, and told his young braves that there would be no war. By noon the Indian army had folded 93 The Fortune of the RepubHc its tents and " silently stolen away " into the forest. The French troops dismantled and abandoned Fort Duquesne and returned to Canada ; the little village of Pittsburg was begun on the ruins of the old fort, and the horrors of war had departed forever. One missionary saved western Pennsyl- vania ; single-handed he defeated an army. That achievement is worth all that the home-mission movement has cost. And yet even Post's achievement has been rivalled by William Duncan, who, forty- seven years ago, landed among cannibals on the wild shores of Alaska, and now look at the work he hath wrought. Yonder is the industrial village of Metlakahtla. Every Indian family in its own frame-house, with their cooperative store, their bank, their great sawmill, their box-factory, making their own tin cans, running a salmon can- nery, owning ships, tugs, naphtha launches, having a church with an auditorium only less striking than this, with Indians that a few years ago pounded a medicine-drum now playing a pipe-organ and singing the great hymns and psalms of the church. And this is only one of a string of jewels worn by the Angel of Missions in America. 94 The Institutions of the Republic This work is going on all over the great West, on the prairies, and in the ISTorthern forests, in the Puget Sound country, and in the great mountain States of the far South- west. These teachers are college-bred men and highly educated. Many of them are men of marked ability, and could earn sev- eral times their income in other occupations as business men. But it is their duty to teach the people morals, to keep alive in men the sense of justice, to make their school, church and home a centre of sweetness and reason- ableness and light and the higher manhood. Take these men away, and the life of the whole community would be threatened. In Living- stone's day, Africa was a land of savages, with here and there an occasional patch of butcher knives and revolvers. And take the Christian Church and the little Christian school out of many of the mining commun- ities of the West, and you have a large tract of barbarism, with no civilizing centre save the bowie knife, and no spiritual agent except the six-shooter. Open the pages of " Black Eock " and " The Sky Pilot " and there you will get in literary form the exact his- tory of hundreds of our home-missionaries. The author of " The Sky Pilot " is himself 95 The Fortune of the Republic a home-missionary, across the line in Canada, who wrote his stories in the hope of getting money enough to help on his work in the little church and the little school that he had founded. Talk about heroism ! These home-mis- sionaries are the true heroes. They are fighting against the saloon and the gam- bling house and the overthrow of the Sunday. They are standing for the home, they are strengthening the schools, they are using the best day of the week, the soul's library day, for the spread of American manhood. They are doing foundation work. They are pio- neers, blazing their way through the forest. They are toiling in poverty, in homesickness, and some of them in pain and in heart-break. They are men whose very shoe-latches you and I are not worthy to stoop down and un- loose. One hundred years from now they will be looked upon as the Pilgrim Fathers of the great West. Matthew Arnold has said that America holds the future of the world. Mr. Gladstone believed that the Mississippi Yalley is to hold the great manu- facturing cities of futurity, and that by the end of this century the Republic will number six hundred millions. Realizing the influ- 96 The Institutions of the Republic ence of the new settlers and the new in- stitutions upon the future of the Eepublic, we are trying to do all that we can to lay the foundations aright, to hold men back from ignorance and passion and sin, and to de- velop in them manhood and intelligence and virtue. Our country is passing through a great crisis. Many fear that our institutions are going down under the fearful strain. Groundless are all such fears. The peril of the hour is materialism. Wealth has come in like a flood, and wealth is to be yet more and more. The money that is now a little stream, trickling over the ankles of our chil- dren, is to becomeariver,deepenoughtoswim in. We now have through machinery sixty man-power for every worker. And through new electrical devices the new machines are to multiply every man to two hundred. Also the new intensive farming is doubling the output of the fields, the new methods of extracting ore is doubling the value of the mines. The income of the average family that is now $1,000, will soon be $2,000 and $3,000. But abundance often injures. Lux- ury is a severe test. Shakespeare and the greatest age in literature represent an income 97 The Fortune of the Republic of a hundred dollars a year per family, just as Emerson and Whittier and Hawthorne and Thoreau lived in what our working-men would call poverty, and wrote their books upon a daily income much less than any mem- ber of any trades union in this country. But God wants to give men abundance, to in- crease their herds and flocks, to overflow the storehouse and barn, and the increase of com- forts and conveniences is intended for the in- crease of manhood. With wealth there ought to come leisure. With leisure there should come culture and refinement and Christian character. The richest age ought to be the most spiritual age. The substance of the peach comes from the soil, but the blush and perfume and the dripping juices come from the invisible ele- ments of the air. The basis of national prosperity comes from farms and factories and comforts and conveniences and houses and ships ; but the glory of the nation's life is its character and manhood. And these are spiritual. The only way to develop the civilization on the outside is to develop man- hood on the inside. Would you have books ? Strengthen the reason. Would you have pic- tures? Waken the imagination. Would 98 The Institutions of the Republic you have laws? Stir the sense of justice. Would you have tools ? Rouse the inventive faculty. And these truths that appeal to reason and to love and conscience and self- sacrifice, these stimulants that the preachers hold and use are the most powerful stimu- lants for the production of a great civiliza- tion known to the world. This, then, is our task, the keeping alive in men's minds the sense of the presence of God, the spiritualizing of things that are material, the maintenance of the old convic- tions of honour and truth and duty and pa- triotism. Our fathers founded our institu- tions and handed them down to us. Our task it is to guard these institutions, to use them for the manufacture of manhood of a good quality, and to hand them forward unimpaired to another generation. It is a little thing that we are increased in goods if our sons decay. It is of small consequence that our towns are crowded with stores, and our stores stuffed with wares, or that our cargoes overtax the ships, if all these things on the outside smother^ men, and the character within. We do not have to ask the good God for material treas- ure. He has already granted that in abun- 99 LOfC. The Fortune of the Republic dance. Kather is it ours to ask Him for the strength to dedicate ourselves anew to the work that our fathers began. To care for the American home, and keep its ideals bright ; to care for the church, and spread His truth among all new peoples. To care for His day, and keep the Sunday as the soul's library day and gallery day, and day of brooding. To keep alive in men the sense of God, and His loving providence, of Christ, and His redemptive mercy ; the sense of duty, the sense of sin, the sense of sympathy and self-sacrifice, and the hope of immortality. And so long as we hold the faiths of our fathers, cherish their ideals, and spread manhood among the people, so long will our institutions continue firm as the moun- tains and stars, and all the families of the earth will look to the Kepublic as their edu- cator and teacher in liberty and free insti- tutions. lOO IV The Schools of the Republic and the Education of Our Rulers To the six national holidays of the Re- public must be added Commencement Day with its emphasis of the higher education. Every June witnesses the commencement exercises of hundreds of high schools and academies, colleges and universities. Every June one hundred thousand students re- ceive at the hands of college presidents the diploma that is the outer sign of the inner culture. Because of the people's en- thusiasm for education the Commencement Day has become one of the high days of the soul, a new holiday in the calendar of national events. We have it on high authority that wisdom is better than rubies. The man who uttered that sentiment was not only the wisest man of his day ; he was also the Croesus of his epoch, and the king of his country. What he really means is that knowledge is its own exceeding great reward. Doubtless it is true that wisdom is worth while for its own sake. lOI The Fortune of the Republic Nevertheless, knowledge is of practical worth. It makes for utility. Wealth is not in raw material of wood or stone or steel, but in the amount of education that the workman puts into the material. Kovalis once said that " philosophy bakes no bread, but gives us God, freedom and im- mortality." Having confessed the truth of the second half of the statement, it remains for us to deny the first. As a matter of fact, philosophy bakes all the bread, and when- ever the loaf has been burned it has been in the absence of "philosophy." Knowl- edge opens the furrow and sows the seed ; knowledge curves the sickle and reaps the sheaf ; knowledge builds the mill, grinds the corn and converts it into bread, the staff of life. Knowledge touches a forked stick and turns it into a steel plow. Knowledge as- sembles many bricks and turns them into one house, or factory, or hall of science. Knowledge is more precious than fine gold, because it produces gold, that is of finer quality still. Civilization is a texture spun of the golden threads of wisdom and knowl- edge. But when knowledge has enriched the home, the town and the city, it lends tran- 102 The Schools of the Republic quillity to the scholar's heart. " "What has been the happiest moment of your life ? " a friend asked Horace Bushnell. " I have ex- perienced my highest happiness in the mo- ments when I have been conscious of pursu- ing the truth for its own sake, and of yield- ing myself fully to God's truth." To love the truth supremely, to pursue the truth eternally, to yield one's self to the truth completely, to defend the truth persistently — this is to receive from God the patent of nobility ! Close, indeed, the affiliation between the state and our schools of learning ! Doubtless, the people of the republic are interested in education because of certain motives of self- interest and self-protection. The monarchy does not rest upon the common school. The problem of educating the rulers in the old nations is very simple. Autocracy repre- sents the government by one, and educating the rulers means educating the royal family. The oligarchy represents government by a few ; the education of its rulers means the education of the patrician classes. Democ- racy means government by the many ; the education of our rulers means the edu- cation of all the people. When the founders 103 The Fortune of the Republic of the republic conceived their idea of self- government they understood the necessity of making every voter a scholar, as well as a patriot and a Christian. The very thought, however, of making ten million voters wise towards political truth, social truth, economic truth, staggered the people of the Old World. The Tories in England shouted " Madmen ! " Carlyle said, *' Government by the multitude can never succeed until the vote of Judas Iscariot is worth as much as the vote of Jesus Christ." The English Conservative has always looked forward to each new election in our country, anticipating the final plunge into the abyss, while he murmurs, " After Niagara and the whirlpool, what?" Even Macaulay ended his long review of history with the con- clusion that democracy would break down just as soon as the free lands were exhausted. Then, he says, will come the military dic- tator, who will protect the rich from spoli- ation by the poor. Well, the cheap lands have long been ex- hausted. Our cities are as large as the cities of the old monarchies, but our institutions have steadily declined to go to pieces. Our working-classes are more and more con- 104 The Schools of the Republic servative, as well as more and more pros- perous. If our immigrants when they come bring with them the note of anarchy, the hatred of all government in the state and of all ecclesiasticism in Church, they soon be- come patriots and lovers of the republic. History tells us that our public schools have done their work. The educational system of this country has justified itself by manu- facturing patriots and citizens of good qual- ity. Our teachers have made young men and women strong, wise, self-sufiicing ; man- hood is the best fruit that the republic can exhibit. These schools have taken the chil- dren of foreigners and turned them into able and useful leaders in the cities and the States, and in the National government. JS'o patriot who is in close touch with the public schools but finds his fear and pessi- mism have dissolved like the frost before an April sun. Would you strengthen your op- timism, your enthusiasm for the schools of your country, your hope for the republic ? Get in touch with your public school teach- ers. Linger for a few days in the atmos- phere of the colleges and State universities. Soon you will come back with a new confi- dence in your country, in its people and in 105 The Fortune of the Republic the institutions they represent. Verily the schools of our country have fitted the people to be their own rulers, bringing assurances of the permanency of the republic. Our schools have another claim upon the republic in that the secret of national prog- ress is the secret of the higher education. The hope of the future is in the ever-increas- ing intelligence of the average people. It is a singular fact that a great man can be- queath his gold to his child, but not his treasures of mind and heart. The scholar's wisdom dies with him. The inventor car- ries to the grave his mastery of matter and force. Eloquence dies with the orator. The fall of the great jurist is like the fall of some cathedral or gallery. Sir William Jones mastered eight languages and twenty dialects, but his child must go back to the point where the father began, and for him- self master afresh every truth the father learned. At first thought this seems to make social progress impossible. It compels the human race to return every thirty years to the cradle, and begin its progress afresh. Herbert Spencer says that acquired charac- teristics are transmissible, the German scientist, Weismann, denies the statement ; 1 06 The Schools of the Republic Spencer says that education leaves a little dent in each cell, and that the dent passes on from father to child ; Weismann insists that the father achieves wisdom for himself alone, but transmits the traits with which he was born. When the scholars disagree, how shall the laymen decide ? One rule is safe ; when we do not know which side of the street to take, we can keep in the mid- dle of the road. The common sense view, perhaps, is furnished by experience. Leav- ing the scientists to JSght out the contro- versy, we can affirm that we have seen four generations of Darwins, seven of Emersons, ten of the Bach family in music, a thousand generations of the Hebrews, but if the father cannot as a scholar bequeath his knowl- edge to the babe, there is something better that can be done. You can hand your edu- cation over to the child by training, which is better than giving it by direct fiat. In- deed, it is this that explains the length of man's infancy. In proportion as man goes towards God, he lengthens his childhood. A sand-fly is mature in three days, a robin in three months, a colt in three years, but man re- quires three climacterics of seven years each. 107 The Fortune of the Republic This long epoch of childhood and growth in- volved in twenty-one years makes it possible for society to hand over to the growing soul all the treasures accumulated in three thousand years. Civilization is a museum, holding tools, books, arts, laws, industries. The child is a traveller that lingers for twenty-one years in the museum. Slowly it walks through this treasure-house, familiar- izing itself with these great achievements. So plastic is the mind of youth that a single week avails for reading and fixing in mind forever the book of the old blind poet, who spent seventy years upon that Iliad. In four years, perhaps, a youth with a hungry mind can sit at the feet of two hundred masters ; these, also, will be the mountain-peak minds. In telling him their story, they have told him the full epic of man's soul. But this plasticity of childhood, this long infancy of twenty-one years, that makes it possible to educate the youth and hand over to him so many of the treasures of the family of man achieved through three thousand years, represents a great responsibility for parents and teachers. The relations between edu- cation and wealth ask us to emphasize the value of our schools. Experience tells io8 The Schools of the Republic us that ignorance is the great waster. It was ignorance of the simple principles of sanitation that brought pestilence upon our forefathers. In their ignorance, our an- cestors believed in rain-makers. Grievous were the losses of yesterday through old medicines, old tools, old astrologies, old superstition, and all these losses came through ignorance. Wisdom hath built a new world. This is the great lesson of slavery. Look- ing backwards we now see that the South be- fore the war was getting poorer and poorer, while the North was growing richer and richer. The reason is very simple. Slavery was slowly starving the South to death. Slave-labour represents ignorant labour. The slave wants no newspaper nor books, and that ignorance starved the press. The slave needs only one coat, and that ignorance starved the loom and factory. The slave wants no sewing-machine, no cottage-organ, no comforts or conveniences, and this starved the manufacturing-towns. The mas- ters represented a handful and they were good buyers, but the slaves represented a multitude, and they were poor buyers. And so the South grew poorer and poorer, and 109 The Fortune of the Republic emerged from the war a mere wreck, and shell, ruined by the ignorance of millions of slaves. But the North came out of the war richer than when it went into battle. Free labour is educated labour. Our workmen were good buyers; they hungered for books and supported the presses. The eye hungered for beauty ; friendship hungered for hospitality, the work- man wanted a hundred comforts for his children ; every new knowledge developed a new need ; and the people grew by leaps and bounds. It was given to Rudyard Kipling to take a goosequill and a farthing's worth of paper and ink, and to sell the hieroglyph, which he named " The Eecessional " to the London Times for £400. The raw ma- terial represented a penny ; all the rest of the $2,000 represented education and training, — without which, in some form, even genius is helpless. If by divine fiat to-morrow you could quadruple the education and intelli- gence of the eighty millions of people in this country, you would multiply by ten the wealth of the republic. Recently I was in the Patent Ofiice in Washington, looking at the tools. Three out of four of the new tools are not yet practical. The people are The Schools of the Republic not yet ready for them. As yet the work- men are too careless to handle the exquis- itely fine tools and costly material. But we shall soon double the intelligence of the nation, and then all these inventions will come in, to increase the comfort and the happiness of the people. Wisdom is not only better than rubies, but it can now manu- facture a thousand coins of gold. Igno- rance can turn Carthage into a heap, and make New York a ruin, but knowledge can cover the desert lands of Idaho and Colorado and Nevada with houses and gardens by leading streams of water across the thirsty plains. Yerily there is a cave of diamonds and an Aladdin's lamp. Knowledge finds the path to the cave and treasure-house, and wisdom holds the key. Therefore, with all thy getting get wisdom, and with all thy having have knowledge. In this era of universal comfort and con- venience, of arts and sciences and liberties, when all the highways that lead to happiness are open unto all feet, we must not forget that civilization is a storehouse, filled with treasure, accumulated by scholars — scholars, sometimes literary, but also scholars prac- tical, working in wood or stone, or steel. Ill The Fortune of the RepubHc Great are those words religion, culture, art, beauty, but each word stands for a place where a scholar achieved some form of excellence. The old poets would have us think that all the good things of life are the gifts of the gods. Thus, Prometheus gave fire, Yulcan the sword, Apollo eloquence and music. J^evertheless, the gods gave nothing, and man achieved everything— under his heav- enly Father's guidance and blessing. Thus a great tool means that the inventor has found out the last fact in the case. Thou- sands of years ago a savage stood in the forest, looking at the soil. Growing wise towards the tree, he cut a forked stick ; growing wise towards the bullock, he asked the ox to pull his rude plow. Grown wise towards the wild rice, he sowed his first crop of wheat and filled a granary, and now, all these grains and fruits and steel plows and steam-threshers represent new achievements of wisdom and knowledge. The time was when the forest child stood beside a river, to whose swift current he was not equal. Grown wise towards the tree, the savage bound many logs together and made a raft. Grown wise towards fire, he burned out the hollow log, and achieved 112 The Schools of the Republic the swift canoe. Grown wise towards the wind, the breezes filled all his sails. Adding other forms of wisdom, at last he achieved an ocean steamer, with commerce for every clime. It is wisdom, therefore, that measures man's progress. Palissy looks at a lump of mud, and wisdom turns it into a china plate. That early musician looked at the sea-shell, and fastening a few strings across the mouth he made it a harp. Yester- day, a man took a tin vessel filled with elec- tric fluid (as it were) and climbing into a motor car, made the hidden energy carry him twenty miles into the country and back again. What foods knowledge hath found out ! What soft raiment it hath woven ! What temples and architecture it hath con- structed ! What mountains of knowledge hath it not levelled ! What seas hath it not crossed ! Indeed, man seems rapidly ap- proaching the era when every hidden force in land or sea or sky will perfectly obey his will; when the lightnings on Pike's Peak will drive trains to the east and hurl cars to the west ; when a little electricity, whose vibration began on the Yalu, which in the early days of the Russo-Japanese "3 The Fortune of the Republic war was crossed thirty times by the minds of correspondents, and then was crossed by an army, will at this end report itself in a picture of the river, and the army going down into the water. For God hath placed all things in His universe under "man's very feet," not to mention man's reason. For all the fruits upon which society feeds have been ripened upon the boughs of the tree of knowledge, planted by parents and nurtured by teachers. The school has another claim, in that edu- cation is the first factor in human progress. What the astronomer sees depends upon his lenses. If the lens is small, he sees a few stars ; if the lens is powerful, the flakes of light break up into vast cosmic systems. Culture is not simply a familiarity with the best that has been done and thought and said. It is the power, also, to perfectly en- joy and use all the forces of land, or sea, or sky. It is said that man has five senses ; what we ought to say is that man may have ^ve senses. Some have eyes, but in all the wondrous beauty of a June day see nothing ; some have ears, but separate no sounds in the vocal and melodious June morn. We are told that sleep is the sister of Death, but 114 The Schools of the Republic Death has another relative — named Igno- rance. Education is twin brother to life- The ignorant man enters the earthly scene and calls it a wilderness. Then comes the scholar. He beholds the mountain, and it becomes an altar. The smoking clouds turn to rising prayers : where had been winds, is now the going of God in the tree-tops, and the birds become choirs. Each fluted blade of grass tells the story of God's loving care. Each tiny bird that cannot fall without his Father's notice reminds him that the soul is dear unto God. The whole scene to him is rich and full of poetry. What had been a wilder- ness to a serf becomes a glorious landscape, covered with the emblazonry of God. Out of such considerations the commencement season assumes new importance. Education becomes a broad word, in which the college has only a partial place. Indeed, college men are pioneers, blazing the pathway and making ready for the great host that crowds hard after. God has so constituted the world that life itself with work and love and death, are teachers. Instruction is one part, but awakening and inspiration is the other part. The intellect is a loom that weaves the rich 115 The Fortune of the Republic cloth of poetry and philosophy ; but the mind is not simply a loom that weaves ; it is also an engine that runs. The great emotions and the inspirations, therefore, have a large place in education. That is why Kobert Burns, who never entered a college, is a scholar, just as truly as Wordsworth. That is why the rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln, surpasses Edward Everett, the polished classic student. When any human being possesses a soul whose windows are open on every side, so that all truth, all beauty, all goodness, come rushing in to enrich the house of man's soul, that man is educated, whether he has been trained by college or is self-trained. One supreme claim the public schools have upon us all. Their aim is to secure in- dividual excellence, and to promote self- sufficing power in each youth and maiden. It is true that enemies of the schools affirm that the common school is unfriendly to greatness. It is said that our people are being reduced to a dead level ; that all are being ground through the same mill ; that nature works towards difference and variety ; that the common school works towards sameness. It is said that great men are now ii6 The Schools of the Republic disappearing from our country, in that all men are as much alike as eighty million peas, picked from as many pods. But nothing is risked when we affirm that there are more great individuals than ever before. Absolute greatness has wonderfully in- creased; comparative greatness may have diminished. When there are only one or two men of a generation who have leisure to think, the great man stands out. Pliny was all but worshipped for his genius ; yet Pliny the naturalist tells us that a chameleon attracts birds and that if you burn a chame- leon on red hot coals it attracts thunder- storms. Now, it is very easy to be a genius when everybody else is a fool. Much of what is called the era of great men is based upon the paucity of wisdom among the masses, among whom a comparatively strong man stands forth a colossal figure. In a desert, where there are many blades of grass under the shadow of a rock, the solitary palm tree looms up very large. But that palm tree would look very small planted in a forest of northern pines, three thousand miles wide. Because the schools are making all the people great, the occa- sional great man is seemingly passing. But, 117 The Fortune of the Republic strictly speaking, our schools were never so strong, our teachers never so wise, our chil- dren never making so rapid progress, our institutions never so useful. Our earth is a field in which to grow men. Manhood and womanhood are its richest flowers and fruits. These seasons that come and go are not for the filling of granaries alone, but for the enrichment of souls. Who, therefore, shall properly recognize the nation's debt to its teachers? These are the true builders of the state. No words can over-praise them. Multitudes of these men and women are uncanonized saints. Here on earth their place seems small, but God's angels have a niche for them in heaven. The city makes much of the in- fluence of the great banker and manufac- turer, but what if the teacher, who educates two generations of business men, should say : " I trained this jurist, his laws are mine ; this author, mine his pages ; this artist, mine is the song, the canvas." Be- cause truth never dies, these educators are immortal. The scientists tell us that a milligram of musk lasts through radiation for seven thousand years, and a milligram of radium eleven times as long. But is not ii8 The Schools of the Republic truth more lasting than perfume or matter ? Truth never dies, its errand never fails, its end is always victory. Here the teachers may be obscure ; there they shine as the brightness of the firmament. They are our Theban band, protecting our liberties. Our educators are our leaders, guiding the pil- grim host out of the wilderness into the Promised Land. 119 Individual Excellence, the Secret of National Progress The genius of the Eepublic is individual excellence. The aim of our institutions is self-sufficing manhood. Every youth is to bear his own burden, practice self-reliance, independence and courage. Every worker is to eat his own bread in the sweat of his own brow. Let the scholar distill his wise thoughts in the alembic of his own brain; let the martyr fill the cup of sacrifice with the crimson of his own broken heart. There is no easy road to greatness. There is a royal road to character and self-suffic- ing manhood; Make the most possible of yourself ! Would you have a great nation ? Let each individual make himself wise, strong and self-sufficing. Would you have a weak state ? Let the people cling to the garments of their legislators as little children cling to the skirts of their mothers — for giants you will soon have feeblings. 120 Individual Excellence The test of every institution is, Does it pro- mote the greatness of the individual ? Who is the Christian ? An individual who has carried his thought and life up to the like- ness of Christ and become one of the sons of God for greatness. What is the church ? A group of these great individuals, unique in their personal excellence. What is the secret of strength ? Let every man bear his own burden, and by exercise gather strength to bear the burden of others. Would any youth become an original poet, let him stay at home with his own soul and sail the seas with God alone. Would any man be universally beloved, let him bear his own burdens, consume his own smoke, and thus will he gather strength and bear the burdens of others. Of course this insistence upon individual excellence rebukes our independent genera- tion, falling on us like whips on naked shoulders. Our soft and luxurious age wishes to escape personal responsibility. It traces all troubles back to institutions on the outside, instead of to individuals on the inside. Is the youth a truant, hating his books ? Blame the teacher and the school- administration,— everybody excepting the 121 The Fortune of the Republic youth himself, who will not feed his love of learning. Is a man a drunkard, a tramp, a vagabond ? Blame competition, corpora- tions, anybody excepting the individual who loves idleness and hates work. Are there multitudes to-day in concert rooms, in dance halls, at their sports, instead of in churches? Blame the Church — some be- cause the sermons are too long or too deep or too shallow ; blame anybody excepting the individual who has no noble discontent and hunger for a higher life. Is one youth industrious, thrifty and economical, so that he begins to climb up the golden ladder of success, while another is fickle and change- able ? Blame the wage-system or the tariff, anything; only do not reform the in- dividual ! If the man himself is sick with some economic ill, instead of giving the remedy to the man, take the dose of medicine to our State capitols and give it to the legislators vicariously. In this time, when all men avoid personal responsibility and blame the laws instead of themselves, we must be grateful that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, else there would be small hope that our pilgrim band will ever come out of the wilderness into the promised 122 Individual Excellence land of wisdom and happiness. Meanwhile here is this Book that stands for individual excellence, saying : To every man his work ; every man shall give an account of himself • let every man bear his own burden. JSTow this theory of individual excellence draws deeply into life, and must vindicate Itself before the bar of reason. History is a stern judge. She tests every theory. She sends the unsound principles to the left and the sound ones to the right. What has his- tory to say about individual excellence as the spring of national greatness ? Civiliza- tion has always had its origin among little lands and little peoples. Little Palestine gives us religion; little Greece gives us poetry, eloquence and philosophy; little Italy gives us law and government ; little Switzerland gives us international postal system, international weights and measures, international law and the international Eed Cross movement ; little Holland makes her great contribution to modern democracy. But by way of preeminence each of these races stands for the principle of individual excellence. In the providence of God, the Jewish people were shut in by the deserts on the north, south and east and the sea on 12 The Fortune of the Republic the west. There they fashioned their own laws, grew their own social and domestic institutions, reared their own prophets, poets and judges ; there the Saviour of the world touched the earth at Bethlehem, and as waters sometimes pile up until at length they break through all obstructions and sweep out through all the land, so at last the flood divine burst its barriers, and this command was sounded forth : " Go ye into all the world and preach the evangel unto all nations." Little Greece, too, was shut in between the mountains and the sea, until she developed sweetness and light in her sons and daughters, just as the Swiss were shut in within the mountain- walls for cen- turies until they perfected their great mes- sage. And what shall we say of Scotland and England, save that they are isolated lands — people that remained apart until they developed great individual value ? Our own forefathers also were shut up and apart, while they developed their free institutions, until the day came when the New England spirit journeyed forth to shape the Western Keserve, then to cover the Mississippi Yal- ley with the institutions that represent the higher education, until finally the New Eng- 124 Individual Excellence land spirit, moving into the South, came into collision with slavery and ground that iniquity to powder. Not one of the great nations of the world but represents a long interval of providential training, culture and personal development, until its great men march in squads and regiments. And what is true of the nations is true of all great institutions. There is no notable tool, no shop, no factory, no law, no art, no science, no constitution that does not rep- resent a great individual from whom it took its rise. If we journey backward to- wards the beginning of the steam-engine we come at last to a studious individual named "Watt. If we seek for the beginning of the theory of gravitation we go back to a scholarly individual named Newton. If we seek for the beginning of the drama and oratorio, we go back to a world-poet named Shakespeare, and a gifted musician named Handel. Every river that bears upon its bosom fleets of war and business must be traced back to a spring on the mountainside, and every great institution seems to flow down out of the soul of man. If we go back and seek out the beginning of this evangel, of peace on earth and good will towards men, 125 The Fortune of the Republic we come at last to a great Teacher upon His cross, with arms flung wide to lift the earth back to His Father's side, for religion itself, in its final, universal adaptation, sets forth from a great Saviour. And how shall we account for this universe, with its suns and stars and procession of the sea- sons, save as we trace it back to the mind of the great God, from whose right hand of omnipotence suns and stars fly forth like sparks under the stroke of the smith's ham- mer ? If history or experience tell us any- thing it is that everything in the career of nations and men fully justifies Paul's theory that individual excellence is the secret of national happiness and social progress. But this emphasis of personal work re- ceives its final form in Christ's estimate of the individual. JS'o other teacher exhibits such enthusiasm for man. Other moralists have talked man down. Christ talks him up. Others have despised man because of external circumstances — just as if bloody Herod had weight of manhood because he wore purple and lived in a silken palace ; just as if Paul had no personal worth be- cause he wore plain clothes while he was meditating his ode to love. Some moralists 126 Individual Excellence despise man because of bis poverty. Just as if wicked Dives was praise wortby because be bad gold in bis coffer, or as if Emerson and Wbittier bad no social standing because tbey did tbeir best work on an income of $600 per year. Horace looks witb contempt upon certain men because tbey v^^ere igno- rant, and praises otbers because tbey were wise; Eobert Burns at eigbteen was ig- norant, and Eobert Burns at tbirty-six was wise: but tbe essential genius of Eobert Burns existed during bis unscbooled days as truly as in tbose days wben be was tbe idol of Edinburgb drawing rooms. Cbrist ignored external conditions. He stripped away tbe rags from the beggar and tbe pur- ple from tbe prince, and laid His band upon tbe soul and wbispered, " Made in tbe image of God." It was impossible for Him to paint in colours too ricb tbe destinies of one in God's image, wbo carried two eternities in tbe beart. 'Nor was any man so bumble in bis talent or obscure in his task as to es- cape Christ's notice. "To every man his work," said Cbrist, giving to all tbe poets their thought that be who does tbe humblest thing well in God's sight makes the task easy and duty all divine. 127 The Fortune of the Republic Has any man been despoiled by passion until sin has swept through his life like a fire sweeping through a city , or as a cyclone sweeps through the land, leaving only ruined houses and gardens? Jesus Christ has an instant remedy, but it is the remedy for the individual—" Ye may be born again." The wild grape may have a new infusion of a large, sweet flow of sap that will trans- form its acid into the sweetness of the Con- cord ; the wild rose may be fed at the bot- tom and grafted at the top until it becomes a rose double, of every colour and every perfume ; the wild rice may be born again and become the Fife wheat. If in the vegetable world there may be such strange increment of life and power, who shall say that in the world of morals and mind man may not find a new power coming from beyond himself, and so recover man- hood and achieve weight of character ? In a word, Christ's philosophy of life, not less than Paul's, is the philosophy of individ- ual excellence — that is, the spring of social happiness and progress. Now for some reason, multitudes dis- believe in this emphasis of the individual as the golden mean. Out of two extremes 128 Individual Excellence stand two widely separated theories — the one the theory of egoism, the other the theory of socialism ; midway between lies this golden mean, named individual worth. To day society swings towards that Scylla of egoism that is the apotheosis of selfish- ness ; then it straightway turns and flings itself towards the Chary bdis of socialism at the other extreme. The philosophy of the selfish egoist is, every fellow for himself and the devil take the hindmost ; the philosophy of socialism is, society is everything and the individual will is nothing. Egoism makes too little of society ; socialism makes too little of the individual. Egoism is the Dead Sea into which all streams run ; at last, always getting and never giving, it finally becomes a putrid pool. At the other extreme stands socialism, making the individual a mere drop in a river, a mere leaf in a forest, a mere cog in a great labour-machine, a mere grain of sand lost on an infinite shore. But midway between the two extremes is this golden mean that includes all that is best in both theories. In nature there is a centripetal force that wants everything for itself, and is always in danger of pulling the 129 The Fortune of the Republic earth into the sun for the destruction of both ; there is the centrifugal force that leads the earth to fly away from the sun and come into immediate touch with the other planets, which means a collision in- stead of a union ; and there is the golden mean that moves in its own orbit, becomes a solid earth with pastures, and harvests, towns and cities. Now these words, *' Let every man bear his own burden," ask the man to love his fellows and his God, and by avoiding that false egoism, on the one hand, and that false socialism on the other, to become a great individual, gathering wisdom and goodness as he goes forward. Because we believe in the poor, because we love the weak, because my heart is knit in with my kind through sympathy, because I want to see the individual achieve happi- ness and personal culture and personal weight of manhood, I do not believe in either egoism on the one hand, or socialism on the other. " To every man his work ; let every man bear his own burden." These are nature's laws, and they cannot be abrogated, neither by the Commune in Paris nor by the city council in our own land. History tells of Kigault, who in 1871 was 130 Individual Excellence at the head of the Communists when, in an attempt to seize property and divide it equally, corpses were piled like cord wood in the streets of Paris. When a bishop was brought before Rigault, he said, " Who are you?" "A servant of God," answered the bishop, whose deeds of mercy had been familiar to Paris for nearly a century. "God? God? Where does He live?" said E-igault. " He lives everywhere," an- swered the old bishop. " Very well," said Eigault, turning to his officers, "put this old man in jail and send out and arrest one God, who lives everywhere." But, so long as the infinite God lives, neither the egoism that asks everything for itself nor the socialism that says nothing for the individual can succeed. What a tribute to individualism is this, that God should endow a soul with full power to say : " I think, I pray, I sing, I love, I repent, I die," and who makes all His laws bow down before the individual, as the sheaves of his brethren bowed before the sheaf of Joseph. There is but one great thing in our world — man ; and there is but one great thing in man — his individual will. In this plea for individual excellence, we 131 The Fortune of the Republic have the key of all problems, the solution of all vexed questions, the clew of every maze. Individual worth will give us, for example, the secret of an increasing wage. We all want to double the earnings of the people. How shall we do this ? By laws shortening the hours, and limiting the out- put ? By legislative enactments ? No : by undertaking as individuals to double the quality and quantity of our work. Over in Kome is a block of stone. It was carved by the hand of an old Greek. When Michael Angelo was overtaken with blind- ness, he comforted himself by going daily to the room where was the Torso. There the grand old man would put his hands upon the marble, and feel the fine surface, while the solar light passed over his face. Lifting his eyes towards heaven, he would smile, even while his lips moved softly in prayer to the God of infinite beauty. But what is this stone ? The sculptured trunk of a man's body — wonderful in its anatomical perfection. The head is gone ; so are the arms and hands ; and it is without feet. You can buy as large a piece of marble from the quarries of Ferrera for one lira ; and yet Italy would not give up that 132 Individual Excellence piece of marble for a king's ransom. It seems that a great individual put bis tbougbt into tbe marble, and made it think for him. Personal excellence in the man whose hand held the chisel lent value to marble that was valueless. Wealth is not in the raw mate- rial named marble, nor in wood, nor in steel, but in the amount of soul that is put into the raw material. In London there is a bookshop called Quarritch's. There old, rare books, first editions, are sold. The other day a little piece of faded blue paper was put up for sale, — a tiny sheet ; you can buy twenty- four sheets like it for five cents. Yet that single sheet was sold at Quarritch's for over $2,700. Now, what was it that lent a value of $2,700 to the sheet of paper that cost a cent ? A great man put his soul upon the paper and gave it value. One day a field-daisy came to Kobert Burns and besought him to bless it with immortality of sweet song, and the plow- boy, who had been musing and dreaming and admiring, at length in an ecstasy of prayer fell upon his knees in the moist fur- row and baptized the wee, crimson-tipped blossom ; and now the little sheet of paper ^33 The Fortune of the Republic on which he wrote his thought has a great value because an individual put his great soul into that work. Now and then man arises to say that la- bour creates all wealth ; that all the prop- erty in American society was created by labour ; that capital has wrested away la- bour's all, and that strong men and corpo- rations have despoiled labour of her own. In one of the new books on political econ- omy one reads these words : " Every dollar of the ten billions of the product of this country last year was created by labour, and four dollars out of every five that labour created was stolen from it." Now, test the statement. Years ago the men in the gas-plant of New York City from coal extracted the vapour for light ; the residuum was tar — of no known value, and they carried it out to the Jersey City flats and threw it away as waste. One day a poor young man, looking eagerly for work and position, chanced to see the teamsters carting away this tar. He lingered for weeks about this black flood. At last he worked out a plan of using the waste tar in conjunction with pebbles for roofing. He also found there a large number of idle men 134 Individual Excellence who had no work and no wage whatever. They were impotent to find work for them- selves. Organizing his idea, he led these men out to this waste material, showed them how to dig it up, transform it into roofing, gave these labourers, who had nothing to do, work, out of the waste, making a wage for them, while he himself made a fortune. Now, take away that man's intelligence. You have the tar on the Jersey flats ; you have the idle workmen with no wage what- ever. Who created the industry ? That thinking man ! Who gave work to idleness ? That inventor ! Who gave them plenty in- stead of starvation ? The employer ! And what is his reward ? This — that he is now told his fortune represents theft; that his workmen created all his property, as well as theirs ; that he is a vampire, a parasite, who wrested his savings from the men who produced it. Is this fair ? Is it honest ? Is this the reward we give to our inven- tors and benefactors, whose organizing ability represents the very life of the great nation ? Over in Eussia, to recall Mallock's history, a hundred men were one day at work. They were digging a cellar and laying walls 135 The Fortune of the RepubUc of stone. At last the structure was com- pleted. One day the Czar drove along. Suddenly the cellar exploded and a gen- eral was killed. Now, what the hundred workmen built was a cellar, for they knew nothing of what was going on. What the superintendent, guiding the work, built was a mine filled with explosives for slaying a Czar. It seems then that work derives all its effectiveness from the organizer. But the work of a great German musician furnishes us with a better illustration. Here are a hundred men out on the green. They are shouting, laughing, pouring forth the exuberance of animal spirit ; but the sound has no continuity of tone — no melody — no harmony ; we call it noise. Then, at a given signal, they leave the park and pass into the auditorium. All stand expectant ; now a man lifts his baton and suddenly one golden flood of music leaps forth immortal. Where was sound before, now there is a symphony. What changed the bellowing of a hundred people into the glory of the "Hallelujah Chorus " ? The genius of a single presiding intellect. Say what you will, God raises up one great lawgiver or statesman in a century and 136 Individual Excellence lifts all others to his level during the next century. He raises up a great poet, a great inventor, a great merchant, a great railway- builder, and these men are our benefactors. Take them away, and we should be helpless for guidance. It is cruelly unfair and un- righteous to pour out upon them all manner of scorn. And yet of late the very skies seem to have rained lies and slanders upon some of the noblest merchants and manufac- turers that this country has ever produced ; leaders who have planned enterprises that have furnished work to innumerable multi- tudes, who otherwise would have been im- potent for guidance. This principle is the more important in these days, when certain communistic papers are stirring up class hatred and class enmity and preparing us for a series of strikes, which may in a crit- ical moment create a panic that will in a year close factories and turn the plenty into poverty — abundance into a desert. In the long run there is no way to in- crease the wage, save as we increase the in- telligence. At will, we can double our wages, as a nation. The method is simple — double the quantity and quality of the work we do. We are investing the hand in 137 The Fortune of the Republic the spade, when we ought to invest the brain. A hand and a spade earn a dollar a day. A little intellect and a spade earn $1.50 a day. In Philadelphia a blacksmith in the locomotive works who has ability and puts his intellect into a roller and trip-ham- mer earns $20 a day. He rides to his work in his own carriage. Laws increase your wages? It will take twenty years to bring about your pet reform. It is too long to wait. Therefore, rely on yourself. Go early, stay late, give your nights to study, climb, make yourself indispensable, save the waste ; then there is nothing you cannot hope for. The difference between men is not inequality of laws, so much as it is in- equality of personal worth I We have here also the secret of progress for this state. Society is an assembly of in- dividuals. Unless all citizens are great, how can the state be great ? Stanley's pigmies were small, scarcely more than four feet. If 100,000,000 pigmies were placed in a row, would they become giants ? Here is one Shetland pony that can trot a mile in ten minutes. By putting a hundred Shetland ponies side by side, do you think they can compass the mile in two minutes ? Here is Individual Excellence a man who cannot distinguish between the Doxology and the tune of " America." Do you think a thousand men like him, stand- ing side by side, would make a great chorus ? To have a great state, you must assemble many great individuals. If the individual citizen is ignorant, if he is morally as illit- erate as the cattle in the stockyards, if he feels that he has no stake in this country, if he exclaims, as a man down in Pennsyl- vania did the other day, in broken English, when one was speaking to a crowd on the streets, about Washington and Lincoln : " Oh, damn Lincoln. What has he done for us f " then, no increase of these citizens to 100,000,000 will make America a great na- tion. Kecently the editor of a certain news- paper in a Massachusetts factory town, pub- lished a double-leaded editorial. He sent it out as a note of warning and alarm to the community. He went on to say that the rowdyism on the streets, the vulgarity, the profanity, the irreverence, the dare-devil spirit had become a matter of public con- cern ; that the civilization of the entire com- munity was threatened ; he made a plea for the best citizens to go on the streets in the 139 The Fortune of the Republic hours when the multitudes were pouring from the factories, and help create an at- mosphere of respectability, and ended by saying that while he was not a religious man, he saw no hope save in a revival of interest in ethics, in righteousness, the Ten Commandments and religion, until the peo- ple had reverence at least towards God, if not towards their government or their country. Eecently a scholar went for a day into a mining camp in Pennsylvania. Finding the superintendent of the schools, he asked about how many miners' families sent their children to school during September with- out shoes on their feet. It seemed that during a single month there came to the school board approximately a hundred miners, asking that their bo^^s under thir- teen years of age might go to work in the breakers. One miner had been before the board on "Wednesday night. He was half drunk at the time. The superintendent told the school board that the boy was nearly fourteen; that he could not read in the second reader ; that he could not write ; that the father had for two years earned $3 a day, and that he spent his after 140 Individual Excellence noons and evenings in the saloon, scarcely ever bringing any of the wage home. As the father had persistently broken the State law regarding compulsory education for boys under thirteen, the school board sent the father to jail on Thursday morning for thirty days and took the boy from the breakers and put him in school, in accord- ance with the laws of Pennsylvania. Care- ful investigation showed that nearly every one of the ninety-five miners who had asked that their children be taken out of school and put in the breakers were found to be habitual drunkards, who worked to feed their passions. Can we rear a great state out of such material ? Did Abraham Lincoln have to make his mark when he signed a document ? Was George Washing- ton at fourteen years of age unable to read in the second reader ? Can you mention any man who helped lay the foundations of this country who was not a scholar as well as a patriot and a Christian ? Was there ever a land whose institutions were better calculated to grow strong men than ours ? Misguided leaders and ignorant fol- lowers want " equality." But there are two ways of securing equality. One is to 141 The Fortune of the Republic run a mowing-machine along and cut off the heads of the stronger, taller men and re- duce them to the level of the lowest individ- ual. Another way is to lift up the lowest to the level of the strongest, wisest and greatest man in the community. The free school and press and church and God level men up. They lift the lowest to the side of the best. Does the organization help each and every workman to make the most possible of himself, or does it limit, dwarf and repress him ? In so far as it in- jures the individual and represses his man- hood it is doomed. We have here also the principle that will test every new theory of reform. The young men will find all manner of schemes and patent panaceas for saving the nation. There is one infallible test by which you may judge them. Do they promote indi- vidual excellence ? Is their tendency to strengthen individual liberty and individual self-reliance ? Do they make the citizen equal to his own emergency, or do they support him by laws and stays and props ? Yet even some of the great religious journals in this country have said that they believe Socialism is coming, that it is irre- 142 Individual Excellence sistible, and that it ought no longer to be resisted. They tell us that the property must either be in the hands of the plutocracy or the democracy, and that they favour the democracy. We all favour wealth in the hands of democracy ; but we must all confess that nothing cuts the nerve of enterprise like uncertainty as to the result of one's work. Once a man gets the idea that if he sows another will reap ; that if he plants a tree another will come in and wrest away from him the fruit, he straightway ceases to plant and sow. What makes the cotter's Saturday night so happy ? The cotter has been out in his little garden which he purchased and paid for with his hard earnings. He walks under the trees that he himself has planted. He looks at the little house that he has builded, and the garden that he has beautified, and a happy look steals over his face. When the time comes for him to go inside he turns to- wards his garden and stretches out his hand, as if bidding farewell to his friends. What lends sweetness to his toil ? The sense of ownership, — that it is his because he put his intellect and life into it. Wrest it away from him, and you have cut the hamstring of his labour. Ownership can change a 143 The Fortune of the Republic desert into a garden. Contrariwise, a loss of ownership can change a garden into a desert, and make a heap out of a factory and a waste out of a city. Communism has been tried again and again, and the world will not learn the lesson. Rome tried it. The Commune rose up in Eome and seized everything by spoliation. Then the Roman bad to choose between barbarism and com- munism on the one hand, and civilization and Csesar on the other. In that hour there was a Rubicon. Dr. Hitchcock once said : " Then Caesar crossed the Rubicon and saved civilization from the barbarism of communism." We have no Rubicon. We do not agree with those who say that communism is com- ing and is irresistible. But if it should come by spoliation of property, we shall have our Rubicon, and there will be a " man on horse- back'- to cross it. I do not believe it is com- ing; but in these days, when this philosophy fills all our journals, it is time for young men to read, and read wisely ; to think, and think deeply ; to examine both sides ; and the test of every new plank of individualism and Socialism is tbis : Does it strengthen the individual? Does it make each citizen 144 Individual Excellence stronger ? Does it tend to throw him on his own resources ? Does it make all citizens great ? Does it give an opportunity for each to make the most of himself ? Does it reward strength and wisdom and individual char- acter ? Does it give the youth full oppor- tunity to work out his own destiny ? Or does it make individual men sheep in a herd? Some identify Socialism with mu- nicipal ownership, and national control. With that definition most of us are at one. But Karl Marx, the master, means by So- cialism, the State ownership of all land, mines, tools, with every form of property whatsoever. If by Socialism is meant the latter, then the Kepublic will have none of it. For our institutions are founded on the rights of the individual and the duty of the individual to become strong and self-sacri- ficing. We return from our survey with the con- clusion that the secret of national greatness is the secret of personal culture and per- sonal happiness and character and individual worth. Are you ambitious for culture ? There is a word of Darwin's that oifers you guidance. He accounts for this progress of society by saying that the tendency of the 145 The Fortune of the Republic strongest individual is to survive and multi- ply. JSTow, in the life of personal culture, it is the tendency for the vision hour and the nobler aspirations to survive, to linger in the memory, and to multiply themselves until at last the soul leaves its low, ignoble methods and dwells all the time on the pure ideals with the nobler ambitions. Do you want influence ? Buy it ; depend on yourself. Do you ask for friends? He who would have friends must show himself friendly. Would you be numbered among those immortal dead who make us better by their presence ? Ask little of man, but give much ? Give good measure of service and love, and honour to your fellows, to your rivals, your city, your civilization, and your fellows will give back to you ; good measure shaken down and overflowing will they give into your bosom. Would you sow the world with unhap- piness and discontent, making two clouds where there was but one before ? Join the rank of the pessimists, who always of two evils choose both. Would you diffuse happiness on every side and carry the air of good cheer into every room ? Then let the sunshine in your own eyes 146 Individual Excellence travel upward and lend sunniness to every event outside of you. Would you be strong ? Bear your own burdens. Would you do im- mortal work? Eemember that, however humble your task, it was divinely appointed, and that you were guided for this special mission. Would you know the pathway that leads to perfect happiness ? That path- ways begins at Mount Sinai ; it passes through the valley and the shadow of Gethsemane ; it climbs the hill of Calvary, and it sweeps up to the foot of that cross where you may leave your burdens and your sins. Once Dives and Lazarus both get close to that sacred cross, and the Man whose name is above every name puts one hand on Dives and the other on Lazarus and both under- stand that they are brothers, hatred will be- come love, for strife there will be peace, for the trampled corn-field there will be the new paradise and a New Eden, and every man will dwell under his own vine in happiness and under his own fig tree in peace and prosperity. Self-love is wise also for nations. The very substance of the farewell address of Moses to Israel is Israel's duty to make the most out of itself, by what Ewald calls 147 The Fortune of the Republic "a wise, generous and patriotic love of one's country." A score of times, by way of emphasis and repetition, the sage charges Israel to make no treaties with other na- tions, warns them against entangling alli- ances with outside powers, quickens within them an intense love for their own institu- tions, and finally charges them to build a wall of isolation that shall be so high that they cannot look over the top of it, and see what goes on beyond. And what if any of these outsiders with their fleshly worship, their bestial offerings, their sacrifice of lit- tle children, their idolatry, and outrageous indulgences, what if any of these Philistines get in ? Make short work of them, in the way of expulsion ! is Moses' advice. And then, twelve full centuries come and go, while the Hebrew folk dwell apart, seeking to set forever the great ethical principles that made the Hebrew folk to differ from all other people whatsoever. Now by uni- versal consent Moses was right. History has fully justified his philosophy of nation- building. To-day the horticulturist breeds or inbreeds the flower or fruit until he sets forever the perfume of the one, and fixes the flavour of the other for all time. 148 Individual Excellence To-day some Burbank isolates his cactus, his new plum, or pear, and keeps at a distance every floating germ. Men are not blending two mediocre things to produce a third tasteless fruit. Scientists are isolat- ing the unique flower or fruit, intensifying it, feeding its roots to bring it to a larger stature, pruning the branches that a richer flow of juice may result. That was a shrewd man who said that if he were twenty years old, and had ten years to live, he would give the first nine years to preparation, that he might be ready to live the one last year. The wise lawyer and the wise jurist count all time given to preparation time saved. One way to rule the Philippines is by an army from without, and one way to rule Porto Rico is by a navy and by cannon. A much better way is to rule our- selves with such intelligence, justice and liberty that there will be not a single pauper, nor tramp, nor drunkard in the land ; not a single labouring man who wants work, but can get it, and not a single capitalist who holds back the wage of his workmen. In morals, what the world wants is one Saviour, one cross. In the propagation of Christi- 149 The Fortune of the Republic anity, what the world wants is one Paul, and then many disciples will become heroes for spreading the faith. In liberty, what the nations want is for this Kepublic to be- come ideal — ideal in the maintenance of equal rights for all ; just, in that no citizen suffers ; fair, in that no one man is handicapped, while another is helped unfairly. Could that ideal liberty but come about, every monarchy and absolute government in the world would dissolve, and all the people hasten to imitate the institutions of our country. For the best way for a father to make his sons scholars and patriots is first of all in his own youth to become a scholar and patriot him- self, and one of the ways of saving foreign countries to universal wisdom and peace is to save our own national soul. In his beauti- ful phrase John tells us that the purpose of God in history is to so exalt manhood that every one shall be called a " son of God," — that is, a king and prince — a hero, carrying a great weight of manhood and personal worth. i$o VI The Crime of Stirring up Class- Hatred By way of preeminence our age ought to be called the age of happiness and good for- tune for society. At last a time has come when shields are lifted for protection above all weakness and misfortune. In other ages poverty was the teacher and adversity goaded men along the upward path. Now has dawned an era when abundance has become a schoolmaster, and wealth is furnishing mankind with a thousand new incitements to progress. Such are the resources of our land, such the mental fertility and energy of our people, so prodigious are the new implements that have been invented, that wealth is beginning to flow in upon our people with the volume of a mighty river. This increase of property also has ministered chiefly to the happiness and prosperity of the poor. To-day the great arts and inventions are not working The Fortune of the Republic half so much for the rich and strong, as for the poor, the weak and the ignorant. After thousands of years of struggle, society has created the masterpieces of art, gathered the facts of science, achieved dramas and literatures, developed laws and liberties. But wealth was needed to cheapen these treasures, and place them in the hands of the humblest citizen. For centuries the wealthy could own a copy of the Bible or Shakespeare, but this year has witnessed the publication of one hundred volumes of the world's master- pieces at ten cents each. The rich man of other ages could purchase copies of the great Madonnas, but ours is an era when the newspaper multiplies copies and prints, so that without expense the love of the beautiful is nurtured in all the people. Going into a poor working man's home, some time ago, I found that a little girl of twelve had covered the walls of the small apartment with pictures of the great masterpieces cut from newspapers. Her collection included examples not only of Italian art, but also of the French, English and German. Had King Henry com- manded all the painters in his kingdom to 152 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred range through the wide world and return with what was represented in that humble home, it would have cost the great sovereign untold thousands. And because beauty re- fines, photography is multiplying pictures. Because music is sweet, the cottage organ is hastening to every fireside. Because wisdom is better than rubies, the press and the school- room are freely distributing the jewels of the mind. Because money lends leisure and opportunities of growth, the wages of the working-man have been quadrupled, and the hours of toil in a century have been halved. Vacations, once undreamed of, refresh the jaded heart. The employer, who was once a tyrant, has largely become a coworker and friend. The genius of Christianity is becom- ing the genius of material civilization. Jesus Christ will yet lay one hand upon the shoul- der of Dives and one upon the shoulder of Lazarus, and set them face to face. The time is coming when the rich and the poor shall struggle not to escape the heavier bur- den, but for the right of bearing it, and with clasped hands the classes will climb towards the heights where dwell prosperity and peace. Since, then, the increase of property means 153 The Fortune of the Repubhc the increase of happiness for all classes, men who love their country and their kind will view with apprehension and profound alarm the attempt to array the poor against the rich, the farmers against the bankers, the manufacturers against the professional men — the classes against the masses. Every age and nation has been cursed by the dema- gogue, who practices as a fine art the stir- ring up of class-hatred. Long centuries ago, Alcibiades, the most brilliant profligate in history, whose wisdom was gleaned from his excesses, even as the will-o'-the-wisp is the light of putrescence and decay, arrayed the poor of Athens against the rich, and told them society was divided into two classes — the shearers and the shorn. In that evil hour the workers on the farm dropped their tools, left the grain to fall in the fields and the fruit to rot upon the vines and trees. In the city the shops were still, but the streets were filled with the noise of brawls and fights. On the morning of the day when the poor in- trenched themselves in the buildings on one side of the street and the rich built barri- cades on the other, Athens was in the zenith of its splendour and the perfection of 154 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred its beauty and wealth. But when the long battle was over, the city was a mass of smoking ruins, the rich had become poor, the poor homeless and hungry. Conquered by the Romans, all were deported as slaves to foreign markets. Soon the silence of the desert fell upon the city from which civili- zation had a right to expect so much. But, if hatred of the masses towards the classes destroyed Athens, hatred of the rich towards the poor has been equally destruc- tive for Paris. A hundred years ago French literature was filled with scoffs, sneers, and contempt for the uneducated peasants. The leader of French infidelity, Voltaire, spoke of the poor as " a mixture of bear and monkey." His disciple referred to the masses as " half servants not yet fully ex- tricated from the clay." The attitude of princes was no less heartless. The historian tells us of a princess, who was late at an evening ball. It seemed that her maid, a beautiful girl named Constance, had set fire to her clothing and burned to death in the presence of her mistress. When the princess had apologized for the delay through the servant's accident and her hostess had said : "Poor Constance," both ladies passed for- 155 The Fortune of the Republic ward and, signalling for the music to begin, danced until daybreak. The poor resented the contempt of the rich. One day, when Foulon was asked by the people what they should eat if hard times continued, he answered : " Let the people eat grass." For answer, "the people hung him, stuck his head upon a pike and stuffed his mouth with grass amid the plaudits of a grass-eat- ing people." But close beside class-hatred stood anarchy, and soon the pavements of Paris were red with blood. When the poor were in power, they cut off the heads of the leaders among the rich ; when the rich gained the ascendency, they cut off the heads of the leading men among the poor ; before the strife was over the Seine was choked with corpses. France lost her prec- edency among the nations and her working- people were set back a quarter of a century. Since that era of class-hatred for France one hundred years have passed. In retrospect we see that France has lost practically all her colonies, and become a second-class power of forty millions while little England rules over four hundred millions. Now the class-hatred that has prevailed in countries where the hereditary classes rule, 156 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred has no excuse in this free land. In our country there is no position so high that the boy from the forge, the factory or the farm may not aspire to and achieve the honour and office. If the monarchies have an artificial nobility, the Republic recognizes a natural nobility. Artificial nobility of the old nations is an order fixed and separated from all those below, no matter what their intel- lectual excellence or moral culture. Stand- ing above the mass of men and looking down upon them, artificial aristocracy ex- claims, " Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed. We cannot pass over to you, nor can you come to us." But in the Republic there is a natural aristocracy that includes the best and the wisest, and any one may join the noble class who choose to become worthy and wise. These noblemen of nature rise above other men — as has been said, not for filching away their strength, but rather as clouds are above the earth, to open their bosoms and cast down fertilizing rains, that every living thing may rejoice. Amid institutions like ours, therefore, the attempt to stir up prejudice and hatred among the people is un-American and vicious. Class-hatred can rear no factories, 157 The Fortune of the Republic but it can ruin those already existing ; casts no new treasure into society's granary, but can hurl a firebrand into the granary al- ready filled. Mankind is out upon a march away from dirt unto divinity ; but hatred can stay the advancing chariots, and turn all V^ the hosts back towards barbarism. Among other perils, class-hatred tends to obscure the achievements and the vast con- tributions to civilization made by men who have dwelt close beside poverty. In all ages the poor have not only been in the majority, they have also furnished the leaders for society's forward movement. Indeed, the rich men of to-day are the children of those who yesterday were poor. Call the roll of the great industrial leaders in New York or Philadelphia and they are seen to be the sons of adversity. Men who stand to-day upon fortune's crowning slope began a half- century ago in the vale of obscurity, while often the children of those who once were rich are now toiling with the lowly. Four volumes have recently been pub- lished, called ^'The Men of Achievement Series." These books tell the story of the great inventors, merchants and statesmen of this century. The biographer tells us that 158 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred eighty-five per cent, of these leaders came from the farm and the small rural villages. The remaining fifteen per cent, did, indeed, come from the city, but they were almost without exception the children of compar- ative poverty. Society's experience in the past warrants the belief that the men who will be the commercial leaders of our city a generation hence are now threshing grain and husking corn or handling the saw and the plane in the shops of the city. How in- tense is modern civilization ! How rapidly does it consume the nerve and deplete the brain ! In the city men go down ere the life-course is half run. Those alone can hope for leadership who have spent their youth in the open air, hardening the mus- cles, compacting the nerve, developing great blood vessels and arteries, through which the blood can run in rich, free currents and be glorified in fine thinking. Looking backward, the history of great men seems to be the history of poverty. All giants went to school to adversity. We love Whittier the more because of his patient battle with poverty. Of Burns, and what poverty did for him, it has been said that this fascinating poet illustrates the 159 The Fortune of the Republic story that the nightingale sings its sweet- est song when its breast presses against the thorn. Of the great astronomers, Newton was the son of a poor widow, while Fergu- son's parents were so poor that the child was never sent to school, but while tending his sheep whittled a wooden clock and with a thread and a few beads marked the move- ment of the stars. Stephenson, the founder of the English railway system, was a herds- man at nine years, at eighteen did not know his letters, at twenty -four was still working in a colliery, where he devoted his days to toil, his nights to studying mechanics and making his own clothes. Michael Farraday was a scullion in the kitchen of Sir Humph- rey Davy, but he was faithful in the care of his master's chemicals, and from poverty passed to world-wide renown. " You need poverty alone to make you a great painter," said Turner to an English amateur, who was an artist. And not only has hard w^ork and self-reliance lent greatness to artists ; it has clothed orators like Clay and Webster with their wisdom and potency and lent gianthood to Lincoln and Grant. There is no price that wealthy parents might not afford to pay for the discovery of some in- i6o The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred strument that could do for their children what adversity and struggle did to produce greatness in the parents. Looking out upon the waves of the sea, that which is now crest in a moment will be trough, while the trough will be crest. Thus wealth moves forward with an undu- lating motion, and obscure families become renowned, while the renowned pass into obscurity. To-morrow the farmer's boy will make his way into the city and become the merchant or the banker. To-morrow the working-man's son, climbing upon the strong shoulders of his sturdy father, will look level into the eyes of men great in the pro- fessional classes. For it seems that three generations are requisite for producing a great man. First is the generation wherein physical toil develops and compacts a fine physique. Then comes a generation that through morality preserves this fine brain- fibre and makes it hereditary, setting vigour and health in the blood and brain. A third generation adds the intellectual element that makes greatness. To-day there are multitudes of farmers in the country and multitudes of toilers in the city, whose man- ner of life has been characterized by a i6i The Fortune of the Republic method of living so wholesome and moral as to render it practically certain that their children will take precedency among the foremost. Now every attempt to incite the industrious and thrifty poor to a hatred of the rich is to incite them against that very position to which their own sons aspire and will soon come. But how can hatred have any place between the brother who chooses the farm and the brother who chooses the bank or the store ? Ten poor generations of yesterday have blossomed in their great son and leader of to-day ; ten other gener- ations will blossom to-morrow into another great man. Why, then, should the columns of poor that will soon come to the throne be led to hate their own kind that have just arrived at power ? Society's interests are one. The steamers of our inland rivers, like the Mis- sissippi, are borne forward by side-wheels. The forward movement is made possible by the fact that the blades of the wheels that are now up will in a moment be down, while the blades one moment thrust against the waves will a moment later flash in the sunshine. Thus God hath ordained the rising and falling movement in society 162 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred by means of which civilization moves for- ward. But if the rich do well to remember so- ciety's indebtedness to the poor, the poor also do well to consider that much of the wealth of field and factory has been pro- duced — not by land, not by labour, not by capital applied to both, but by ability. Among many men the impression prevails that labour alone has produced the wealth of store and factory and warehouse ; that the large fortunes of the rich have been cre- ated by and belong to the poor ; that he who has amassed a large fortune has done so by holding back the wage that belongs to his workman, or by corruption and the purchase of special privileges. The logical result of this idea is that all the wealth in the hands of the rich in justice belongs to the poor who produced it ; is class-hatred and class- warfare. An age fruitful in foolish and false ideas has produced none more erro- neous than the idea that labour has pro- duced all wealth. Fortunately^ of late all scholars and thoughtful men have begun to call atten- tion to the fact that to the power of land and labour and capital must be added a 163 The Fortune of the Republic fourth factor called ability. In his " Work and Wages " Thorold Kogers tells us that in 1750 the average weight of a fatted bullock in England was 400 pounds. But Kobert Bakewell discovered a method of improving cattle and sheep by a system of crossing and selection, so that in fifty years the average weight of the fatted bullock went from 400 to 1,200 pounds. Labour had toiled for centuries, and the utmost it could do was to produce a small, thin bullock. But ability came in and enabled labour, with the same exertion, to add 800 extra pounds. A still more remarkable instance of the fact that it is ability that has increased the world's store of wealth, is seen in the enor- mous saving through the reaper. In 1830, farmers toiled sixteen hours a day with the scythe and sickle. But the newly invented reaper saved the average farmer the labour of six men through a period of ten days in each year. In 1860, the ability of that single inventor was saving the nation annually $55,000,000. In 1890 the annual saving in labour was $100,000,000, and the aggregate saving in wages since 1840 is estimated at $4,000,000,000. The ability of that in- ventor represents through natural law a 164 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred free gift of $50 each year to the average farmer. The steam engine offers an example not less stirring. Even after Watt had perfected his engine, Smeaton, the engineer, pointed out an obstacle that made the en- gine impracticable. Watt soon found he could not make cylinders of any large size that would make the piston steam-tight. When failure was certain, the indomitable inventor hoped to train young men to the task of making cylinders and nothing else, with the idea that at last the degree of ac- curacy would be developed by which the large cylinders would become possible. But, when training failed to produce the de- sired result, the ability of Henry Maudsley, with his slide-rest, did in a moment what the skill of no labourer could accomplish. Mal- lock says the ability of that man descended at once on a thousand workshops and sat on each of the labourers " like the fire of an industrial Pentecost, and increased the ef- ficiency of the toiler a thousandfold." Similarly, the ability of Arkwright, who perfected his loom in a secrecy as carefully guarded as ever patriot guarded himself against spies, placed that loom in the hands 165 The Fortune of the Republic of the labourer, set free ninety -five out of each hundred weavers and enabled one man in one year to weave cloth for clothing a thousand men for twelve months. Indeed, the last $200 of the average income of $600 represents not the product of land or labour, but the gifts of ability, through less than a score of inventions and discoveries. Recently a demagogue asserted that all property was the product of the working classes and should be wrested from capital. Upon what misconception is that statement based ? A great writer declares that of the great labour-saving inventions the people have received over ninety-nine per cent, of the income thereof, while the inventors whose ability created these devices have re- ceived from one one-thousandth of one per cent, to one-tenth of one per cent, of the gain. Now and then, indeed, men make fortunes by oppressing the poor, by extort- ing unjust prices, or through bribery gain special privileges. But these fortunes are the exceptions. The great majority of the fortunes of this country have been made, not through fraud or oppression, but through ability that has done far more for the poor man than for its possessors. i66 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred A recent work contains a study of a hun- dred millionaires in New York City. These are some of the foundations of wealth : Oil lamps, wall-paper, clothespins, hooks and eyes, buttons, spices, wire-thread for sewing shoes, hemlock tar, attar of roses, blacking, glue, cocoa, yeast, dyes, to which must be added some eighty articles that have made their manufacturers millionaires. These rich men discovered certain wastes that were going on in the factory and workshop, and the saving of the remnants that others had thrown away made them rich — and so- ciety far richer. That these rich men became rich by mak- ing poor men poor, is a falsehood so colossal as to seem almost Alpine in its vastness. All that they have was gained through sav- ing what had been previously thrown away, and where they made one dollar out of their invention society has received ninety-nine. Indeed, the great need of our day is not land, nor labour, nor capital — but ability. Scientists tell us that eighty-five per cent, of all the coal burned passes out of the chimney. Some day, some poor machinist's boy, after long toil with his blast-furnace, will teach us how to consume our smoke, 167 The Fortune of the Republic and so add $25 a year to the income of each average family. Let us hope that this young machinist will become rich through his discovery, and let us also express hope that demagogues will not reward the in- ventor with the words " plutocrat,'* " money baron," " robber," " oppressor of the poor ! " In the world of engineering, the next point to be gained is how to apply the power of heat to the engine without the intervention of steam. The machinist who masters that principle will quadruple the power of all our tools. His inventive ability would increase the average income from $600 to $650. Let us hope that this inventor, too, having made a nation rich, will himself become rich also, and, also, have the good fortune to escape the scoffs and epithets used against honour- able wealth as a reward for his social serv- ices. To-day the wastes in the field, the remnants in the factory and the shop, and the dirt under man's feet, represent untold wealth. But the young men of the next generation will save these wastes, and their future savings will amass large fortunes. The crying need of the age is for inventive ability. For making the most of the ability i68 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred given us, the people have founded the com- mon schools and made them rich and beauti- ful in their equipment. There the rich man's son and the poor man's son sit upon the same bench. They receive the same instruc- tion, that each may shoot up as high as his talent will permit. To-day no single fact offers more hope than the fact that the ability of poor boys, educated in our com- mon schools, is bringing them into promi- nence and usefulness. Anarchy and social- ism propose to run a mowing-machine over the top of society and cut off the tall men's heads, until all are equal. The common school levels men, not by lowering the rich, but by lifting the poor. All thinking men will concede that God has ordained property as a means for de- veloping society and educating mankind. Confessedly, the amassing of wealth means thrift, ingenuity, economy and perseverance for the individual, while at the same time it ministers great treasure to the home and the market-place. Although commerce is often accompanied by incidental evil, yet on the whole, trade is an evangelist. Savagery always means poverty. When barbarism starts towards intelligence and Christianity, 169 The Fortune of the Republic it starts towards wealth. When that Ute In- dian, whose moral ideas permitted him to burn the settlers' homes, and tomahawk women and children, was captured, his wealth included one gun, one red blanket, fourteen scalps, and two large pieces of ochre for colouring his cheeks. But as sav- ages rise in the scale of manhood they rise in the scale of industry and property. God has made wealth to be the almoner of bounty towards the pasture and meadow, but also towards the gallery and college, to- wards art and science, morals and religion itself. The individual may increase on re- finement in the face of bitter poverty — but nations, never! And here, in a land where climate and soil are stimulants, where the ungathered riches in the sea, where the unbroken treasures in the wilderness and forests, where the riches in rocks and mines excite glowing expectation, all classes, poor and rich alike, need to remember that neither the denial of riches nor signal success can give happiness, but that it is work alone that gives rest and contentment. Doing with one's might what one's hand finds to do is the secret of happiness. Nor is there 170 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred any other path that leads to peace. For ambition there is no rest ; for passion, there is no fruition of joy ; precedency often ripens no fruit save envy and bitter sorrow, and position brings such jealousy that the rising cloud of life is filled with flames of burning pain. God hath ordained that work alone brings peace. Ask the labourer at the forge or factory, ask him who shapes his blocks of stone or molds his pillar of brass, or polishes his wood, or perfects his tool, and the workman will tell you that honest toil gives a sweet peace that wealth cannot increase nor poverty take away. For God hath ordained that the heart shall sing when the hand does honest and honour- able work. The demagogue's power to stir up class- hatred will be strikingly lessened when rich and poor alike remember that all classes are working-classes and stand, therefore, upon an equal level. Unfortunately, the dema- gogue always points the poor to the idle and thriftless rich, while the rich are pointed to the vicious and intemperate. Long ago Kuskin reminded men that there are idle poor and idle rich, industrious poor and in- dustrious rich. There are beggars as lazy 171 The Fortune of the Repubhc as if they had the income of Croesus ; and there are rich men whose work begins long before the tramp has wakened, and whose task will not end until all thriftless ones have been long asleep. There is a working- class strong and happy, both rich and poor. And there is an idle class weak and miser- able among rich and poor alike. Unhappily, the wise of the one class habitually con- template the foolish ones in the other. Were industrious rich men to scourge the idle and spendthrift rich, did the industri- ous and worthy poor scourge the vicious and lazy poor for their vices, the agitator would soon have no occupation and the voice of the demagogue would die away as the voice of the wolf dies away in the dis- tant forest. In reality, the great majority of the poor are industrious and thrifty. They love country, they love liberty, the}'' love the home, they long to better the condition of their children. They are to-day the bul- warks of all that is best in our civilization. They stand for virtue and patriotism and religion. Civilization itself is a monument. But on the other hand the rich have equally been benefactors. The names of John 173 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred Howard, the merchant ; of Peabody, the banker; of Cooper and Shaftesbury and Ruskin, glow like stars in the firmament of heaven. To-day the poor have no better friends than men who were trained in poverty's school how to become rich. Forecasting the future of the Republic, we must hope much from the new citizenship, made possible by a leisure class. Centuries ago the wealthy class of England recognized riches as an opportunity and a form of obli- gation. But, unfortunately, in this new land, where one generation has toiled unduly, the next generation rebounds from every form of work. Wealth comes to mean a weary attempt to kill time, while other men desire to save the precious hours ; means for many an August of indolence at the sea- shore ; means a September of never-ending games and sports for recovering from the awful fatigue of two sea-baths and three parties in one day ; means an October when the young sport recuperates his exhausted nerves by wringing the necks of a hundred beautiful birds and bathing his hands in the hot blood of a young fawn just killed, sup- plemented by two cock-tails after breakfast ; means for young women, too often, weary 173 The Fortune of the Republic assemblies, protracted through the night; costly and wearisome music, costly and burdensome dress, an expensive and cha- grined struggle for precedency in display, an endless vexing of the poor head over the tremendous problem whether the feathers in the hat should be pointed forward or back- ward in the autumn — it being, as has been said, entirely improper for the widows of India to burn themselves at their husbands' funerals, but entirely proper for an English or an American woman to torment her hus- band into his grave through the ceaseless struggle to buy each spring half a donkey's load of finery. But fortunately the example of some rich young men and the example of some rich women encourages the belief that the time draws near when our young men of leisure will imitate the example of Gladstone and Peabody and Shaftesbury and give them- selves to the problem of government in our city ; to the cleansing of the streets, to the housing of the poor, to the problems of the orphan and the newsboy and the sewing- girl, until the wrongs of poverty are righted and our civic life becomes beauti- ful and without blot or shame. Then will 174 The Crime of Stirring up Class-Hatred wealth become a blessing and not a blight. In foreign lands, rich in soil and climate, there are rivers which overflow their banks, polluting the fields, making the soil plague, and the wind, death. The river that should flow in rich irrigating streams from the meadow becomes famine for the land and pestilence for the cloud. And God hath ordained that wealth should flow through the land as a veritable river of water of life, but man's selfishness has made that river little better than the bitter waters of Marah. To-day multitudes are not so much in the position in which Providence placed them as in the ditch to which society has kicked them. Yet riches are instruments that may lift these unfortunates out of the slough. The genius of property is like the genius of poetry. It is a trust, held in the interests of weakness and poverty. The giant has strength given him, not for crushing weak- ness, but for supporting and guiding it. Wealth may say to the widow's son : " You have eloquence ; speak for me." May say to the workman's child : " You have genius ; carve or paint for me." May say to the young reformer : " Speak for me ; plead for 175 The Fortune of the Republic me ; pray for me." "Wealth may build booths for the weary pilgrim ; dig well-springs for thirsty lips ; plant vineyards for hungry wayfarers ; turn deserts into gardens and sloughs into fruitful fields ; carry light to those in darkness ; carry life to those in death. Then shall the rich and the poor alike find that the ways of sympathy are the ways of pleasantness, that the paths of service are paths of peace. 176 VII National Decay and Growth Among the great teachers of patriotism we must make a large place for Jesus Christ. He sanctioned patriotism by His life, com- mended it in His teachings, and illustrated it in one of the supreme hours of His life. His lament over Jerusalem tells us that He felt the downfall of His country — as keenly as He felt the spear-point and the nails. Insisting that every citizen and patriot should love his country. He also showed what are the signs of national decay, and what are the signs and the causes of national growth. His argument is very simple. Nature forecasts coming events, in the red sky that proclaims the angry storm, in the clear sunset that foreruns fair weather. Nature piles the clouds up on the horizon, as a warning for the sailor, putting out to sea, for the traveller, setting forth upon his journey, and, so clear are the signs that a foolish man, though he run, may read the news of the coming storm. 177 The Fortune of the Republic Then Nature broadens her argument, and takes on a wider meaning. In the orchard the peach or plum takes on a premature flush, telling of a worm boring at the heart. In the forest, in July, there is a flaming branch in the maple tree, whose sickly red betrays the sad injury that has overtaken that bough. In the household there is a youth or girl with two fire-spots burning on the cheek, and the brow of marble, and, beholding, the parents and physician go softly, for they know the time is short. But if Nature warns men in her realms, for nations also there are signs of peril, and clouds that precede storms. That His dis- ciples might better understand the signs of the times, Jesus led them to the gate of the city, where the multitudes thronged in and out. He pointed to workmen whose indus- tries had been ruined by bad government, unfair taxation, until the hand dropped the tool, and the heart was listless. He pointed to the beggar-class, gaunt, emaciated, starv- ing, standing with their back to the wall, and waiting eagerly for some signal of riot and anarchy. He pointed to the Koman soldiers, welcoming the news of an insurrec- tion in some province, going out empty- 178 National Decay and Growth handed, to return laden with spoil. What with misgovernment, war, foreign troops quartered on the people, class-distinctions ; what with the gluttony and drunkenness of the rich and the poverty and ignorance of the poor, the signs of the times were big with peril ! The people had broken the laws of health ; therefore, pestilence and disease would camp in their homes. The leaders had broken the laws of work; therefore, famine would stalk through the streets and death reap a rich harvest. The ecclesiastics were hypocrites, and had broken the laws of righteousness, and casting away faith, would bring anarchy to ravage the land. These were to be God's judgments — pestilence, famine, riot, war. Yet these are not arbi- trary penalties, sent by God, but natural penalties, dragged in by the people them- selves. It is the foul air of the city that breeds the storm, and the people of Jeru- salem had bred their own penalties, nour- ished their own judgments and invited destruction. And so to every Pharisee, priest and soldier, Jesus sends forth the words. Ye hypocrites ! who are not wise to read the signs of the coming storm. These words of Christ, inciting us to a 179 The Fortune of the RepubHc study of the signs of national decay or pros- perity, derive new meaning from the evident fact that commercial prosperity and national decay are often coexistent. In the hour of supremacy, for Jerusalem and Palestine, the nation was big with destruction. Indeed the land had never been more prosperous in trade, the era of David and Solomon alone perhaps excepted. So far as gold and silver, caravans and goods, herds and flocks were concerned, all was well. Gone the era of brigandage, and insecurity of property ! At this time the merchant and the farmer were safe. The whole land was a hive of industry. The Plain of Esdraelon was literally crowded with factories and shops, and the villages on the shores of Galilee pressed the one upon another. To the east of the Jordan were six hundred walled vil- lages. In Tyre, Herod built theatres and public baths. In Damascus he erected a system of aqueducts that still endure. In Capernaum and Samaria Herod built gym- nasia, vast colonnades and public temples. In Caesarea, in the interests of the fine com- merce that had been developed on the Lake of Galilee, he built a breakwater two hun- dred feet broad, long piers and quays, and i8o National Decay and Growth on the sides of the city marble houses, theatres and an amusement-garden for the merchants and traders. His own palace in Jerusalem was a marvel of Doric architec- ture, that has been likened by travellers to the emperor's palace in Rome. But the vast wealth and commercial pros- perity of the times is best indicated by the temple that Herod built in Jerusalem. Think of the forest of Corinthian columns, each five feet in diameter and twenty-seven feet high ; of the great entrance-doors of brass, overlaid with flowers and leaves of hammered gold, richly set with gems. Among the treasures of this temple that Titus carried away to Rome for his triumphal procession, was the table of shew-bread, made of solid gold. Outwardly the nation had never been so prosperous. But, what if " wealth accumulates and men decay " ? What if the merchant has bought the wages of silver in exchange for the souls of men ? What if rich purples are woven, but stained red with the blood of women's fingers ? Speaking to the soldiers, who had spoiled provinces of their treasures, to lying merchants, to " that fox, Herod," to the wicked Pharisees, with their "money- i8i The Fortune of the Republic trust " for changing gold in the temple, and their " sheep-trust " in that the priest would offer no lamb that was not purchased from the trust at double price, Christ said, " Oh, ye hypocrites, can ye not discern the signs of the times ? " This wealth of things was only show-wealth. It was " fool's gold," not solid metal ; lying paint on the outside of a sickly cheek ; mere veneer, not a solid substance. What makes a rich nation ? The number of men the nation has, who are noble, wise, pure, self-sufficing. Wealth is life, and its exuberant exhibit through ideas. The physical basis of life is things, but life is in the great thoughts a generation thinks. It is in its books and arts, its liberties, the rich- ness of personal manhood and joyous womanhood ; in the hopes and happiness of its children, playing in the streets and un- disturbed by vice and crime. What doth it profit a nation if it gain the whole world of tools and ships and goods, if the men in the factories are broken in spirit, if work- men go sullen to their tasks, if their wives commit suicide ? What if our billions may be prefigured by the poet's image? — the rich garment that a wrecker unwraps from 182 National Decay and Growth the body of a captain lured upon the rocks, the gold taken by a brigand from a noble soldier, slain through ambush, the pieces of silver gained by betraying one's master and Lord. There is a wealth that is poverty. "Woe unto the nation that loads itself down with thick clay, supposing it to be wealth. The greatness of an individual and nation is threatened when the intellect is ahead of the conscience, and culture is ranked above morality. History teaches that mental power and moral principle must journey for- ward side by side. Unfortunately, our gen- eration seems to know the right, but to be losing the power of doing it. Among cer- tain classes moral illiteracy prevails. The school has lent the intellect wings, but the conscience crawls. The reason moves swiftly along the highway with the speed of a palace-car ; the virtues follow slowly, as if moving in an ox-cart. Unfortunately, a generation may be wise towards books and illiterate towards morals. Solomon was at once the " wisest" and the " meanest" of men. Daniel speaks of the image that was part gold and part mud — which is a portrait of the Hebrew king who had read and written The Fortune of the Repubhc many books, but who was profligate, drunken and personally indecent and vicious. At the very moment that the wise king's fore- head was crowned with the flowers of wis- dom his feet were in the mire of passion. Witness also Lord Bacon's knowledge of science and his sale of judicial decisions and his acceptance of bribes ! Witness Goethe's culture and Goethe's infidelity to the women he loved ! By common consent ours is an educated era ; those instruments for the dif- fusion of knowledge and wisdom, the com- mon schools, the press and the book, were never so strong nor so numerous. Would that our generation could do all that it knows and obey every principle it has dis- covered ! The rulers of this nation would doubtless be glad to exchange a part of the knowledge possessed by the reason to re- ceive in return an increment of obedience for the mind and heart. Alfred Kussell Wallace raises the inquiry about other planets and their inhabitants. Does that distant planet possess a city like ours ? If so, do the inhabitants of that city know how to turn corn into whisky, poppy leaves into opium, bark into cocaine ? Do seven hundred of the people 184 National Decay and Growth of one city commit suicide each year ? Are there fifteen thousand murderers let loose to wander like mad dogs among the people ? Do they have trusts there, whose leaders bribe rebates and special rates from rail- roads ? Do the leaders of these trusts, by breaking the laws of that republic, train young men in methods that will bring them up in the penitentiary ? Have they drug- gists in their cities, one of whom sells $300 worth of morphine in a single month, as does a druggist in yonder city ? Are there scientists there who know how to grind charcoal and mix it with saltpetre with such skill that by adding a match they can slay a thousand peasants who follow one military leader, but know not at all what they are fighting about, and who have no idea why they should kill other people or themselves stand up in rows and be killed ? Yet all these are common events in our world. They represent forms of knowledge and intellectual culture, but all these knowl- edges might well be exchanged for a small quantity of good morals. Ours is a world where the new Adam knows how to sharpen daggers and construct deadly weapons, but when this rnodern Adam throws himself ?8S The Fortune of the Republic upon the grass in the garden of Eden he finds the grass soaked with his brother's blood. Little wonder that, sleeping, he dreams bad dreams. It is a sign of national decline for the people to misunderstand the message of the prophet and the poet. In that hour when Christ pointed out the signs of the times, the people knew Him not. He was their one man of vision. He was the greatest thing their nation had ever had. The gift of the prophet and the poet is like God's gift of the sun to a dead world in winter. And yet, Christ's voice, the words He spake, the deeds He did, meant more to the mer- chants and rulers of His city and nation than all things else beside. The prophet is God's man, who sees clearly the signs of the times, who feels them deeply, burning with a divine rage against falsehood and injustice, and who lives holily, rising above all the beset- ment of His time. The prophet and the poet are a torch, burning at midnight, to bring the wandering nation back into the path. The man of God goes into the desert to brood and pray, but he comes back to save the city. Jesus was the one person in all that multitude who saw the impending i86 National Decay and Growth destruction and the black cloud hanging above the doomed streets, and the eagle and vulture drawing near because they saw the carcass, for their hunger. Jesus was the one teacher who pointed out the cure for all the ills of the time. But men blinded their eyes, and would not read God's writing ; they stopped their ears, and would not hear this world-melody, — this alluring music from heaven for guiding the pilgrim host in their upward march. What a revelation all this, of the decay of the individual ! What an awful injury had overwhelmed the people, who could not understand their greatest man! History tells us that every mistake of any nation has come through a failure to follow the warning of the prophet and seer whom God sends. Consider Carlyle's warning to England. In substance, he said to the merchants of Manchester ; " The nexus between you em- ployers and you people is a cash nexus. Be- tween you as manufacturer and your work- man, there is a great gulf fixed ; you have emphasized class-distinctions until your working people have become but the mere accidents of a machine. Yet, despising them, when a generation has passed, what 187 The Fortune of the Republic through poor food, poor ventilation, bad air, you will destroy the source of your wealth." Then, fifty years pass by. The Boer War is on. The sons of the factory- people come in to enlist as soldiers. But what a tragedy is revealed ! The factory- boys pass before the recruiting officer, and are refused because of their thin blood, stunted bodies, spindling legs, weak eyes, deficient nerve-power ; only an occasional factory-youth measures up to the standard for a soldier. They go down like grass be- fore the scythe of these strong-handed Boers. Then Parliament appoints a commission of inquiry, to investigate the causes of the physical degeneracy of the factory-folk. Startled by these conditions, an author be- gins his investigation. Bead that tragic, heart-breaking book, " People of the Abyss." Think of what is involved in this, that in those wondrous isles of Britain, among the Scotch and English, who, two generations ago would have died rather than beg a crumb of bread, there are now 4,000,000 beggars, and persons receiving state-relief — a loaf of bread, clothes, or soup. Come to your own country. Whittier, the poet of freedom, Lowell, the poet of 188 National Decay and Growth service, Emerson, the sage — all warned the North and the South — the unearthly note was in their voice, the divine warning in their words. But the nation would not hear. Lowell makes his plea for the slave, having caught Christ's spirit, who bade the strong serve the weak. Read his " Vision of Sir Launfal." It is a prophet's warning to the Southern slave-holder and gentleman. The young prince leaves his palace, to search for the Holy Grail. Riding forth on his splendid charger, the youth, with jewelled finger, meets a beggar, and jauntily tosses him a coin. In pride he rides, and because of pride the years come and go. Still the Holy Grail eludes his sight. Wars, strife, battle, defeat, imprisonment crowd the sum- mers and the winters. At last he is old and bent and poor, and he returns to his native land, having never seen the blessed Grail. But in his absence enemies have arisen, they have ruined his palace, and death has taken away his loved ones, and, a poor man, he re- turns to scenes that know him not. And lo, again, a beggar asks an alms. But now — softened by suffering — Sir Launfal shares his crust, and takes the beggar's hand in his, and gives him brotherhood. And in 189 The Fortune of the Republic that hour the mask falls from the beggar's face and lo, it is Sir Launfal's Master, and on the Master's head there falls a beam of light, and down the golden bridge of light the crimson cup doth slide, and the Vision Splendid burns, and in an ecstasy of tears and prayers and joy. Sir Launfal bows his head to the ground and confesses his pride and folly and his sin. And this was Lowell's warning, the poet's interpretation of the signs of the times ; that poet who looked at the seamstress through poverty spoiled, at the workman, degraded for lack of wage withheld, at the street waif, and heard His Master say, " These are the images you have made of me." And when a few years had passed by, lo, the proud South is stripped, and in the thrifty North thousands of homes are in mourning, desolated by war. But yet, we have not learned the lesson ; we have not seen the Holy Grail. What is to be the end of this era of national need ? Our merchants may be peeled of their pos- sessions, our magnates may find their wealth taking wings, pestilence may stalk through our avenues, because our leaders are blind leaders of the blind, mere hypocrites, who discern the clouds of the sky, but under- 190 National Decay and Growth stand not the signs of the times. It is warning the nation wants to-day ; and leader- ship. O for the poet with a note of pierc- ing, heavenly sweetness ! O for an hour of some Wordsworth, with his Ode to Duty, that strong law-giver that " with her stern- ness doth wear the godhead's most benig- nant grace." O for another Lowell, bap- tized and set apart to plead the cause of the slave, the outcast girl ! 0, for a return of the spirit of Carlyle and Euskin and Emer- son, with their stern words ; descending on our grossness, our luxury, our mammonism, the loose hold we have on our convictions, as an avalanche descends, falling like the flame of fire, like the whirlwind and the scourge, to destroy sham, lies, luxury, prof- ligacy, vulgarity ! Another sign of national degeneracy is the decline of the adventurous spirit in the nation's youth. Tell me what are the ideals, the occupations that appeal to young men in our great colleges, and I will tell you what the next generation will be. In the old Greek book, Xenophon says that when Cyrus fronted the regiment that was made up of young men, his cheek turned pale, and the old soldier trembled — the historian's 191 The Fortune of the Republic tribute to the adventurous spirit. It is a truism that the history of England for two hundred years is the history of the dreams and prayers of John Milton. Green says that England's statesmen have been trying to put into terms of law and liberty the visions of the great poet. Now, if you would understand what this means, open Milton's biography. A mere child of four- teen, his spirit burns like a martyr flame. The vision of God has possessed itself of the boy's soul. It has been said that talent is what a man has — genius is what has a man. Thus of the nation, a mediocre age has things and wealth ; a great generation is one that is possessed by ideals. And John Milton's distinguished soul dwelt apart from others because God sent the dream and vision that possessed it. He went through all the years at Cambridge, living in purity and prayer. He thrust every im- pure thought out of his mind, as a vestal virgin avoids the mud and mire. The very thought of profanity, of indecency, of glut- tony and drunkenness in his companions filled him with agony. At length Milton lived apart from them. Because he wanted to write an epic poem that the world would 192 National Decay and Growth not willingly let die, he lived an epic life. And then, he heard the sevenfold hallelujah chorus of God, his vision broadened, and he made his plea for the liberty of the printing press. What a mighty vision for England, that vision of England shaking herself like a lion, rising up against its enemy ! The greatest thing that has happened to England in three centuries — John Milton's visions and his prayers. And when God withdraws this adventurous spirit from our sons, then our church, our city, our nation, has passed into its decline. Henceforth it remains only to produce things and mark time ; but the na- tion's great work is ended. I do not know how you interpret a recent article in one of the magazines, saying that if once the educated men chose the profes- sions, now they choose everything but the professions. What does it mean that Presi- dent Eliot calls the ministry to-day the most adventurous career open to young men, and that few churches have a student looking for- ward to this work of man-building and man- saving ? What does it mean, that we have no single great poet in our land, and that Lowell has no successor ? What does it 193 The Fortune of the Republic mean, that once the Olympic games, Athens' great exhibit, was the exhibit of dramas, tragedies, and comedies, of orations and poems that we are still translating ? In the modern "World's Fair," is there a single day set apart for the presentation of a drama that twenty-five hundred years from now will be translated in the colleges of China ? This is saying nothing against the athletic spirit in the American college. The athlete, the man of big neck and thick arm, has his place. I am simply saying that his place is not the work of the poet, of the dramatist, of the seer ; that "Wordsworth and Milton and Emerson and Lowell, that John the Baptist and Isaiah dwelt apart in solitude, and lingered over their dreams and visions, and saved and guided and sweetened their nation. For if it is faith that nour- ishes life, great character and greatness, it is hope that sustains genius ; but it is good- ness and love that perfect the character of a man and a nation. 194 VIII Christian Unity and Church Consolidation in the Republic Every age has its own task and every generation makes its special contribution. No era has had a character more distinct- ively its own than the present one, but dif- ferent men characterize our era by different terms. The inventor, loving tools, calls our age the age of machinery and labour-saving devices. The scientist calls it the era when great principles have organized scattered facts, and put the truth in systematic form. Merchants call ours the age of commerce, because of the increase of comforts and con- veniences. The educator calls it the era of pedagogy, with new methods in kinder- garten and schoolroom, in lecture-hall, and library. The artist describes it as the era of the diffusion of the beautiful. The love- liness that once was concentrated in castle or cathedral is now spread abroad and be- come an integral part of the clothes we 195 The Fortune of the Republic wear, the books we read, the parlours and libraries in which we live. But the practical man tests our age by results. From his material viewpoint, our age is preeminently the age of organization and efficiency, the era when wastes are saved, and the products of work are quadrupled. The outstanding words to-day, therefore, are organization, cooperation, unity, efficiency, the increase of the output, through dispensing with cut- throat competition. Examples of this organization are num- berless. It began with the common utili- ties. Instead of ten thousand wells in the city, we now have one far-away reservoir, filled with crystal water, supplying ten thousand homes ; instead of thousands of lamps, we have one central electric plant ; instead of scores of little shops with enor- mous wastes, we have been given a few great stores with cheapened goods ; in the place of many factories, each duplicating the other's output, with enormous wastes and poor work as the consequence of rivalry and enmity, we see one central plant, the saving of the wastes, and for rivalry and undercutting, cooperation and efficiency. In the intellectual realm, the city long ago 196 Unity and Church Consolidation left behind the score of little schools, with small classes, and organized one great " high school," where each professor can lecture to a hundred students. Now also this move- ment towards organization has struck the rural districts. Twenty years ago, there were a dozen little red schoolhouses in the township, poorly heated, and with no ap- pliances for teaching arithmetic, physiology, geography, or astronomy, in each of which were assembled some thirty scholars, with two or three pupils in a class. To-day these little schoolhouses are closed and deserted. The principle of cooperation has built one central school, large, beautiful, full of light and air, with maps, charts, globes, labora- tories, library, and everything that is calcu- lated to make attractive the path that leads to the temple of learning ; public servants, answering to the rural mail-carriers, drive from farmhouse to farmhouse, bringing the children and young people to the given centre, and carrying them home again at night. The many teachers, poor and scantily paid, have been replaced by three instructors of signal ability, with large salaries. The inevitable result is a renaissance of educa- tion and intellectual enthusiasm in the rural 197 The Fortune of the Republic districts. The gains for the intellect have been unmeasurable. Now, last of all, the organization move- ment has struck the churches. The epoch of church unity has fully come. It could no longer be delayed. The men who have simplified business, reorganized the banks under one management, reorganized the factory and the store and the shops, are the men who are now in the pews. Having learned how to save the wastes on Saturday, they are irritated by the ecclesiastical wastes manifest on Sunday. In the realm of the intellect, they have discovered that one cen- tral high school is practical and efficient for hundreds of children who are pursuing the life intellectual. At last these business-men have fully determined upon some form of church that will answer in things moral and spiritual to the high-school and uni- versity in literature and science. The age of specialism has come. These business-men realize that it is unnecessary, illogical, puerile, and wicked, to duplicate many church-plants, involving enormous wastes and lessened effi- ciency, when one central church-plant could quadruple the results, at one-quarter of the cost. The church is a school of morals, a 198 Unity and Church Consolidation college for spiritual culture. And the great simplicities of Jesus Christ and Christianity are as universal as the axioms of arithmetic and geometry, or the law of gravity in astronomy. We now have one hundred and sixty-nine different denominations in the United States. Nothing is risked in saying that business-men are now engaged in starv- ing to death one hundred and sixty of them. Now that this movement for church unity and cooperation has begun it seems all but incredible that our intelligent American soci- ety should have endured the old divisive con- ditions so long. When the strong business- man thinks of Christianity broken up into 169 churches, he also begins to think about the one central high-school system in each city broken up into 169 different kinds of schoolhouses. What if high-school teachers should open separate schools upon the ground that one wishes to use a certain kind of arith- metic, written by a man named John Calvin, and another a geography and a method of recitation by John Wesley ? What if dif- ferent branches of the high-school sprang up as the result of controversy as to the coat worn by Archbishop Laud; or as the out- come of peculiar theories about the way of 199 The Fortune of the Republic explaining the bird tracks on the sandstone of New Jersey ; or of some opinion on the subject of the name of the man who built the little red schoolhouse ? In the begin- ning, we are told, the Christian Church was " all with one accord in one place," but if Peter and Paul were to come to New York, or to New Orleans, or to San Francisco, or to Boston, they would find the members of this one Church in 169 different places, with a practical man, named James, leading one group of disciples ; an emotional Peter lead- ing another group; the aesthetic John lead- ing still another ; and the philosophic Paul guiding his own band. The cross of Christ stands in the centre, but each regiment with back towards that cross, marches away from his fellows, while his denominational leader beats the time. Yet unity, and cooperation, could combine these scattered regiments into a solid army, marching to vic- tory. The results of this division and denom- inational rivalry are a decline in the interest in the Church and of the attendance upon it; a support waning to the point of extinction. I have before me the statistics of a town in a Western State, with a thousand in- habitants. Two of the churches are closed, Unity and Church Consolidation with boards nailed over the windows, a third is used as a storehouse for grain. Of the six churches in the place, but two are open and these meet with scant support. In order that my facts should be first-hand facts, I recently visited several towns in as many States, to familiarize myself with all the conditions of churches, ministers, and the views of the people and the pastors. One of these towns has 1,800 people in the vil- lage and country round about, with eight churches and ministers. By reason of con- ditions of infancy, age, invalidism, and the necessities of the home, not more than 1,000 of the 1,800 people can possibly go to church. On the theory that every one of the 1,000 is a church supporter, this gives each church 135 people. It is obviously im- possible for such a handful to support a strong church. The breaking up of the musical, the educational, the social and spiritual talent of the community into eight sections, is scandalous and wicked. What wastes result ! Six or eight feeble choirs with a half-dozen voices in each one, instead of one splendid chorus of fifty voices, chant- ing the noblest music for the entire commu- nity. Eight little Sunday-schools, each with 201 The Fortune of the Republic fifty children, instead of one great Bible- school, employing the teaching-talent of the village, and duplicating the enthusiasm of the village high-school in the enthusiasm of the Sunday-school. Eight little churches, each with a poor piano or organ, instead of one noble pipe-organ, the joy of the 1,800 people. Eight little churches with poor architecture, poorly painted, poorly equipped, with none of the comforts and conveniences to be found in the rich man's home, where there ought to be one splendid central church of noble architecture, with a pipe-organ, with all the musical talent of the town and the country round about gathered in a choral union, preparing the oratorios for the Christmas season and the spring fes- tival. But the greatest waste of all is in the pul- pit. 'Not one of the ministers in this town has a salary of over a thousand dollars. Out of a thousand dollars to-day, what man can buy the books he needs for his mental equipment? College and university bred men are in his pews, and this makes it necessary for the preacher to be the equal of the college-man in learning, and his su- perior in those things that specially apper- 202 Unity and Church Consolidation tain to the clergyman's own profession. The minister should have a salary that will enable him to have the advantages of the business- man, who travels in the summer, who has an outing in the winter, his books and maga- zines, and opportunities for personal culture ; but on a thousand dollars the minister can- not buy books, and starves intellectually. He cannot visit the nation's capital once each winter, and broaden out like the merchant or banker. He cannot once in ten years go abroad for the summer vacation. He does not so much live as exist, " at a poor dying rate." The merchants and bankers, and lawyers, and farmers, in the little rural town and cities, on Monday noon stand looking at the central high-school, and when they see how unity and cooperation have strength- ened the intellectual life of the community, they turn and look at the eight or ten little church buildings, shake their heads sadly and go away and think. Instead of drop- ping out one by one, by scores they are fall- ing away from these little churches. Either the Christian forces of the ten thousand small towns and villages of the country must unite, or the churches will perish, and one-half of the ministers die or resign, with 203 The Fortune of the Republic broken hearts. Indeed, to-day, there is no tragedy in this country so piteous as the tragedy of the broken-hearted pastors, who in many instances want to unify the forces of the community, but who are often com- pelled to struggle on, against their judgment and their better conviction. For the smaller towns in the suburbs, and certain unit neighbourhoods of great cities, the ideal for the Christian Church is not far to seek. Given a country town of two thou- sand people, of whom never more than twelve hundred can be in church at a time, the problem is comparatively simple. The great Eoman Catholic Church will doubtless continue for a long time to come, because it is based upon a principle of government, and of unity through external authority. But for the Protestants surely church unity, on the basis of the great simplicities of Christi- anity, is not only possible, but practical, and easy of achievement. In scores of communi- ties in this country, this Union church has actually come. The many small church buildings have been given up, and instead of the many preachers, two or three have been secured. What an ideal is this ? One noble build- 204 Unity and Church Consolidation ing, centrally situated, crowded from Sun- day morning until the next Saturday night, a church that is the centre of the social, the musical, the literary, the ethical life of the community ; the home of light and joy ; the pride of all the people. With numbers come enthusiasm, economy, emulation, ef- ficiency. When all the musical talent of the community is organized and unified, music, the highest of the fine arts, will become a great moral force. When all the teaching forces are united — and the art of teaching is a great gift, and there are only a few teachers out of two thousand that know how to impart wisdom, — the Sunday-school will again become popular. Instead of ten preachers there ought to be three. One of these should be the preacher or prophet-man who sees the truth clearly with his intel- lect ; who feels the truth deeply, and who is able to state the truth simply, so that the young and old, the wise and ignorant alike not only behold the clusters of God's fruit, but find the branches on which it hangs within easy reach. Men speak of "mak- ing " a sermon. Making a sermon, a mes- sage ? Why, it is a crime to use the word. The prophet " receives " from the lips of 205 The Fortune of the Republic God His message — does not make it. He must go apart, and think, and brood, and pray, and in solitude feed his soul, until at last he comes forth, a man of vision, who realizes what John Euskin meant when he said that the thirty minutes on Sunday, when the man of God stands forth to speak to ignorant and sinful men, are the most important thirty minutes known to society and civilization. But if the preacher makes public teaching primary, and his pastoral work secondary, there must necessarily be connected with the church another man whose pastoral work will be primary, and his teaching- work sec- ondary ; a man who will pass from house to house and school to school, a light-bearer, a happiness-maker, a personal friend of every family ; a man who will go through the community searching out the boys who wish to go to college, the boys who will, in the days to come, speak for the state, paint or carve for the state ; a man who will organize the forces of the community against the saloon, the gambling-den, and the poor- house. The great library of this ideal church and its social rooms, equal to those of the best club-rooms in the great cities, 206 Unity and Church Consolidation will be the centre of the artistic life of the town, where the new painting, purchased by some merchant prince, will be exhibited for all to see ; where the club life for young men, the literary life for young women, and the musical life for all classes will centre. Men who have now withdrawn from the church, would return to such a church as this. Men who have given a little to the church would give much. In this church of the future, that in many communities of this country is already a church of the present, there will be a great sermon in the morning, that represents the thought and study and prayer of six days and nights, of a man whom God ordained through his ancestry for moral illumination. There will be a great Bible-school, towards which all the families w^ill converge. There will be a great choral service in the after- noon, that will be more attractive than all the things of the park, or the ball-field. There will be a practical address to young people at night, that will lead men out of ignorance into wisdom, out of selfishness and sin into righteousness, and the manhood of Jesus Christ. Some will say that this is an ideal, and 207 The Fortune of the Republic therefore impracticable. But the ideals of to-day will be the realities of to-morrow. Christ desired His Church to be one, and what Christ worked for, God will achieve. The ideal that Christ has proposed for His Church is the one thing that will be set up on earth, namely, a unified Church, where all with one accord shall recognize one God — our Father ; one inspirer, comforter, and consoler — His eternal Spirit ; one Saviour — Jesus Christ ; one symbol of sin and sacri- fice — Christ's cross ; confess one need — the need of a heart of flesh and God's mercy and forgiveness ; swear fidelity to one law — the law of love ; and look for one hope — the hope of life immortal. Some one will object that church unity is impracticable, and urge that men represent diverse temperaments — some impulsive, fervid, and emotional — men of feeling ; some loving creeds, and putting the truth into symbols and systems, emphasizing the intellect ; some living by rule and method, emphasizing government and the seat of au- thority ; and some practical, wishing to do religion, — caring nothing about church polity and government, church doctrine and creed, church litanies and liturgies, only concern- 208 Unity and Church Consolidation ing themselves with daily deeds, practical service. On the basis of these temper- aments, it is said that denominations must exist to the end of time ; that the 169 sects will divide us permanently. But Chris- tianity is a system of universals. It deals with a system of universalities. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and the teachings of Jesus Christ, are no more denominational than the multiplication-table. The principles of ethics are no more Presbyterian or Episco- palian or Congregational, than the laws of light and heat. The facts of geology, and astronomy, and physiology, and hygiene are the same for all people ; and the simplicities and universalities of Christianity appeal to men as men. The essential things in the high school are the things of literature and science and mathematics. These are taught to all temperaments and classes by the school-teachers. The individual theories on political economy, tariff, and protection, can be taught at home by the parents. The things of God and Jesus Christ are the great essentials. The unessential things are the things of John Calvin, of the Congregation- alist John Robinson, of the Baptist Roger 209 The Fortune of the Republic Williams, of the Episcopal Archbishop Laud, of the Methodist John Wesley. The name of Campbell, or of Wesley, or of Laud, or of Calvin, was once the great name that eclipsed the Lord Jesus. Now the name of Jesus Christ fills the whole sky. This means that the Sabbath and Christ's Church are for teaching about God and Jesus Christ. Parents at home can teach their children about Wesley and Laud and Calvin on week-days, but Jesus Christ and God are so great that they demand every minute on Sunday. In other words, the temperamental things belong to the family and the parent; the universals of Church and Sunday belong to God and Jesus Christ. This is revolutionary — this destroys the basis of probably 165 out of the 169 denomina- tions — this would leave perhaps one great Protestant Church, one Roman Catholic Church, and one Church named the Quaker, that would not believe in any form, but only in the uncontrolled life of the spirit. Fortunately these statements are not dreams : they are history. No man any longer can say these suggestions are im- practicable, for the reason that they have already been adopted in a number of com- 2IO Unity and Church Consolidation munities. Indeed, denominations are at last coming together. Plans are now being consummated that look to the amalgama- tion of the Congregation alists, the Method- ist Protestants and the United Brethren, which would mean the union of about one million one hundred thousand Christians. In Canada, the Methodists, Congregation- alists, Baptists, and Presbyterians have come together and arranged that if one denomi- nation has a church in the new northwestern territory, into which settlers are rushing, the other three denominations will ask their members to unite with that one church. This means that in a generation there will be but one church in Canada. Already in Australia and New Zealand the churches are federated. In England, during the last few years, all the Protestant bodies, save the Episcopalians, have united in one great Nonconformist union. The Moderator of the Congregational Churches of America, believes that our Presbyterian, Congrega- tional, and Baptist churches can unite so as to strengthen all, without losing any char- acteristic or idea or institution fundamental to only one. The Congregationalists repre- sent English Puritanism ; the Presbyterians, 211 The Fortune of the Republic Scotch Puritanism ; the Baptists are Con- gregationalists who believe in immersion. But many Congregational churches have already put in baptistries, and many Con- gregational parents dedicate their children to God in baptism, and rebaptize them in youth, when they unite with the church on profession of faith. Still, progressive as the existing move- ment is, it does not go far enough. All the Protestant churches can unite without loss of anything distinctive. There are gains in the beautiful liturgy of the Episcopal Church, in its ordered service, its unified, solid, and compact organization. Followers of John Wesley, one of the greatest minds and the greatest hearts that ever lived, have vindi- cated their position — " Whosoever will may come " ; salvation is a personal experience. The followers of Calvin have established their view, and, so far as the rule and will of God are concerned, His provi- dence is the gulf-stream of history, and He does overrule all things for good. It is perfectly evident that there can be no unity on the old lines. There can be no intellectual unity that comes by imposing one creed on all intellects. The ritualist Unity and Church Consolidation seeks unity by reciting the same prayer ; the externalist seeks unity by a common method of baptism, or a common method of church polity. Those who emphasize gov- ernment seek unity by tracing everything to the same head and ruler of the church. But this is sameness and not unity. It se- cures the likeness of a sand-heap where all the grains are the same, and will remain so, because all are dead. But change the grain of sand into a blade of grass or a leaf, and you will find that life works a larger differ- ence. The true unity in the church of Jesus Christ, therefore, is in the simplicities that Jesus teaches, manifest in the divergences of individual temperaments. It is the har- mony of unlikeness, the grouping of dis- similarities. In the high school, or college, we have one class-room where literature is taught. But one of the pupils will become an artist, one a poet, one a novelist, one an historian, one an orator, and all will unite to give us American letters. In the great communal church there is unity. A prophet teaches us the illimitable love of God and His dear Son, Jesus Christ, and these simplicities fuse the multitudes into one solid band of disciples on Sunday. 213 The Fortune of the Republic But on Monday, in practical life, the differ- ent temperaments will work out their lives, fulfill their tasks, or career, by different methods of activity. With many delays, with diverse differ- ences and discussions, this movement is now going forward. But the tides are piling up like waters behind a dam, and the move- ment will soon break through every ob- stacle. The ten thousand rural communities in the great West, where the village is di- vided, and filled with discord, will be- come unified. The brightest intellects, the strongest young men in the college will enter the ministry. Every community will embody in splendid and noble architecture its church life. The musical and artistic genius of the entire community will be or- ganized and unified. The church will be- come the social centre, the joy, the pride, the delight of the whole community. What ought to be will be. God has time enough and to spare — and strength also. Once the workmen about the great cathedral filled the air with strife and bickerings, while they carved the statues and lifted the cap- stone to its place. At last the strife has died out of the air, the noise hushed itself 214 Unity and Church Consolidation to silence, but the cathedral lives on. Now, under the dome of the building, the dis- puting workmen are assembled on the in- side, and ten thousand songs and voices on the floor beneath are gathered up, united and blended into one strain of music, to Him whose cross is the centre of the dome of God. Men are uniting their dreams, unifying their hopes, reorganizing their as- pirations and their plans, and when all is complete, we shall have in this Republic a unit church — with the unity of the faith and the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. 215 IX The True Solution of Social Problems One of the hopeful signs of the times is the universal interest in the social prob- lem. Gone forever the era of selfishness, when the individual exists for himself alone, considers his own advancement, his own offices, his own advantage. Events have compelled the recognition of the solidarity of society. The sound business, rightly conducted, enriches the individual, but be- cause he is honest and honourable, it also enriches the state. The individual is a thread in the coat, and no thread exists for itself alone, but has its dignity and place because of the texture that holds it. The Christian man of every generation has affirmed that nothing is foreign to him that concerns his fellows. But now has come an era when even the secularist and the mere pleasure-lover, living for to-day, recognizes that individual happi- ness and progress mean social happiness, and 216 The True Solution of Social Problems the well-being of all. The time was when the baron, during the winter's storm re- treated, into his castle, shut the great door, pulled down the curtains and by the light of his blazing fire carried on his feasts, while the peasants, out in the night, starved and perished in the storm. But that old prin- ciple of "the devil take the hindmost," is now death-struck and dying. More and more men are knitted in with the interests of their kind. The happiness of our Thanks- giving feasts comes from the feeling that all other homes are filled with the Thanks- giving glow and joy. We cannot enjoy our banquet if others gnaw crusts and starve. Our mansion loses its attraction when we know that others live in rookeries that ooze disease, that fairly sweat malaria, that breed death, because their tenements have been built by lying contractors. And this sentiment of social obligation is so strong, that we have lost admiration and respect for men whose vast wealth repre- sents disobedience to the laws of the coun- try and of God. Society still pays homage to these men because of the financial power they wield, but it is the homage that one pays to the buzz saw ; it is the reverence 217 The Fortune of the Republic that we give to the tornado against which struggle is useless ; it is the admiration that we give to an earthquake, whose power for ruin we must confess, but whose desolation we fear and hate. I^ow and then a cheer arises for the man who has spoiled the people of their wages, and having robbed the people of much, seeks to buy a little in return, and win society's forgiveness by en- dowing some school or institution. But the cheers are very faint and feeble. In their hearts men despise the giver, attach no value to his gift, know that his institution itself shares in the taint of his gold. And the moment the man dies, the feeble cheer will stop, and his name will be as dead as the name of the veriest pauper in the street, and low down and besprinkled with mud, it will be found at the very base of the tablet. For the people have come to recognize that the individual who enriches himself at the ex- pense of the people has spoiled the people, and that the man who advances himself through breaking the laws of brotherhood and the laws of God, is debauching the people. As never before, men are trying to cure all social ills, and ameliorate social distress. 218 The True Solution of Social Problems Fortunately, Christ has done something, and for that reason, encourages the hope that He can do more. All will confess that His example and teachings have destroyed gladiatorial games, ended the old idea of woman as a chattel, exalted childhood, ex- tended education, founded homes and asylums for the unfortunate who once were killed, and taught the obligation of strength to weakness. But there are still great social ills to be overthrown. The ills of drink, the social evil, the selfishness that expresses itself through economic conditions that breed poverty, the wrongs of those who live in the tenement-house regions, the sorrows that come through bad government and those who promote bad government and seek to enthrone bad men as governors that they may use them, the wrongs of the sweaters and of the child-labourers, of the orphans and the waifs in the street. These evils are vast, big with peri], big with destiny. Either we must destroy these evils, or these evils in turn will destroy us. Now drunkenness, impurity, poverty, the bad housing of the poor, selfish govern- ments administered for class-ends, graft, running through every grade of society, 219 The Fortune of the Republic represent the social problem. And good men who love their kind are groaning and travailing with pain. They cannot bear to go out of life, leaving all these sorrows be- hind them. Our editors are talking about the social problems, our business men are thinking about them, our authors are writ- ing about them, and at last the time has come, when, if the people knew the measure that would cure the ill, that measure would instantly be adopted, and the new and ideal commonwealth be set up. Let us confess that the instrument for fighting all social evils is the social vision of the ideal commonwealth. Social reform is half done when it is well begun, and it is well begun when the reformer knows ex- actly what he wants to do. That is why every new social epoch begins with a new dream of social happiness. That also ex- plains the fact that the poet and prophet are the true progenitors of progress. The poet gives the vision of liberty, and con- vinces the soldier that that vision is worth fighting for, and then the hero with the sword fulfills the poet's dream. Every age has had its dreamer and its vision. Let us recall some of these beautiful 220 The True Solution of Social Problems visions. Here is the dream of Plato and his Republic: the city is Athens, the social ill is ignorance, and the method of reform is wisdom and knowledge. Here is the dream of John : the city is Jerusalem, the social ill is iniquity and the cure is righteousness. Here is the dream of Dante : the book is the Paradiso, the new city is Florence, the social ill is ugliness and squalor, the method is beauty, through cathedral and gallery and palace. Here is the dream of Sir Thomas More : the book is the Utopia, the city is London, the social ill is servitude and oppression, the cure is liberty through- out the whole life. Here is the dream of Karl Marx : the book is Capital, the ill is poverty, the cure is the common ownership of all instruments of production, of all wealth produced. Here is the new Secular- ism, allied with Agnosticism : the ill is the narrowness of life through poverty, the cure is the increase of comforts and conve- niences, until there is abundance for all. Here are the legislative dreams ; the ills are through bad laws, the cure is through legis- lation, the method is the decree of the statute. Here are those who emphasize political action, in the organization for a new The Fortune of the Republic system of taxation, for a new form, of tariff, or a new political party, with better men. All these represent the dreams of those who love their fellows, have an ambition to right all wrongs and cure all social distresses. We can never be too grateful for those who have written of the ideal commonwealth. They were the noblest spirits of their time. They were voices for the deep, wistful, eager, passionate longings for an ideal life, in an ideal city. Wonderful the poets and proph- ets who fashioned these dreams, and in retrospect we now see that the social in- struments equal to the social emergencies have been invented. Plainly, there is phil- anthropy and reform and method and wis- dom enough for men to use, and we need only a dynamic to support us in their use. But having affirmed the wisdom, and beauty and function of these dreams of the new Golden Age, we must also confess their failure. Be the reasons what they may, we must confess that apart from Christ all the schemes of social salvation have collapsed. The libraries hold no books sadder than the words of these dreamers in the hour of failure, when they realize that the scheme has not succeeded and they have awakened The True Solution of Social Problems to their shattered illusions, to find all their life-hopes and plans lying in ruins about them. Witness the words of John Eichard Green. For nine years Mr. Green, as a Unitarian minister, lived in the East End, amid the Whitechapel folks of London. By every form of institutional device, by classes, by clubs, by lectures, by culture-schemes he sought to lift the people: but at last, broken- hearted, he writes, " It is all a failure. Men will go on betting and drinking till the flood," and so Mr. Green returns to his study of the past, and writes the History of the English People, because men were not worth working for. And here are the socialistic schemes, from Brook Farm through to the last failure in Tennessee, where the leader moans that every man wants an easy job, and that Socialism succeeds only where there is one man in it who acts the part of a despot, and rules the rest with a rod of iron, which, the socialist adds, is not socialism, but despotism, for only when the social scheme is curved until it turns to absolute monarchy, does it suc- ceed. And here is the secularist. Mr. Pearson, speaking for his school, tells us that abundance and the rescue of the people 223 The Fortune of the Republic from poverty have failed ; that the income of the average family is ten times what it was in Shakespeare's era, but that drunken- ness, and theft, and suicide, and murder, and social unhappiness have not been extermi- nated by material wealth. And here is that Russian Jew, a nihilist, over in the tenement house region, the Ghetto of JSTew York. He has a beautiful character, he has been devoted to his people, he has maintained his night-school, and all the institutional features of settlement-work, for twenty years. But the other day, when a gentleman went to see him, and asked him if the settlement-work had cleansed the Ghetto, he made answer: "All my boys have graduated from these classes to go to the policy rooms, and many of my girls are in the disorderly houses." The questioner exclaimed against this, and said it could not be so. These plans of social amelioration could not be a failure. But the old Jew, w4th his beautiful face, sprang up, seized his hat, and shouted, " If you do not believe it, come with me." Leading the student into one saloon, the white-haired nihilist said: "Good-evening, John." Going into the policy shops, he went from boy to boy, 224 The True Solution of Social Problems calling them by name. Leading the student into a disorderly house, he went from one girl to another, speaking her given name. And the old teacher exclaimed : " It is all a failure. The strong boys and girls of am- bition and of moral worth would rather die than to take a crumb from me. They are too proud to receive help. The weak ones come to have things made easy, but these are the very ones who are hurt by having things made easy. So that I work for the social detritus, the residuum — the foam at the top, the dregs at the bottom. And when certain men come forward who are strong, these bright Hebrews go to yonder music-hall on Sunday morning, to listen to another Hebrew lecture on ethical culture, and the naked ab- straction does nothing to regenerate the men who listen, and they go away, and on Monday steal the very coppers off the eyes of the dead men among my poor people in the Ghetto." Oh, it was a piteous state- ment, this old nihilist's insistence that his social scheme had collapsed, that his reform was a failure. And here Herbert Spencer himself, with his dream of the unity of all knowledge is hopeless. This great man fears that the 225 The Fortune of the Republic individual is to pass under an eclipse, that the state, in assuming all functions of gov- ernment, is dwarfing and stunting the man, that the genius and creative power are be- ing dried up at the very springs by the so- cialistic trend. Mr. Spencer was a leader, b}'' universal consent, and if you wished to talk with some one in the evening hour of life as to the outlook for society, the future of the republic, and to go over our hopes and fears for free institutions, with what man would you rather counsel than with Mr. Spencer ? And yet, in his depression, in the preface to his last book, Mr. Spencer told us that he very much doubts whether the world has been made any better by a single page that he has ever written. 'Not less striking the failure of the Beauti- ful to save men. Do any of you still cherish Dante's dream ? Well, England has the cathedrals, the beautiful music, the stained glass, the noble litany, and right in the shadow of the cathedrals a population as ignorant and sodden and sin-steeped as the Hottentots, and as brutish as the cattle in Smithfield market. Take the men with their economic theories. Once free-trade was going to save England, grand old Eng- 226 The True Solution of Social Problems land, steady England, giving us the seed- corn of our liberties: and lo, after sixty years of free trade, Mr. Chamberlain says it has been a failure ; that there are four millions of people in Great Britain who re- ceive state-help, and approximate the con- dition of paupers, and his new panacea of social salvation is "protection." But we live in a city that has had protection for sixty years, and if Mr. Chamberlain should come over here we should have to confess to him that during the last twelve months in the City of New York 772 persons in Brooklyn and New York have cut their throats, drank poison, or used a pistol for self-destruction, while we have some thir- teen thousand murders each year in our country, much drunkenness, impurity, the wrongs of sweaters, the sorrows of child- labourers, the evils of graft in municipal gov- ernment. Our generation has witnessed many new schemes of social salvation, but all are reducible to and only emphasize the various great schemes to which I have made reference. All these plans hold much truth ; each one gives some form of wisdom ; each is a com- plement to the half -statements of the others ; 227 The Fortune of the RepubUc we cannot afford to dispense with any of them. But, alone, each is a failure. In order to be workable, they assume the Christlike man. Mr. Wallace says that he does not know of any theory of evolution that does not require the presence of an infinite and personal God to make it workable. All these social schemes are good, yet not one of them but asks for the living Christ, to lend perpetual encouragement to the worker, for without Him, the engine waits for the steam to smite the piston, the motor waits for the electric current, the sails wait for the heavenly wind ; there is only one motive to reform that is perpetual, the indwelling Christ, the sense of His constant presence, and the enthusiasm for the poor that comes from the realization that the weak, the hungry, the broken-hearted, are His little ones, and that in giving a cup of cold water unto them, we do it unto Him. But if these schemes of social reform have failed, have they not failed because the Lord of all has not stood in their midst ? He, too, had His dream of the city of God. He, too, beheld the woe, the sorrow and the desola- tion of the poor and oppressed. And be- cause the sword would not save the city He 228 The True Solution of Social Problems went to His cross and gave Himself in vica- rious service and love. If ethical phi- losophy is only a naked abstraction, there is One who is called the living Christ, sup- porting the worker amid his toil. And what is the germ of His reform ? He lays His finger upon the naked soul. To all selfish ones, seeking their own interests at the ex- pense of their brothers, He says. Ye must be born again. For the old, hard heart that squeezes one's brother as the hand squeezes a cluster of grapes, He gives the spirit of brotherhood, of love and sympathy. With the new life on the inside come the new habits, the new method of living in the street, the market-place, on the outside. The truant hates his books, but the teacher who awakens a new enthusiasm for knowl- edge does not have to legislate for the boy or coerce the boy or force knowledge into his unwilling mind. Arouse the love of song, and the youth will write symphonies; stir his love of the beautiful and he will paint pictures ; quicken his inventive faculty, and he will create tools ; arouse the love of liberty and the hatred of oppression, and he will destroy political abuses. And Jesus Christ came to give the soul life, more 229 The Fortune of the Republic abundantly; life, until each individual is equal to all his own crises, — until he has strength that overflows, strength to spare for generous service. But having sweetened and deepened the springs of power for the individual, and made all right within, then the new and strengthened faculties are made right with- out, through the law of brotherhood. Jesus laid His hand upon the purple of the prince and the rags of the pauper, and upon the brow of each wrote the word " Brother." He uttered no word against slavery, or the exposure of children, or gladiatorial games, or political abuses, or the method of tax- ation. Nevertheless, in unveiling this law of brotherhood, He really consumed all these exterior abuses of His time, for that law of sympathy and friendliness destroyed these sins, as the law of sunshine eats aAvay the ice in a thousand brooks and rivers. One day He took a child in His arms, and said ; " Of such is the kingdom of heaven. It is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should perish." JSTow it seems that one of the disciples of Plato's Kepublic had been arguing for the exposure of sick and maimed children, as did Cicero 230 The True Solution of Social Problems and Seneca. But when the disciples heard Jesus say that the angels of the children do always behold the face of the Father, they went out under the influence of this law of brotherhood to collect orphans, the babes exposed on the mountain-tops, and brought them into homes; and therefore that beautiful sketch in the catacombs of the white haired apostle stretching out his hands to welcome a group of crippled children, to whom he is telling the story of Jesus Christ, God's fatherhood and divine love. So also, without talking about gladiatorial games, did Jesus deliberately set about des- troying them. In these words, " Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," was a weapon that made the might of weapons ridiculous. The soldiers in the Coli- seum stood behind the gladiators and urged them into strife with red hot irons. And the gladiators, ready to die, sang, "We who are about to die, salute you," and flung themselves upon death. But, once these soldiers understood that the gladiators were their brethren, once that golden rule of love had sounded for them, once they had re- ceived for themselves a new heart, then that heart rode forth in sympathy, and took The Fortune of the Republic its stand beside the brother gladiator. And in a moment the games became murder, the joy of beholding the strife became the agony of another's suffering. Soon the great Coliseum that held eighty thousand specta- tors was empty. The marble steps that led from gallery to gallery crumbled away ; the rain that fell like God's tears washed off the stains of blood, and the grasses and vines hid the wounds that cruel men had made. Not otherwise was it with all the abuses of that era, such as slavery and serf- dom, and the exposure of aged parents, and the casting out of the blind and the lame and the invalided. That golden law of love, sympathy and friendly service, transformed the social life and changed the face of the old Eoman world. Jesus Christ is the greatest social reformer that the world has ever known, and His reforms have worked. When He cures an abuse it stays cured. Already in the past He has destroyed seven great social evils. And He still stands in the centre of the city, — the bearer of the city's sorrows, the "divine patriot of the kingdom of God, whose patriotism was pure of all selfish- ness, who wept over His city, not because it 232 The True Solution of Social Problems was subject to Eome, but because it was subject to sin, for if it were only subject to Eorne, it might be saved by a sword, but a city subject to sin, and an age subject to selfishness can be saved only by His cross." If now we apply Christ's emphasis of the individual, the sancitity of life, and have found in the new heart the hidings of power, and in individual excellence the secret of influence, and if in this great law of friendiness, sympathy and brotherhood, we have found a genial atmosphere, in which all the social truths and excellences are ripened, how does Christ's principle bear upon great social problems of our own day? Here is the labour-problem. Jesus Christ never tried to do away with labour. He knew that work is happiness, that work is culture, that work is growth, that creative work is medicinal and curative. We found the schools and colleges from which a few graduate, and they are useful, and another handful graduate from the universities ; but God has His college, into which He matric- ulates us all — the school of hard work. He throws us upon our own resources, compels us to earn our own livelihood, makes hunger 233 The Fortune of the Republic to scourge us forward, makes the fear of old age to inspire industry and tireless exertion. What we work for is our daily bread, but what we get is our character. Like the prince who sent his son into the foreign land to be drilled in the care of the troops in the palace: the boy thought he was working for a handful of gold a year, for a wage, but the reward he received was the rule over a palace and a kingdom. God appoints us each our temperament, our task, sets us in our place, gives each man his stint. What is all this talk about shortening the hours of work and killing time? Wise men want to save time, not kill it. Great men want to lengthen the hours of work, not shorten them. The inventor, the poet, the statesman, the lover of his fellows, the mother — these all rise up early and steal every golden minute they can from sleep, and the one boon they ask from God and death is a few more golden hours in which to work. Oh, what a misfortune our coun- try has suffered, and what wrongs have been done the labouring classes by these foolish superficial leaders, who have spoiled life of its dignity, stolen the glory from the tool, made the task contemptible, taught the 234 The True Solution of Social Problems labourer that his work is a degradation, that he must shorten it, and flee from it, even as he hates his employer! But Jesus Christ chose the carpenter's life — a manual trade, and deliberately passing by the professions He inured Himself to hard work. My Father worketh, and I work, He said. To every man his work. Work, for the night Cometh. And, once a man bows before the cross of Jesus Christ, once he understands that he is a child of two eternities, that he is here not to "get on," but to do God's work, that he is to be self-sufficing, that he is to prefer another to himself, then all life becomes sweet, work is a joy, the hours on golden wings fly o'er us. All the wage is the reward that comes from the sense of God's approval. This has always been Christ's solvent of the problem of work ; it is the only salvation of the labour-question. And if it were adopted it would in a gen- eration double the wage, end the strife, crowd all the factories with contracts, fill all homes with contentment. Christ knows the path that leads to social peace. But when the individual's problem of work has been solved, then comes the problem of service. If the worker is to be just towards 235 The Fortune of the Republic his employer, what about the employer's sympathy and brotherhood towards his workmen ? A great orator, who was not a Christian, once conceived in the spirit of Christ this law of brotherhood. In his par- able there were three Ten Talent men. The first one was a professional philanthropist. God gave him genius to touch ore and turn it into steel ; to touch oil and turn it into light ; to front a mob and turn them into an industrial army. When he found that he knew a thousand times more than the people around him whom he called the herd, he asked the king to let him have control of some five thousand people, and the king per- mitted him, because he knew that this great organizer could take better care of the peo- ple than they could of themselves ; then, with the assistance of a few soldiers, he took them out to his factory-town, divided them into groups, built for them houses, each one like the other, made them work so many hours, made them sleep and exercise so many hours, built them a theatre, built them a church, forced their lives into regularity, and at the end of ten years he found that these people had not only had better houses and better food than before, but that he had 236 The True Solution of Social Problems made twenty per cent, on his investment, and told his friends that it was the greatest social scheme on earth. The people were incapable of taking care of themselves, so he took care of them, and not only bettered their conditions, but bettered them, and in- cidentally made a fortune. And when the man died he was buried with great cere- mony, and on his tomb they put the words, " The Protector of the People." But after the man's death, the people left his tomb to crumble, the parents taught their children to curse his name. They preferred a crust that was their own to his largess that be- littled them as paupers, and when a genera- tion had passed by all people understood that this benefactor had debauched the people. But there was another Ten Talent man. God gave him also the power to touch ore into steel and oil into light, and the execu- tive skill to turn a mob into an army. This man hated slavery, and wanted his work- men, he said, to be free. His favourite prin- ciple was to get all you can, to keep all you can, and the devil take the hindmost. When hard times came on he cut the wage in the middle, and when the men said that they 237 The Fortune of the Republic could not support their families, he said: " If you don't want your job, leave it ; there are plenty of men who want it." His favour- ite saying was, " The poor you have always with you." Many of his workmen lived in close rooms, had large families, little to eat, but the great man felt that God gave him his superior genius to get things for himself, and the One Talent people must look after themselves. Hard times, therefore, and epochs of panic became epochs of harvest to him. This man saved an enormous fortune. He rose from poverty to wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. He founded museums and colleges, and when he died they put up this inscription : " He Lived for Others." But after he was dead the people would not go to his museums ; they cared little for his colleges ; they told their children that he was selfish through and through. His name was remembered only for contempt and shame. There was a third man to whom God gave genius as a Ten Talent man. He, too, could change a desert into a garden and a mob into an industrial army. But his favourite sentence was, " I will get all I can honestly though productive industry ; I will keep all 238 The True Solution of Social Problems I can and regard the rights of my brothers, and instead of letting the devil take the hindmost, I will take the hindmost." When from his great factory, therefore, through his workmen who had come to love him, he found that he had made half a million dol- lars, he turned to these workmen and said, substantially, "Much of this I will give back to you as a free gift. I might keep it and build a college with it, but I want you to have it as your wage, and send your boy to college and your girl to the schools. I want you each to have a library in your own house, because as workmen you have earned the money for it. Instead of taking the wealth that you have created with your contribution, and I have created with my contribution, to found some institution that will take my name and blazon my fame, I prefer your love and the love of my brothers. God gave me industrial genius, but He gave it as a trust-fund, that I might save my brothers, as Christ used His life for His brethren. God gave men talent to feed the state and clothe the state, as He did to the soldier to keep the state in liberty, or the poet to keep it in hope, or the jurist to keep it in justice." 239 The Fortune of the Republic !N"ow when this man died he left no money, because he had used it for his brothers, and his grave was unmarked, but the people planted it around with flowers. They took their children there, to borrow inspiration from his grave. They wept bitter tears over the death of their friend. They love him and cherish his memory with all but idol- atry. In their distresses he has been their saviour. This man had learned Christ's method, and his wealth was no " wrecker's handful of corn, gleaned from the beach to which was beguiled an argosy, a camp follower's bundle of rags, unwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers slain. His wealth was no gilded index of far-reaching ruin. His benefactions left at death were not like a river that overflowed the land, to poison the wind, its breath pestilence, its waters bitter, its breath famine, but it was a goodly river that flowed in soft and gentle irrigation through the field " — the river that fed the trees of life and happiness, the river that carried upon its bosom the fleets of prosperity and commerce, the veritable river of the water of life. 240 X The Message of Puritanism For full two hundred and seventy years and more have men assembled upon Fore- fathers' day to celebrate the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers ; to revere their virtues, to sympathize with their sufferings, to recall the thrilling story of their first winter upon the bleak coast of New England ; to marvel at their victory over the wilderness, famine, winter, disease, savages, and death itself, and for themselves and their children to swear anew fidelity to their fathers' God, to law and love, to liberty and learning, that these sacred fires may not die out upon the altars of the human heart. On this high day, in scores of cities in our land, in church and hall, and around the banqueting board, the sons and daughters of the Puritans through oration and eulogy, in song and story, recall the famous men of old, with wit and laughing jest, indeed, hitting off their fathers' foibles, but in the secret heart reverencing their ancestors and emu- 241 The Fortune of the Republic lating their example — since thus alone we prove that we are not the ignoble sons of a noble heritage. For, if the giants of mis- rule and despotism may be forgotten, no race can afford to forget its heroes. God raised up the famous men of yesterday as soul-food and stimulus for the youth of to- day. Standing at Plymouth Eock, Webster looked up towards the fathers, that he might himself be lifted to their level. Lingering long upon those shores, where the first pilgrim stepped foot upon this new world, Webster uncovered his head and joy- fully confessed that the patriotism, forti- tude, and faith of the heroes had entered into his soul, as iron enters into the rich blood of the physical system. The faith of the fathers is, indeed, " the elixir of the children." Looking back upon our history, we now do see that the Puritan spirit and principles first conquered New England ; that the ideals and institutions the Pilgrims devel- oped soon repeated themselves in New York and the Keserve of Ohio, and afterwards journeyed into the towns and cities of our great North and West. Then, when the civil conflict came and the whole land shook 242 The Message of Puritanism with the earthquake of civil war, it was the Puritan spirit that again went forth in battle array to conquer servitude and make our soil too pure for the feet of slaves. To thinking men it must now be evident that the time is surely coming when this entire land is to be puritanized. As loyal patriots and true Christians, we may also look for- ward to an era when our republic shall edu- cate the world in free institutions. Should that time ever come it will be found that all the nations will recall Forefathers' day as one of the great days of history, and cele- brate the qualities of the Pilgrims with ad- miration, awe, and tearful sympathy. " If we succeed," said that first intrepid leader, " if we succeed, men will never cease to cele- brate this day with song and story." Con- trariwise, should the spirit of the fathers fail, " should the consciousness of a divine energy underlying human societ}^ mani- fested in just and equal laws, and humanely ordering individual relations, disappear," we may believe with Curtis, " the murmur of the ocean rising and falling upon Plymouth rock will be the endless lament of nature over the baflded hopes of man." Now that long time has passed, all men 243 The Fortune of the Republic see that the age of the Puritans was the heroic age of our history. In its innermost genius the story of the Pilgrim Fathers is a story unparalleled in all the annals of his- tory for the weakness of its beginning and the glory and grandeur of its victory. To the end of time, Xenophon's march of the Ten Thousand will fascinate mankind. But the young Grecians were soldiers, men of iron strength. They marched not towards the wilderness, savages, and certain death ; they marched towards life, home, and all- welcoming love. With absorbing interest also we follow the adventurous career of Cabot and Drake, Ponce de Leon, De Soto, and Champlain, in their search for new realms for their sovereign or for gold and gems and the treasures hidden in the palaces of Peru, for fountains of eternal youth, and for the fame that has ever beguiled brave men. But no dreams of power or wealth allured these Pilgrims forth. Our heroes unfurled their sails to leave behind gold, lands, ancestral halls, and resigned forever all thoughts of ease and luxury. To us it seems incredible that in the very years when Shakespeare was writing his greatest dramas, English rulers could have 244 The Message of Puritanism been so bigoted as to burn the wisest scholars, behead the thinkers, and imprison resolute souls, whose only crime was the love of liberty in thought and word and worship. And yet in those far-off days, inde- pendent thought was a penal offense, and the worship of God in any way, save that or- dained by the King, was more likely to be punished than murder or theft. In the Brit- ish Museum men have preserved an auto- graph letter of Queen Elizabeth, written to the Scottish King, and asking for the extra- dition of one John Penry. Now, Penry was a graduate of Oxford, a scholar of great at- tainments, a man of the noblest life and character. He had been guilty of the crime of saying that a clergyman might be or- dained by a presbyter as truly as by a bishop, and, therefore, once Queen Bess got her hands upon her enemy, she had him indicted for treason. Standing before the Lord Chief Justice, Penry said : " If my blood were an ocean sea, and every drop thereof were a life unto me, I would give them all for the maintenance of my convictions." But the best use that England could make of such a man was to behead him ! Soon the Puri- tans felt that the time had come when they 245 The Fortune of the Republic must decide whether they should live under an absolute or a limited monarchy ; whether or not a king might also assume the func- tions of a pope. And when one scholar and leader had been imprisoned thirty-six times in seven years, and fifty of the leading Puri- tan pastors and scholars were lying in the dungeons of London, the Pilgrims decided to leave the old home land and cross over to Holland, a land made glorious by the valour of " William the Silent " ; made free by the fortitude and faith of the heroic burghers, who endured the siege of Leyden, the cruelty of Alva, and the awful tyranny of " Philip the Monster." When eight fearful years had passed over the factories and fields of Leyden, a com- pany of them decided to seek a permanent home in the new unknown world of Amer- ica. A thousand times through stately oration and thrilling narrative have our orators and editors rehearsed for us the story of that unique voyage. We see the Pilgrim band marching down to the sea- shore. There they kneel upon the sands, and, weeping, commend themselves to God, while John Kobinson asks Him who holds the seas in the hollow of His hand to 246 The Message of Puritanism care for their little craft and bring them into some harbour of peace. Returning in the little ship Speedwell to Southampton, they were joined by others like-minded, and set out upon their uncertain voyage with firm faith. Taught by our artists, we see these brave men assembled in the cabin of the Mayflower to sign their compact and covenant. And when after more than five stormy, weary weeks the little ship has tossed upon the tumultuous sea, on the shortest day of all the year, midst drifting sleet and snow, while water freezes in men's garments and makes their coats to ring like iron, we see two little boats pull through the surf at Plymouth, and, jumping into the water, the men take the women and children in their arms, and carry them through the surf to the shore. What dangers were theirs, when the first flight of arrows fell upon them from the Indians ambushed in the forest ! How pa- thetic the stern record of that first Christ- mas morn in the new world I " On Monday the twenty-fifth we went again on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all day." What sorrow and suffering are re- 247 The Fortune of the Republic vealed in the fact that when the next De- cember came, half of the little company were sleeping beneath the winter's snow ! As once that Scottish hero, fleeing from his enemies, sprang over the precipice above the sea and clung to a narrow ledge of rock, while his enemies above pelted him with sticks and clubs, so this frail band clung to the edge of the forest, while hail and snow, famine and pestilence harassed and assailed them. There on the woodland border we see the Pilgrim rearing his cabin, for the family is the first of his free institutions. We see him dedicating his little church and on Sunday morning standing before it as a sentinel, with rifle in his hand, keeping guard over wife and child while they worship God in peace. We see him completing the first schoolhouse and calling a meeting of the citizens to pass a law that when there are a hundred families they shall be taxed to fit the sons for college and found a university. We see them coming together to publicly discuss all questions of government in the town-meeting, that was to be the germ and seed of all our social institutions. Yerily, these were "famous men, by whom God 248 The Message of Puritanism hath gotten glory," of whom " the world has not been worthy." Of late years it has become the fashion to belittle the Puritans and ridicule them. Our pleasure-loving generation hurls many a gibe and stinging jest at their high hats and sombre garments, their cold reserve, their solemn habit of thought and life. There is a type of mind that can never think of the Puritan save as "mere acrid defiance and sanctimonious sectarianism," nor of the Puri- tans save as a band of " ignorant and half- crazy zealots." With biting sarcasm, Hume said the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not be- cause it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. While in America, when Connecticut expelled a Tory for disloyalty, he went home to palm off upon credulous England the so-called " Blue Laws " — laws which never had any existence outside of the brain of a man who had been exiled for treason. And yet many an English author still refers to the time when the mothers of New England were punished for kissing their husbands or babes on the Sabbath day, and when the Puritan house- wife threw away the vinegar on Saturday ?49 The Fortune of the Republic night, lest the acid should " work " on Sun- day, thus breaking the law against labour on the day of rest. We smile also at Judge Sewell's diary, written after going home from church and listening to a sermon in which the minister had turned the hour-glass four times, on the coldest winter day, in a church where no fire was permitted. The journal begins : " Extraordinary cold ; storm of wind and snow. The bread was frozen at the Lord's table to-day. Though 'twas so bitter cold, John Hutchinson was baptized. At six o'clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by my good fire. Yet," adds the judge, "I was very comfortable at the meeting to-day " — subterranean fires having doubtless been opened up by the preacher. The fathers also are criticised for lack of sympathy with art and beauty, and the elegancies of life. Some, too, insist that the Puritans sympathized deeply with that iconoclastic spirit that spoiled the cathedrals of England and of the Continent, white- washing the frescoes, pulling down the altars, smashing the precious statues. Let us confess that they were men with faults, many and great. To minimize their 250 The Message of Puritanism errors or magnify their excellences would be alike unworthy of their memory and our inheritance. Their theology was narrow, and has in part ceased to satisfy thinking men. Their stern thought towards the Hester Prynne of the " Scarlet Letter " has been succeeded by a certain tender, gentle, throbbing sympathy ; to the rock-like stern- ness of virtue, we have added charities and sweet philanthropies, that embody God's tenderness towards each " bruised reed." But, faulty as they were, be it remembered that there is some spot on every shaft of marble, some flaw in every pearl and dia- mond, some disproportioned feature even in the loveliest face. For, criticise him as we may, we must go back to the Puritan for the foundation of our social happiness and peace. If these men of granite were cold, be it remembered that the mountain peaks that are crowned with white snow are not low-browed. If the Puritans were simple folk and with- out the graces of the modern drawing- room, be it not forgotten that Doric temples have their beauty through a column that rep- resents a simple shaft of white marble. Our heroic fathers doubtless were different from 251 The Fortune of the Republic their children. But what if the generation of Bradford and Brewster differs from ours, as warships differ from pleasure-yachts, as great organs differ from harps and music- boxes, as the oak and pine differ from the vines that cover them ? If the Pilgrim Fathers were not ideal men, neither can their children lay claim to that high honour. ]N"or will the ideal man ever come until one rises up who, to the severe virtues of the Puritan adds the grace and sweetness of modern life, carrying his strength up to beauty, inflecting sternness towards sym- pathy, clothed with integrity that is spot- less indeed, but having also sweet allure- ment. Happy indeed the man who, within the granitic qualities of law and justice conceals the amethystine qualities of affec- tion and sympathy in the heart. Not until Puritan and Cavalier unite in one man, who bends for coronation before Christ, his di- vine master, will the perfect man appear. In his eulogy upon John Brown, Wendell Phillips said that Lord Bacon, as he marches down the centuries, may put one hand on the telegraph and another on the steam- engine and say, " These are mine, for I taught you to invent." Could we as- 252 The Message of Puritanism semble in one room earth's greatest sons, who have achieved much for liberty and progress, and could the Puritan spirit pass from one son of goodness and genius to another, few would be found in that goodly company who did not belong to the group called Puritan. For long before Puritan- ism became an outer cult it was an inner spirit and a potent influence. It was the Puritan instinct in Moses that led him to resign the splendours of the pal- ace in Egypt, choosing rather the rigours of a life in the desert. It was the Puritan spirit stirring in Daniel that led him to stand forth alone, braving a throne and its de- crees that he might worship God after the manner of his fathers. Paul showed the Puritan spirit when, fettered and a prisoner before Felix, he lifted his chains and boldly indicted the King upon the throne and brought the tyrant to his trial. Socrates had the Puritan spirit when he braved the Athenian jury and said : " It is better to die than to refuse to obey the voice within." Galileo was not a Puritan in the hour when he recanted, but a spark at least of that faith showed in him when he muttered under his breath, " JSTevertheless, the earth 253 The Fortune of the Republic does move." Savonarola, too, had the Puritan valour. When the Pope tried to buy him off with an offer of the cardinal's hat, he replied that rather than sin against his convictions he would receive the red hat of martyrdom. Luther had a like intrepid temper when he said that he would go to Worms and front the Emperor though there were " as many devils in the streets as tiles on the roofs." Cromwell was a Puritan when he went forth to destroy that citadel of iniquity called the divine right of kings, and razed to the ground the ancient castles of England that long had been the strong- holds of feudalism. The Puritan temper also dominated Milton when he wrote the noblest plea tiiat was ever made for the freedom of the press. Pobinson was a Pur- itan in the hour when he foreshadowed our toleration, in the words, " There is more light yet to break forth from God's word." It was the Puritan spirit also that spoke in Garrison, " I am earnest ; I will not equiv- ocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." It was the Puritan spirit that lent power to the polished shafts of Wendell Phillips ; that lent a deep moral purpose and passion to 254 The Message of Puritanism the orations of Lincoln and Beecher and Sumner and Curtis; when Gladstone also stood forth to plead the cause of Ireland's poor against England's power and wealth, it was the old heroic faith of the fathers that flamed forth in the famous son. It is not too much to say that the history of modern liberty is the history of Puritanism. If now we analyze the qualities that lent the Puritan his power and influence, we shall find that his crowning characteristic was his faith in the unseen God. In words that have the roll of thunder, Macaulay, in the most eloquent page he ever wrote, has portrayed the vision of God as the hidings of the Puritan's power. " The Puritans," said the essayist, " were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habit- ually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. . . . They recognized no title of superiority but his favour; and, confident 255 The Fortune of the Republic of that favour, they despised all the accom- plishments and all the dignities of this world. If they were unacquainted with the work of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadem, scrowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt ; for they es- teemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. . . . Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. . . . Enthusiasm had made them Stoics . . . and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. They went through the world like Sir ArtegaPs iron man. Talus, with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor 256 The Message of Puritanism lot in human infirmities, insensible to fa- tigue, to pleasure and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier." Happy — thrice happy — our generation, could we exchange some of our tools, our knowledge of bugs and beetles, our outer embellishments, for the temper and spirit of the fathers ! Because they worked " un- der their great taskmaster's eye" they needed no paid overseer to see that they slighted no task ; no timekeeper to see that they came not late nor went early ; no lynx-eyed reformers to search out their accounts for sinful entries. They lived in God's presence, as the flowers live and un- fold in the soft enfolding sunshine, as birds sing when the morning rolls in warm billows o'er them. " The times that have ceased to believe in God and immortality," said Mazzini, " may continue illogically to utter the holy words, * progress and duty,' but they have derived the first of its basis and robbed the second of its sanction." And when our fathers' faith in God shall go, when we become ma- terialistic and bow down to a mud god, and live by ethics of pleasure, not duty, then 257 The Fortune of the Republic justice will forsake the laws our fathers left us ; liberty will fade from our institutions ; the glory will depart from library and chapel ; our music will lose its sweetness, and our canvas its lustrous colour ; ipe&ce also will pass forever from the American home. For the loss of faith in our fathers' God would be the most disastrous loss that ever befell the young republic ; just as the victory of our fathers' faith is soon to be the sublimest history in the annals of time. To the vision of God that like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night led the Puritan forward, let us add the emphasis of civic righteousness and the recognition of conscience and duty rather than pleasure and selfish gain. Though the Cavalier called him a dreamer and an idealist, the Puritan held firmly to his faith that the ideal repub- lic would come when the law of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount were organized into the laws of the market place and city hall. E"ot Plato in his "Atlantis," not Thomas More in his " Utopia," not the modern dreamers of ideal cities have dreamed so noble a dream of the ideal com- monwealth as these Puritans who laboured to set up the kingdom of God upon eartho 258 The Message of Puritanism These grim, stern men have been praised for their valour, kneeling down to pray be- fore they entered the battle of Naseby or Marston Moor — who were never defeated, and never wounded in the back. Admirable as was their physical bravery, their moral courage was even more significant. How unique that scene in the Puritan Parliament ! Carlyle shows us five hundred English gen- tlemen, members of Parliament, who, upon the opening day, after taking the oath of office, fell upon their knees and besought God for their country. Afterwards they healed all enmities, and, striking hands as brothers, forgave and forgot all wrongs and ingratitudes. And then, testing each pro- posed law by the rule of right and conscience and God, they presented their bills for dis- cussion and adoption. What if to-morrow, when Congress assembles, that Puritan scene should be repeated ? What if every ruler who has done wrong should first go away to make restitution and clear his record, and afterwards return to do justice and plead the cause of the poor ? Our age does not need more tools, luxu- ries, or comforts so much as it needs the fathers' sense of righteousness and justica 259 The Fortune of the Republic During the past year two hundred towns and cities of a sister State have been black- ened with murder, where man has slain his brother man in the streets. And to-day, while we sit here, the ministers in that Stato have been asked to cry aloud against this wave of sin and crime. What meant it that in many of the little Puritan towns the first hundred years of their history was stained with the record of never so much as a single murder ? What meant it that these little communities had no poorhouse, no jail, no tramp, no drunkard, and that in 1690 a sheriff in one Puritan community proposed the abolition of his office, because in his four years of service he had never had a single duty to perform ? It matters little what we think of the Puritans. It matters much what Bradford and Brewster, what Yane and Hampden and Cromwell and Pym, think of us and our era of lawlessness and crime. Standing close beside the anniversary of that far-off winter's day when our fathers first stepped foot upon these new shores, let us with reverence and holy hope swear anew fidelity to our fathers' faith and to the insti- tutions they have bequeathed us. To-day 260 The Message of Puritanism our generation is rich indeed, through a thousand treasures that have come down out of the past. But our greatest treasure is not the tools of Watt and Arkwright, not the philosophy of Bacon or Newton, not the poems of Shakespeare or Milton : the greatest boon our generation possesses is the religious and political liberty that our Puritan fathers gave us. The battles they won will never have to be fought again. Never again will kings try to pass an act of uniformity in worship ; liberty of thought and speech and act are our eternal possessions. Never again will the colleges and universities be closed to all save the patrician classes; the great institutions that represent the rights of the common people are now surely fixed as the mountains. But if the blossoms of Qur tree of liberty are crimson they are red with our fathers' blood. If our institutions bear a royal stamp, they are stamped with our fathers' signatures. Those who won for us our institutions have the right to expect that we shall transmit them unimpaired and greatly enriched to the next generation. The memory of our fathers to-day should consecrate us, their approval should be our benediction. We fulfill a noble instinct 261 The Fortune of the Republic when we remember the famous men of old of whom God hath begotten us. We, too, are Saxons, and therefore the sons of Milton and Hampden and Cromwell. We, too, are Puritans, and therefore the sons of Bradford and Kobinson and Brewster. We, too, are Americans, and therefore the sons of Adams and Webster and Lincoln. Unto this genera- tion there sounds forth the word : Lord God of Hosts, be with ns yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 262 XI The Universal Note In Christianity In the final instructions of Jesus to His apostles, recorded in the last chapter of Mark, — "Go ye into all the world and preach the evangel,"— He forecasts final tri- umph of the evangel of God's love. His kingdom is to be a universal kingdom, and His sway world-wide. Passing over all race prejudices. He offers His evangel to all men, as men, and not as Hebrews or Gentiles; offers it to all men who are born into the cradle and who journey towards the grave. The note He strikes is not the Hebrew note, it is the human note. Come soon or come late, victory is to gather all nations and tribes under the banner of God's love and Christ's sway. Governments are many in form, but eternal justice is one. Houses are of many styles of architecture, but the genius of all homes is love. Manifold the churches, varied the creeds, diverse the pol- itics, but at last unity will come, offering one name— Our Father; one law — The Golden 263 The Fortune of the Republic Eule; one petition — the Lord's Prayer; one dynamic of personal life — the cross of Christ ; one hope — the hope of immortality. The vision of world-wide supremacy is beautiful, but what if it be only a vision ! Humanly speaking, there never was so uii-;/ likely a candidate for universal fame. Men often spake of Jesus' birthplace, but no man ever called Bethlehem the mother of the arts and sciences, that title belonged to Athens. Many travellers have commented upon Naza- reth's wickedness as the headquarters of the Koman legion, but no one ever associated it^ with law, or government. The world-race was the Roman race ; but Galilee was a lit- tle, despised province. Jesus' class was the artisan class ; His lot was a carpenter's shop ; His sphere, obscurity. And yet Jesus en- courages world-plans — talks of world-vic- tories, and sends His disciples out upon a world-mission. He promises to fulfill in terms of institutions the hopes and dreams of the poets and prophets. He looked forward to an era when, in peace and plenty, every man should sit under his own vine and fig-tree. Little wonder that men have spoken of the sublime audacity of Jesus ! His disciples did not think it audacious. To them there was 264 The Universal Note in Christianity nothing strange, nothing unnatural, nothing that jarred, in Christ's world-wide plans. Such a victory and sway seemed the one thing that would be in harmony with Jesus' sinless life, exalted character, and glorious resurrection. With instant readiness, there- fore, they leaped into the breach and set forth on their world- widei^mission, challeng- ing persecution and martyrdom, in their purpose of carrying to all men the evangel of God's love, and building the city of God on the brink of the demon city. If Christianity is to be a world-religion, plainly it must strike the universal note. There is a broad distinction between that which is local and temporary, and that which is universal and permanent. For ex- ample, home is a universal idea that will abide ; the bark hut of a Fiji Islander is local, adapted to a tropic climate, and not interesting to us. In literature, there are certain epics that hpld the universal note. Homer strikes this note in the Iliad, where he deals with the ambition of Agamemnon, the resentment of Achilles, the heroism of Hector, while in the scene where the Trojan soldier bids farewell to his beloved ones, the little child lifts up its hands to stroke 265 The Fortune of the Republic the plumes that fall from the father's hel- met, shouting aloud in its delight. But heroism, fidelity, jealousy, war, fickleness, love, hopelessness — these are universal notes. Science also throws new light upon the uni- versal element. For example, the physi- ology that is written for Oxford students will describe just as well the physical or- gans of people in Africa or India, for all have bones and muscles and nerves, and lungs and heart. A psychology written for an American student is just as useful for the class-room in Arabia or Egypt, for all men have intellect, memory and judgment; have imagination and volition. An astron- omy^ written by Herschel would do fairly well for students in Mars, if such there should chance to be, for gravity is a uni- versal law and to the uttermost parts of our system the planets go round the sun. Not otherwise is it with religion. If Jesus' music is a world-music, if His reign is to be a universal reign, He must strike the uni- versal note. He must not speak to men as Hebrews or Greeks ; He must speak to men as men, of whom the outer pigments as white or red or yellow are only skin-deep. And unless the universal note is in His 266 The Universal Note in Christianity teachings, and the eternal melody in His music, it is for a day, and not for all time. Our theme, therefore, is this — the universal note in Christianity, that prophesies a world- wide supremacy. Religion begins with prayer. If God speaks to man in revelation, man must in return be able to speak to God in prayer. Under whatsoever name, all men, high and low alike, pray. Man's strength is broken like the reed, man's wisdom cannot pierce the veil that hides the next hour. Man's best resolutions avail not in the battle and stress of temptation. Man's first and last prayer is the confession of need. For the strongest man an hour comes, when the world reels beneath his feet, and he wants a divine bosom and friend on whom to lean. But what prayer shall man pray? If Christ is to be a world-teacher, He must be a world-guide in prayer above all else. Here analysis to prove that what we call " the Lord's Prayer," is fitted to every temperament and race is rendered unnecessary, because we can make the ap- peal to history. Some years ago I was in Oxford, and spent an hour in the library of Max Muller. 267 The Fortune of the Republic The World's Parliament of Religions had but recently closed, and the great Orientalist was full of the subject. He insisted that the event was the greatest event in the history of religion, since the birth of Christ. Thoughtless men were saying of the Fair, " How marvellous this assemblage of the physical resources of civilization I How beautiful this Court of Honour! How wonderful these looms! What art and architecture ! " But not so Max MuUer. All these material things go to the waste-heap when new tools are invented. Man's great- est possession is not his tool in the hand, but his faith and hope immortal in the heart. Well ! Suppose that Professor Max Muller was right. What was the great hour in the World's Parliament of Relig- ions? It was this hour. Just before Dr. Barrows opened the Parliament, he called the delegates together. In that company were Buddhist priests from India, and Brahmins from Ceylon, bright with their turbans and brilliant with their many- coloured robes ; priests from Japan, teachers of Confucius from China, representatives of the Greek Church from Athens, scholars from Upper Egypt and Lower Arabia, 268 The Universal Note in Christianity Three men were there who professed the faith of Mahomet, and many varieties and schools of Christianity represented. How was the Parliament to be opened ? In that hour a Brahmin was ready with the an- swer. He said that for years he had called the Lord's Prayer the Universal Prayer. And then, to the astonishment of everybody, it was discovered that Jesus had struck the universal note in prayer. And so, these Buddhists from Japan, the Brahmins and Parsees from India, Jewish rabbis. Gentile teachers, bishops of the Greek Church, prel- ates of the Roman Catholic, ethical teachers, all alike, bowed the head, and were gathered into one comprehensive petition, universal in its inclusiveness. For whatever was true in all these broken lights was gathered up and perfected in Jesus. What Jesus Christ and Christianity ask for is a few Parlia- ments of Religion. It seems, therefore, that the note of justice in all governments is not more necessary than the universal note of prayer that will meet the spiritual wants of all the races. If Christianity is to be a world-religion, it must meet a need that is universal among all the peoples — the need of a new heart. 269 The Fortune of the Republic If the literature of the various nations teaches anything, it teaches the universality of sin. Professors of theology in the semi- naries seem to think that they have a mo- nopoly of total depravity. Would to God that they had ! But, unfortunately, this doctrine, so dear to some hearts, represents a universal fact. Witness Seneca : " No virtue like truth and justice is natural to man. Magnanimity must be acquired." Does not the great Koman hit off your ex- perience ? For surely your heroisms and self-sacrifice have not come unasked, nor do they stay unurged. Witness Socrates : "Some men sin less, and some sin more. But evil is wrought into the very texture of our soul." Witness the universality of the sacrifices. Witness Cornelius, the Roman centurion, who had found Christ without having learned the Saviour's name, but who was deeply conscious of his sins. Well, if the sense of sin is universal then there must be a Saviour from its power, and the old evil heart must become a new pure heart. What the world wants, therefore, is a new life. The man who hates needs a new heart, so that he can love. The man who has suffered from an enemy and wants to kill the trans- 270 The Universal Note in Christianity gressor for his ingratitude, needs a new heart of magnanimity. The man who lives to self needs the new heart of self-sacrifice. And that is what science is trying to com- pel us to understand. The scholars insist that life comes from preexisting life. If you will boil the water, and kill every germ, and seal it tightly, the scientist will tell you that even after a million million years there will be no life there. The theory of self- originating life has gone to the limbo of exploded superstitions. What, then, shall be the source of this required new life ? "Where shall sinful man look for the Saviour from his sin ? It is in this need that we recognize the universal element in Christ as teacher, example and Saviour. What a man wants is some one who will lift him out of himself. The races ask for a Saviour who stands upon the earth indeed, but also one whose forehead touches the stars. He who reconciles man in his need and sinfulness to the righteous God, must be Himself a link between heaven and earth. Little wonder that in retrospect that figure hanging yonder where the sky and earth-line meet hath stretched up His hands to grasp the feet of God, while His own 271 The Fortune of the Republic pierced feet lend sanctity to our earth. So wondrous is the Christ in the glory and beauty of His life that the earth, out of whose elements His body was made, may well shine like a star that ought to be re- deemed. In His character He is the uni- versal man, — the one true cosmopolitan. We never think of Him as essentially Hebrew ; the red and yellow and black races never remember that He was white ; but all the races, when they behold the beauty of His face, exclaim : " Lo, He whom I have long desired ! " What virtue, that is not supremely perfect in Him ! What heroism I What fortitude and moral courage! What victory over poverty! What tenderness to childhood ! What gen- tleness to the broken-hearted ! How did He breathe hope into the hopeless hearts ! The little child may come, the great patriot in his victory, and the martyr in his defeat ; the dying mother and the falling statesman may stretch their hands to Him. In the darkest night He whispers that the path in which our world passes is starlit; that God is nigh ; that the gate of hope is never closed ; that the hours that sweep us on carry us towards hope ; that God is always 272 The Universal Note in Christianity on the side of the transgressor, who turns with his eyes blinded with tears to re- trace his steps, and find the way home. Other names are great, but to whom shall we liken the man of Galilee, who hath journeyed forth from Bethlehem to trans- form the earth? Little wonder that to Him the great and small from every quarter are turning their faces I And the way in which He meets the universal need, and saves all souls, prophesies His coming victory. Jesus stands forth also, carrying full power to make all souls great. Having given ideals to men, He stands ready to lend these ideals power to journey out into all the earth. His religion is no hot-house affair, it is a summer climate that makes goodness and greatness indigenous. What the races want is some philosopher that will smash egotism, and make it shrivel up and pass away. No religion can be a world-re- ligion, that is not deeply altruistic. The world-system must take an individual, and lend him a surplusage of manhood and cause his heart to be like the palm tree in the desert, that having ripened leaves for itself, ripens dates for every passer-by ; must 273 The Fortune of the Republic be like the tropic orange, that having be- come beautiful in its own place, stores up a surplus of perfume, so that its sweetness can ride up and down the streets in a chariot of air ; must be like a river that overflows to feed cities and civilization before it leaps into the sea. Now this is exactly v^hat Christ is. He had extra goodness and greatness and spilled them over on His dis- ciples ; then He lent them extra goodness and greatness, and they overflowed upon little children who were ignorant, upon the sick, the lame, and the blind, and asylums were built ; and so through all the centuries, Christ has constantly been changing timid Peters into moral heroes, selfish Sauls into city-building Pauls. Our sun rolls forward with changeless diameter ; from the astron- omer's viewpoint it seems a small ball of fire. But go in any direction away from the sun for millions of miles and you are conscious that the sunbeam is travelling on like a strong man to run a race. Oh, won- drous figure, that touched our earth at Bethlehem, that communicated to man's progress an impulse that has never died away ; oh, beautiful spirit, that setting forth from Bethlehem has journeyed across our 274 The Universal Note in Christianity earth like a beautiful civilization I Outgrow Jesus and the evangel of God's love ? How can an ignorant pupil outgrow a great mas- ter? How can a slave-child outgrow the noble emancipator ? When sailors outgrow the north star, and its need on a dark night, then, and not till then, will the world out- grow the evangel of God's love and the cross of Jesus Christ. But this prophecy is fast becoming his- tory. These victories of Christianity are all but innumerable. Every morning one must waken to read the reviews and home and foreign press, lest one miss some world- achievement. Is it Japan ? Her fame is in the world. But fifty-four years since, her law threatened any missionary or foreign merchant with beheading. And now listen to that Japanese admiral who at a meeting the other day in Detroit, described a bat- tle in the Sea of Japan and his part in it, and ended by saying that for twenty j^ears he was secretly a Christian, and now openly one, and that all his sons and daughters shared his faith. How beautiful his elo- quent plea for more teachers, and his tribute to the Christian faith that he thought had done more for his land than commerce and 275 The Fortune of the Republic science ! Is it China ? Eead Mr. Chang, secretary of the special Chinese embassy, who is here studying American politics, prior to the proclamation of the new Chinese constitution : " When these special ambas- sadors shall have finished their labours and submitted the draft of the constitution, China will step out of the rank of absolute monarchies and enter that of constitutional governments." Is it rapidity of growth that you seek ? Then remember that news has just come from one of our churches and stations in the province of Canton, where fifteen hundred men and women have united with the church on profession of faith in the last nine months. Is it India you are thinking about ? Eemember that one station has in fifteen years grown to thirty thousand members. Is it Africa ? Up in Uganda, where Sir Henry Stanley started the first mission, his one teacher has in twenty-one years become seven hundred places of wor- ship, with two thousand teachers, physicians, evangelists and preachers. And these black men have just built a cathedral in Mengo, their capital. The building was constructed by the native Christians, under the direction of a missionary engineer. Kow these men 276 The Universal Note in Christianity work for Christ. All that they have is His. Plainly, another half-century and two or three continents will have been born, as it were, in a day. You may help the progress of this work, but try as you can, you cannot hinder it. Young men, what part are you to have in this great enterprise ? Are you investing your whole life in this high service? Have you consecrated your gold ? Do you look upon your salary as His ? Oh, I some- times wonder whether the heroic note is to pass to the working-people, and to these once despised folk of foreign lands. Their achievements and their self-sacrifice make me ashamed for my church, for myself, and for my country I Are men losing power to surrender themselves to great causes? Is this generation to repeat the mistake of the old generations of dead cities, by simply pursuing the things of self and pleasure ? Whenever culture begins to exist for its own sake, the scholar becomes selfish, and his wisdom is manna that rots. Whenever a business man pursues success and gold for himself, his money rusts ! Oh, you need not tell me about the pull towards money-getting. I know the story. Have I not seen five 277 The Fortune of the Republic ministers, of about fifty years of age, with their faraiHes dependent upon them, driven out of the ministry because the church gave them a beggarly pittance, on which they could not send their children to college, while they went into business to earn five times the salary ? Do I not know the college presi- dent, who built a splendid institution in the West, and became a nervous wreck, through work for others, and at sixty was dropped, and wrote me the other day from a ten-cent lodging house in New York, having in three months exhausted his little savings ? And yet he is a gentleman and a scholar, and lives and has always lived the highest and best life. Are there not three hundred ministers in a single denomination in and about New York, whose salary is less than a thousand dollars a year ? Business men have quadrupled their incomes in twenty years, but left the salary of the minister just where it was. I know a church in an adjoin- ing State that has a man on its board of trustees worth twenty millions, who asks one of his mission-workers to toil for eight hundred dollars a year, and who knows that these workers have hardly the bare necessities of life. 278 The Universal Note in Christianity I am ashamed of the selfishness of wealth. These men always ask others to do the sacri- ficing. These men who live on the gifts and talents bequeathed them by noble Christian parents, who betrayed their convictions years ago, and have not had a dollar's equity in their own souls for ten years, and whose every pore is stamped with a dollar mark, come to me and say that they are so glad that I am in favour of keeping up the schools and missions and clubs, and holding Ply- mouth Church down in a region that has become foreign. Oh, yes, they know that there are sixty thousand poor foreigners in this end of the city, and these foreigners must be Americanized, and they want me to keep guard over them, while they steal a bank or run off with a railroad. Their Sun- days are for the automobile and banquets, and getting ready for a horse-show, for eat- ing and drinking and lounging, while other people teach childhood, labour from Sunday morning to Sunday night in schools and clubs, seeking to bear the burdens of the poor and the weak. It is even worse in politics. I notice that one multimillionaire has criticised our borough president, who is about to retire. 279 The Fortune of the Republic He thinks it is a terrible thing that a gifted young man should give himself to the law and practice of justice. He asks what is to become of the city and state if our young men of light and leading desert the political arena ? Well, here is a city that loads its most prominent public official with heavy duties, asks him to submit to a thousand calls, expects him to work by day and night to solve the greatest problems that can come to bear upon a public servant, problems of transportation and light, and heat, and water, and streets and public utilities, and then pays him a comparative pittance of seven thousand five hundred dollars, when, perhaps, he might earn forty in the law. But meanwhile, what about the college-presi- dent's family ? What about the minister's future ? What about the public official's to- morrow, when the millionaire asks the one to do all the sacrificing, so that he may save enough to buy a new thousand-dollar carriage or have another five-hundred-dollar recep- tion ? Oh, all ye young hearts, beware of the atrophy of heroism ! Happiness is in life. The number of high thoughts and noble re- solves we have I I take you to witness that 280 The Universal Note in Christianity I have never flattered men that I might use them, or withheld my convictions that I might keep them in my pews. Life without liberty is not worth living. With the years lying before you, consider well your plans. Build your life into the great things of Christ and His church. All things else whatsoever will go. Only eternal truth and character abide. What if you do grow tired on Sunday, teaching in your classes ? It is not at all necessary that you be an athlete. One thing is necessary, that while you do live you fulfill your duty and your divinely appointed task. It is not of the slightest importance whether you are poor or rich. One thing is important, that while you live, you live as a patrician gentleman, filling your life with service for man's sake and God's sake. Whether your gifts be many or few, give them to God ! Work, here ! There will be time to study, there. Here and now, do you serve ! Fall into the ranks of Christ's advancing army and His world- movement. Give your wisdom, give your money, here and now. Give your intellect, give your beauty, give your all to your Saviour, for man's sake and for God's saka 281 XII The New Ideal Commonwealth In what we denominate the Lord's Prayer, we have the social programme of Jesus. This prayer contains Christ's vision of the city of God, and the coming Golden Age. That which He prays for, to God, is that towards which He is working for men. What He wants God to send us from heaven is what He believes will bring happiness to the earth. If, by divine fiat, Christ's prayer had been instantly answered, the millennium would instantly have descended into the earth. For here, in miniature form, is His whole plan of individual redemption and social reconstruction. Sincere prayer is simply our highest ideals and noblest visions rushing into verbal form. Enlarge a seed and you have the shock ; develop the babe and you have the sage and statesman; expand the fire-mist and you have a habitable world. Not otherwise does the Lord's Prayer hold the mother-ideas of all social institutions that 282 The New Ideal Commonwealth are related to a perfect age. Enlarge the Lord's Prayer and expand it, and you have John's vision of the new city of God and the ideal commonwealth. Condense John's vision of the city of God, and you have the Lord's Prayer. In the old Greek myth is the story of the growth of our beautiful world. The god on Mount Olympus sits beside a stone jug. Waving his wand a cloud of smoke issues, expands into a golden mist, breaks up into stars and suns, and soon a world, with hills and valleys, is spread out, at the foot of the mountain. It was the Greek poet's way of describing how God made little things to be large. In Christ's prayer, we have in the small the social teachings that give us an ideal society ; for His is mother-speech, world-thinking, and the answer to His prayer means that every man shall sit in peace under his own vine and ^g tree, enjoying the fruits of his own garden. " Our leather, who art in Heaven.^'' Ko one knew better than Jesus that that word, " Our Father," contained the germ of politi- cal and social revolution for His age. Jesus was not a destroyer, coming to break the 283 The Fortune of the Republic institutions as a potter's rod breaks the earthen vessel. The rather, His teachings descended on men like the dew that blesses, and not like the hail that breaks. His social ideas came slowly, like the rise of the dawn ; not swiftly, like the stroke of the lightning and the earthquake. The early conception of God had been of a world-force, then of a world-mind. The spring of these ideas was in the intellect, and its effect was culture. The source of Christ's conception was in the heart, and its result was charac- ter and conduct. He knew that the mili- tarism and political autocracy could not en- dure among men who had learned that fatherhood was the final idea and revelation, in the conception of God. He fully under- stood that men who could truly say, " Our Father who art in heaven " would soon add, " our brothers who are on earth." If God is our Father, then the world is the great family home for all God's children who are brothers. These brothers who dwell under the same great rooftree must not injure the rooms in the world-house by wars. Brothers must not engage in feuds and in cruelties, directed the one against the other. God is our Father and all we are brethren. That 284 The New Ideal Commonwealth meant that there soon would be no more slavery, for brothers do not enslave each other, nor brand each other's hands with hot irons, nor make fetters for each other's feet. God is our Father, and men are His chil- dren : that meant, no more exposure of little orphans, no more neglect of brothers who were blind, or deaf, or halt. God is our Father : that meant no more feuds in eccle- siasticism, with one man, a Jew, standing within the Holy Place, and enjoying all special rights and privileges of communion, and the other, a Gentile, standing outside of the heavenly pale. That great word. Father, also meant the rewriting of all theology, for it meant that a Father instead of a judge was on the throne ; that the Incarnation is the last and crowning revelation of God's heart; that the cross reconciles man to God, instead of reconciling a God of anger unto men in need ; that the end of redemption is charac- ter and likeness of the son to the Father, and the result of punishment, regeneration instead of retribution ; that all chastisements and sorrows are medicinal and full of mercy ; that God is love, because He is the Father, 285 The Fortune of the RepubHc and that in His ceaseless solicitude for men He neither slumbers nor sleeps. What revolutions in human thought and in social institutions are contained in this thought, " Our Father who art in heaven " ! The social teachings of this word descended upon an earth filled with armed regiments, with masters and emperors, and cruel despots, upon slaves and gladiators, even as the summer morn descends on the snow-clad hills of April, turning white flakes and frost crystals into flowers, herbs and grass. " Thy Icing dom come^ Thy will he done in earthy Here is a sentiment that sets kings trembling and thrones tottering. You can have no more iron militarism of Kome, no more cruelties in the palace of Herod, no more misgovernment by Pilate, after the Father's kingdom comes in earth. God's kingdom is the place where all men habitu- ally obey the laws of the Father ; the king- dom of earth is the place where all men habitually violate the laws of the Father. The kingdom of earth is the kingdom of selfishness, of disobedience to justice. The kingdom of earth is in this Roman master, who extorts luxury from a thousand slaves living on the edge of starvation. The 286 The New Ideal Commonwealth kingdom of earth is in Herod, who plays false to his palace, betrays his own soldiers, oppresses the poor, holds back the wage of his workers and makes earth to be a hell. The kingdom of earth in the scholar is in Byron, when he uses his splendid genius to lend beauty to Bacchus. The kingdom of earth is in the merchant, who uses his gifts to spoil men, until his wealth becomes like the Kiver Ehine, after it ceases to work, and in north Germany spreads out into a vast lake, a miasmatic pool, full of foul gases, a river that ought to have turned mill- wheels and kept sweet and pure by serving, a river that becomes a death-river, because it lives for itself alone. If the kingdom of heaven should come, and God's will be done, what would happen in Kussia to-day ? One hundred and twenty- nine millions of people in Russia own not a single title-deed to a foot of land ; ninety millions can neither read nor write ; these peasants own not a single book ; never see a newspaper ; scarcely know that war has gone on ; eat meat but once a week, wear leather coats, walk on dirt floors, know ugliness, filth, squalor, misery, while the absent land- lord lives in the city palace, leaving over- 287 The Fortune of the Republic seers to rack their rent out of them. If the prince and bureaucrat were to sincerely pray this prayer, " The Father's will be done among these, my serfs and peasants," the great estates would be broken up at once, peasants would be free to own their own vineyard and garden-plot ; it would no longer be a crime for a baroness to teach the peasant children to read and write ; Cossacks would no longer be hired at triple the usual wage to ride into groups of working-men and hack them down with swords. If God's king- dom should come, and the Father's will be done, in St. Petersburg, you could not have officers looting the royal hospital train, with the theft of all the surgeons' supplies, in- tended for the wounded soldiers in Port Arthur ; you would never again have the rich officer explain the looting of the train by saying that there was no use wasting treasures of the royal train on peasant soldiers — that " the Czar had a hundred and thirty million more of the dogs, anyhow." To-day feudalism is enthroned in Kussia. England gained Magna Charta in 1215, a representative parliament in the next cen- tury, broke up the great estates in 1646, des- troyed the doctrine of the divine right of 288 The New Ideal Commonwealth kings in the same revolution, put an end to feudalism and mediseval institutions. Now Eussia must gain freedom of speech, the liberty of the printing-press, the peasants' right to own lands, representative govern- ment, religious liberty, — and all in one revo- lution. Is Eussia to buy these treasures with rivers of blood? Every man who loves his kind ought to pray to God, by day and night, for thiese wretched millions. But if this prayer should be truly prayed by the Czar and the bureaucrats, autocracy would melt before the descent of the kingdom of God as the hoarfrost melts before the sum- mer's sun, for the kingdom of God from heaven means the new government on earth. " Give us this day our daily hread.'^'* Strange, that man, who of the whole order of animal creation, stands nearest to God, should alone, of all the animals, be compelled to pray daily for his bread ! Pass- ing strange, that man, God's child, alone is hungry ! Other animals find bread ; man must make it. Other animals have raiment, man must build a factory and make clothes. Other animals find shelter ; man must make tools and build his own houses. Bees find their clover-honey ready for them ; hungry, 289 The Fortune of the Republic the squirrels simply go and get their nuts; cold, the birds simply turn their heads to- wards the south. Man alone must waken to prayer, " Give me this day my daily bread," and work while he prays. At best, society is always within eyeglance and earshot of starvation. Yesterday water sold in Mos- cow at twenty cents a pailful. Bread also sold at forty cents a loaf. But a fortnight ago, and a member of the English govern- ment said that Great Britain was always within twenty-one days of hunger ; he therefore proposed that the government build great grain-depots in cities like Liver- pool and London, where the corn and wheat of the world should be stored without ex- pense to the owners, from whence their sales could be made. He calls this plan the free elevator and storage system, and in the event of war the government is to have the right of seizing the grain at the market price. But even in our own land we are always within a few weeks of possible hunger. Florida gathers certain fruits in February ; Georgia in March ; in June farmers cut their wheat in Kansas ; in late August the har- vesters of Dakota sharpen their sickles ; Sep- 290 The New Ideal Commonwealth t ember sees the grain of the Northwest garnered. But, should our earth, that trembles in its orbit, assume a little different angle towards the sun, a chill would creep into the August air, the frost would blight the corn and fruit and grass, and with No- vember, starvation would be on the land. Famine would stalk through the streets, pestilence would decimate the people. Scien- tists know this. It is people in cities who never think of the harvests, or how they are gotten, who are in danger of forgetting to pray. We live, we move, we breathe, in God. The thoughtful man is the profoundly religious man. But he who prays this prayer will be no drone, living on the sweets hived by the workers; no pauper, living on his rich father's estate ; no tramp, asking others to do the work. Nor will he eat devil's bread as a gambler ; nor lying bread, as a waterer of stock ; nor poisoned bread, as one who lives on other's passions ; nor the bread of cruelty, by withholding the wage of the poor, or using his gifts to spoil other work- men. This prayer, answered, would give us a new industrial order ; for hate between labourer and capitalist, would give the spirit 291 The Fortune of the RepubHc of good will. Two brothers living in a father's house, both dependent on the father for bread, in the hour of prayer will throw away their weapons, and cease to be over against each other like armed men, in the permanent feud that now exists between labourers and capitalists. " Forgive us out debts ^'* What a sentence is that in the Apostles' Creed — " I believe in the forgiveness of sins " ! To a young German boy an old monk once said, as he closed the Bible chained to the table in the monastery, " Of a truth, God can forgive sins." That sentence lingered in Luther's mind like a flood of golden sunshine. It made Martin Luther the reformer of Germany. ISTor could it be otherwise. Every man ought to find himself who has learned how to be at peace with his own record. The man who has come to terms with God has nothing to fear in this life or the next. Contrariwise, to blind one's eyes to one's own sins, for the glutton, or the thief, or the liar, to ignore his trans- gressions, is for the workman in Holland to turn his eyes away from the break in the dyke, for the sailor to neglect the leak in the ship, for the householder to forget the 292 The New Ideal Commonwealth spark that has fallen into the shavings, or for the ailing man to be careless of the disease that, if not cured, will end his career. " Forgive us our sins " ? Why, sin is the first and the great fact. [N'ature is always on the track of the transgressor. Physiol- ogy is always threatening the drunkard ; the stomach and brain are always warning the profligate ; the outraged nerves are al- ways prophesying revolution for the youth who disobeys their laws. Nature works remorselessly, and will not intermit her penalties. The prodigal son comes home, and his father forgives the sin ; yes, but the punishment goes on. The youth's health is lost. The years that are wasted are gone forever. The April fields of opportunity were sown to thorns and weeds, and now there are no sheaves of wisdom and fame and wealth for the October of old age. God forgives sin — forgives absolutely^ utterly — squarely — through and through — forgives and forgets — buries the sin in the depths of the sea, remembers it no more forever. But listen, " Forgive us our debts as we forgive our de'btors.'''' What if you capitalists are never forgiven of God any more fully than you forgive your workmen ? 293 The Fortune of the Republic What if God is always as hard on you as you workmen are hard on your employers ? You say that you helped that man, put him on his feet, loaned him money, made him what he is, and then he stabbed you in the back. " Forgive him ? Never ! I'll see him damned first." No : Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors : you cannot pray this prayer with a heart full of hate ; with a mind black with enmity ; with your soul as full of brooding thoughts of anger and enmity as a hole in the rock is full of rattlesnakes, or the night is full of bats and wolves and creatures that crawl and creep. When you sleep to-night, you sleep in the great world- house, the family chamber, and all about you are your earth-brothers, and the one who keeps watch over you is your Father, and His banner is love. And you must not hate ; and you must pray one prayer, " For- give us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." And when you pray it, for the first time perhaps in your life, a great, deep, sweet peace will come in like the tides of God, and lift your little life-craft from the shallows and float you out into the deep, where peace, perfect peace, 294 The New Ideal Commonwealth and happiness, abiding happiness, and se- curity, the security of the wings of God, shall be your possession forever. Plainly, Christ looked upon our world as a testing-place, a wrestling-ground, a moral gymnasium, a school of discipline, a uni- versity of character. Virtues must be gained, and kept. Character must be strug- gled for. " The virtues will not come un- asked nor stay unurged." The innocence of Adam and Eve, possessed because the hedge keeps the serpent out, is worthless. Better fling the gate open and take the ser- pent in, and have a goodness that is of free choice and a character that is built up by battle, than to have the soft and worthless "innocence" that is pure ignorance! So God pulled all the fences down, and turned all the temptations in, and put man on his mettle, and taught him by temptation and battle and struggle and defeat and victory. From the very beginning every form of peril was let loose. Not a parent but feels this. The boy of ten, sent out to exercise each day, is exposed to rain or wind or snow or heat, and while the parent trembles, he knows that the way of exposure is the way of hardihood and health. Time for travel 295 The Fortune of the Republic comes, and the parent sends the youth out into the world, to run the risk of storms at sea, accident in the forest, dangers in the mountain. It is better so. The path of risk is the path of glory. Into the great city goes the youth, to make his fortune. A thousand temptations are on every side. Doors that open towards the abyss are on every street-corner ; white and beautiful hands hold out the cup of flame ; evil men flourish like the green bay tree ; gamblers, speculators, prosper ; noto- rious men receive honours ; men with double lives in politics and finance are buried with honour. The parent trembles, but sends the youth into the thick of the moral figbt, and by day and by night he praj^s, " Lead us not into temptation. Oh, Lord, do not make the way too long, the rocks too sharp, the cup too sweet, the demon of temptation to be transfigured into an angel of beauty and of light. Expose the snare in the sight of the bird. Deliver us from eviiy But when the man has prayed this prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," for himself and his children, he must pray it for others also. That man must not own a tenement- house whose vicious surroundings will lead 296 The New Ideal Commonwealth his renters' children into temptation. He must not let his property for saloons or evil hotels, or make his business to be a death- trap and lure to evil. He must not, as politician, debauch men. He must not as merchant tempt them — his clerks, boys and girls — by giving them a wage so small that they must eke out subsistence by sin. In- dustrially, if this prayer were answered, it would open up a gulf and swallow half of these streets with the saloons and evil re- sorts ; it would bring half of the tenements crashing down ; it would destroy absolutely the headquarters of corrupt political rings ; it would smite into nothingness the whirl- pools of speculation ; it would set up the city of God in yonder Babylon, and for hate and strife in the market-place give quiet indus- try, fruitful work, pure hearts, happy lives. And doubt not but that this day will come. For the kingdom of earth shall be- come the kingdom of our God. His is the power. And because the Father is able. He will bring in the Golden Age. Long have we prayed, " Thy kingdom come," and the new social order is coming, and to God shall be the glory. ]^o more war, no more trampled cornfields ; no more bloody streets ; no 297 The Fortune of the Republic more tumult and strife between labour and capital ; no more corruption in legislative halls. Industry shall become a fruitful vine, whose leaves shall heal the nations. The laws shall be obeyed. Liberty shall bless and not curse man. Open shall be all the paths to the schoolhouse ; beautiful, also, the threshold of church and library and lecture-hall. In peace each man shall dwell under his own vine and fig tree. For the Lord's Prayer shall at last be answered, and the City of God shall be set up in our earth. 298 XIII " One Man Soweth, and Another Reapeth " Christ is now stating for His disciples the universal elements in His kingdom. He has already given them the universal name, our Father in heaven ; the universal prayer, the Lord's Prayer ; the universal need, the new heart ; the universal law, the law of love and sympathy ; and He is about to give the universal hope, the hope of life immortal. But here and now He is talk- ing to them about the law of one's life-work, the handing forward of personality and influence. And the law of this is, that we reap a harvest of happiness that our fathers sowed ; and that we in turn are to sow har- vests of well-being that other hands will reap. The philosophy of the law is that God's plans are long plans. His vine is a vine of power and influence, whose boughs stretch over generations, while His sheaves wave, 299 The Fortune of the Republic not over furrows, but across centuries ; so that two generations are necessary to com- pass the space between seed-time and har- vest. Fortunately, nature makes this law clear. As things go up towards excellence, they ask more time for full growth. In the garden, a week answers for the mushroom, a month for the radish, a summer for the shock of corn, five summers for the peach, while fifty are necessary for the oak and elm. Not otherwise is it in the kingdom of morals. In a single hour the parent can teach the child the folly of cutting his fingers. But when you rise to the culture of the disposition, and the sweetening of the whole life and the uplift of a nation, long time becomes necessary. Thus the teacher, the patriot, the merchant, sow in sorrow, and die, not having received the promise. Then when long time has passed, the son doubles the achievements of his father ; the young patriot overthrows polit- ical abuses that his dead leader supposed were intrenched forever ; and, standing on his teacher's discoveries, and beginning where his master left off, the pupil pushes the horizon back, and finds out secrets that would have amazed his guide. So one sows 300 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth" and another reaps. One man labours and an- other enters into the fruit of his labours. But hardly had Christ completed His statement of this law of work and influence than His disciples began to illustrate it. In the hour of persecution they fled from Jerusalem in all directions, some into the north towards Babylon, some to the south- east towards Arabia, one group to the cities to the south of the Mediterranean, and an- other group to the cities of the northern coast. Everywhither they went, preaching the kingdom of righteousness, peace and love. Beholding them afar off, brutal leaders went forth to meet the Apostles with stones and clubs and swords, and soon ten of them had achieved a violent death. But what they sowed we have reaped. Lift up your eyes and behold a world filled with free cities, blessed with religious liberty, political equality and the full rights of op- portunity and work ! Yet in the hour when Christ stated the law it staggered the dis- ciples. "Why should one have to sow and another reap ? Why should one labour and toil, and another enter into the reward ? Does not sowing mean the weary foot, the aching back and the dripping brow ? Do 301 The Fortune of the Republic we not associate shouts with the sheaves and the harvest festival with the reaping ? Nothing is so hard as the opening of the fur- row and the sowing of the seed. What sup- ports the toiler is the foresight of the harvest. Once convince the Finns that what they sow the Kussians will reap, and these outraged peasants will refuse to cast away their seed. Once let the Macedonians believe that if they plant the vine the Turks will pluck the clusters, they will henceforth neglect their vineyards. The Bulgarians will not build houses that others may dwell therein. Any- thing, therefore, — war, brigandage, unjust taxation — that tends to render the harvest uncertain, discourages the sowing. But in bold, clear, unmistakable terms Jesus Christ tells His disciples that He sends them forth to sow a harvest they shall never reap. He capitalizes the difficulties. He tells them that He sends them out as sheep among wolves, He gives them no purse, no staff, no promise of the reward of a far off reaping. Some- thing in His appeal to His followers reminds us of Garibaldi's. After the Italian hero was driven out of Rome by the French he found refuge in a peasant's hut. In an hour when he was covered with blood and 302 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth" pierced with balls and bayonet-thrusts he sent forth this call for troops : " Soldiers, what I have to offer you is this : hunger, thirst, cold, heat, no pay, no barracks, no rations, frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet ; who- ever loves honour and fatherland, follow me." And four thousand men followed him to their death. Thus also was it with Christ. He sent His soldiers out to capture fortresses with no weapons save their bleed- ing fingers and their prayers. But the dis- ciples met the stone, the club and the sword with forgiveness and the martyrs' courage. Soon they fell on death. They sowed and we have reaped harvests of the spirit, ca- thedrals of worship, Te Deums of praise, literatures, new laws and liberties, happy homes and the immortal hope that arms life against death itself. For we have en- tered fully into their labours. Consider the justice of this law of influ- ence. It would be easy to establish the in- tellectual supremacy of Christ over other teachers by His statement of this principle alone. Lift up your ej^es and behold the na- tions. Of all social wealth we can only say that one soweth, another reapeth. Immeas- 303 The Fortune of the Republic urable the wealth of this republic. Our treasure, in lands, in pastures and meadows, in fields of cotton and of wheat, in flocks and herds, in farmhouse and factory, in car and ship, represents some ninety bil- lions of dollars. The sum of this treasure represents wealth so vast as to stagger im- agination itself. And to whom does it be- long ? Is this treasure the possession of the forty millions of adults ? Strictly speaking it all belongs to the children and the babes in the cradle. These little ones, who have never opened a single furrow, are to reap this great harvest of wealth. These babes will ride in cars they have never built, will sail in ships they never constructed, will use looms and engines they never invented. They are going to live in mansions on the avenues and cottages in the streets that their hands never founded. They will read books they never wrote. They will enjoy laws they did not enact. They will use liberties they never won. They will laugh over comedies and weep over tragedies and exult and sing through solemn prayers, not one of which they ever made. For the great merchants, the inventors, the architects, the authors will to-morrow all pass on forever. 304 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth" O, if you young men and women had the magician's skill, or the wand of imagination, and could make the past to live, how real this statement would become, that one gen- eration sows and another generation reaps. And what sorrow of sowing was that of our fathers ! They came to inhospitable shores. Nature met them with storms, with bleak- ness, with savage beasts and still more savage men. Midst the snow they hewed out the forest and founded the town. They subdued the wild grasses and conquered the niggardly soil. They cut roads through the wilder- ness j they covered the hillsides with fruit trees ; they tunnelled the mountains ; they bridged the rivers ; they uncovered the coal. In the far off Western forests what heroism and what privation, and what tears from the sowers ! What tragedies written in the story of Lincoln's mother's little mound in the wilderness ! Breathing the malarial air that rose from the new soil, they shivered with cold and burned with fever. When that group named the Iowa Band went forth to lay the foundation of a state they laboured not for themselves alone. They sowed a harvest of intelligence and wealth for another generation. Few of them ever saw the 305 The Fortune of the Republic result of their labours. On their tombstones you may write these words : " In the wilder- ness they were born ; there they lived ; in the wilderness they died." But what they desired to see, and died without seeing, their children have beheld, namely, the wilderness become a city ! And the rich harvest that is now ripening from all that earlier sowing is all yours. Yours their houses, their lands, the comforts they created, the laws they passed, the railways they built. Yours their gold, their silver ; they wove a rich texture whose threads are golden with treasure, and spread this shining web over all the land, the beads being great towns and cities. For verily, one generation sows and another reaps. Our fathers laboured and we have entered into the fruit of their labours. Having vindicated the justice of our sow- ing a harvest of happiness that we shall never reap, because we have reaped harvests that we never sowed, consider that this is not merely a national law, but it is also an intellectual law for the individual. Our age makes much of its great men. We never tire of praising them. We celebrate their birthdays. We make a pilgrimage to Stock- bridge to see Jonathan Edwards' chair. We 306 " One Soweth, Another Reapeth " pay a fortune for a little relic from Strat- ford. The city preserves the pen with which the great author wrote. We make long journeys to some foreign land to stand be- fore the house where the hero was born. All this is right. Nor are we here to belit- tle the achievements of great men. But jus- tice to the army of unrecognized heroes is also important. These great ones of earth stand on the shoulders of unseen helpers. Knowledge represents a progression. Some- times the life-saving crew link hands, make a long human chain, running out into the waves, and if the man furthest from the shore gets the praise of succour, all the mem- bers of the chain deserve like commendation. Not otherwise is it in the realm of intel- lectual discovery. We praise Isaac Newton, but if Isaac Newton were living, the great scholar would be the first man to insist that he reaped a harvest of knowledge that others had sown for him. Ptolemy thought the blue sky was a dome, that the stars were holes in the dome where God set candles burning, that the moon was a larger aper- ture, and opened into the palace, or banquet- ing hall of the gods, that was never dark. But some of the astronomers devoted a life 307 The Fortune of the Republic to the overthrow of Ptolemy's view, and they made ready for Newton's coming. Galileo invented a telescope to multiply the power of the coming Newton's eyes. Kep- ler discovered the great laws of motion, and handed over to Newton four powerful instru- ments. Copernicus proved that the sun was the centre, shepherding the planets. What harvests of wisdom were these ! But for these unseen friends who had laboured, and into whose labours Isaac Newton entered, there would have been no discovery of the law of gravitation. He took the next step forward. We praise Isaac Newton and rightly do we praise him. In that hour when Newton saw that his computations were to establish the soundness of his theory of gravitation, he became so agitated that his hand could not hold the pen, and he asked his helpers to complete a task for which joy had made him unequal. But when the world poured a flood of honours upon the philoso- pher, it quite forgot the unseen sowers who stood back of Newton, whose ripe sheaves he had harvested. They laboured. He entered into the fruit of their labours ! Sometimes an intellectual movement for a nation illustrates this law of work and in- 308 " One Soweth, Another Reapeth " fluence. During the Middle Ages man's mind was darkened. The symbol of that generation, Symonds says, is Bernard, rid- ing around Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The monk's eyes are closed and while his head is bowed over the neck of his mule, his fingers are counting the beads. For him there are no white clouds in the sky, no white mountains like altars of prayer on the horizon, no blue lake at his feet, no forests of pine covering the hillsides like the garments of God. He closes his eyes, and mutters his prayers, and counts his beads, lest the light and joy of this world break in upon his soul, and flood it with splendour. Then, one day, in this dark epoch, an old man appears in Florence. He is clothed with rags ; he is miserably poor, but he has one treasure, a roll that he has brought from a far-off tomb in Athens. The stranger assembles the idlers on the street. In low, sweet voice, he reads to them the tales of Agamemnon, of the elo- quence of Nestor, the beauty of that Helen over whom kings fought, the fidelity of Penelope, the story of that Ulysses who wandered afar, but finally returned to his fireside altar. The strange black letters on 309 The Fortune of the Republic the old manuscripts looked like magic to the ignorant Italians. The wonderful tales spread like wildfire. The old scholar be- came a hero. The prince received him into the palace. The manuscripts were multi- plied. Knowledge became a sacred con- tagion. A school was founded, that the people might listen to lectures on these old Greek poets. Artists came forward to illus- trate the manuscripts. As the parent awak- ens the child from sleep to the joy and duties of the day, so these old Greek mas- ters wakened the Italian mind that had been sleeping for centuries, and led it forth into the joys of this wonderful world. What seeds had the old Greek orators and philosophers and poets sown ! What an in- tellectual harvest is this that we find in the outburst of art I The rise of the inventors, the great voyages of the discoverers, the overthrow of feudalism, the rise of the new liberty ! Italy became the land of wealth, rich with a thousand sheaves. Her art-galleries, and her cathedrals, and her palaces, were stuffed with the harvests of the intellect. But do not forget that hands long since dust had sown these harvests. Petrarch and Boccaccio reaped that on 31Q "One Soweth, Another Reapeth" which they had bestowed no labour. Athens laboured, and Florence entered into the fruit of her labours. But whatever is true in one kingdom of life must be true also in other kingdoms. We are not surprised, therefore, to dis- cover that this principle of one sowing and another reaping holds in the industrial world. Much of the wealth of to-day can hardly be called ours. The trains are now coming over the mountains from California laden with grapes, and soon the raisins will come, and the oranges. Most fascinating, the history of this wealth. When Cortez returned from Mexico he carried shiploads of gold and silver and various forms of wealth back to Spain. But the missionaries were not seeking men's gold, but men's souls. They therefore broke with Cortez, and fled into the mountains. Making their way to the shores of the Pacific, they jour- neyed north. One of these teachers carried w^th him the root that after centuries has become the celebrated Santa Barbara vine. Its trunk is like a man's trunk for thickness, and in a single summer it ripens tons of grapes, competing with the historic vine in Hampton Court. And the raisin-grapes that The Fortune of the Republic now feed the world, this great store of the fruit of the vine that journeys over the mountains to feed these far off States, we owe to that humble priest. He laboured, he suffered incredible hardships, he perished in the desert, he was stricken down by sav- age Indians, but dying he left the furrow open. He laboured, and we have entered into the fruit of his labours. Last summer I went into the Kensington Museum in London to study the rise of the tools. I never knew before that clergymen had invented five of the greatest wealth- producing tools in history. There I saw the first reaper, made by the Kev. Peter Bell. It is a rude mechanism, held together by copper thread and filaments of pounded iron and old rope. His church paid the man a very poor salary. Also the task of so ex- plaining the Confession of Faith as to make it seem reasonable took all the hours in the day and left the poor man no time for work in the garden. Plainly, if he were to do both things, he had to invent a tool that would work for him while he studied the catechism. Thus the poverty of the preacher wrought great wealth to the people in the pew by inventing inventive discovery. 312 " One Soweth, Another Reapeth " Some ten years later a newspaper account of this reaper seems to have drifted to this country, and with nothing but the sugges- tion, Mr. McCormick reinvented the reaper on lines original and peculiarly his own. That reaper enabled us to win the late war, in that an old man or a girl could drive the machine while the strong men were set free to go to the front. And what shall I more say, save this, that Whitney invents his cotton-gin and multiplies the value of every acre of cotton-land by ten, and dies in poverty. Whitney labours, the Southern planters found an association to fight his patents, and they enter into the fruit of his labours. Goodyear toils unceasingly for a score of years over his task of vulcan- izing India-rubber, and dies heart-broken ; the sailors, dry midst the storm, the miners, comfortably standing in the water, the mil- lions in the forest and in the fields and in the cities, who go dry shod under the drenching rain — these reap what the in- ventor sowed. He laboured, we have en- tered into the fruits of his labours. Some of you young men think that the world owes you a living. Why, if you lived a million million years, if you toiled without. 3^3. The Fortune of the Republic slumber or sleep, think you you would ever be able to repay the debt you owe to the great society round about you ? The world does not owe you a living I You owe the world a thousand lives, for your harvest of good fortune is a reaping that other men sowed. This law of the sower is a moral and spiritual law. Keats, dying, insists that his name is writ in water, but we know that it was written in triple brass. Experience has also taught us that every man who lives writes his full life-story indelibly on the world about him. Shakespeare says the good that men do . is often interred with their bones, but the evil that they do lives after them. No wise man can doubt that both evil and good live forever. On every side we behold men of wickedness all compact, the mere weight of whose being scatters in- iquity and breeds strife and sin. It is as if their souls were set on fire of hell, and they kindle a conflagration as they journey through life. Think of the politicians who have looked upon their positions as a form of personal graft, and have preyed upon the people as the harpy feeds upon the dead vic- tim again. Think of the authors of salacious books, men who have become the high 314 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth " priests of Bacchus and Yenus, who have en- abled drunkards to sing attractive songs, and wreath the sepulchres of sin with flow- ers. All these have made Satan to stand forth in the guise of an angel of light. Sometimes a nation illustrates this harvest of iniquity, and a whole people have con- spired together to sow transgression, the fathers sow the wind, the children reap the whirlwind. The one generation labours to scatter tares, and the next generation reaps tares, and starvation, and retribution im- measurable. Witness the career of Spain. In 1478 Torquemada set up the inquisition. In a few months four thousand Christians who interpreted their religious faith for themselves, were burned alive. In 1492 the edict was extended against the Jews. They were bidden to leave Spain, and at the frontier were searched for hidden gold and silver. In Portugal they were sent as slaves to the sugar-plantations and the markets of Algiers and Constantinople. Eight hundred thousand of these wretched folk were driven to suicide or death. They flung themselves into the wells. Fronted by starvation, the father slew his entire family. The Moors, believing that they had swallowed their The Fortune of the Republic gems, tortured them with swords. Two hundred thousand were driven to the boats on the Mediterranean. Coming to the shores of Italy, they were denied the privilege of landing ; Genoa put soldiers on her wharf. The miserable creatures, an- chored in sight of the beautiful shores of Genoa, slowly starved to death or died from the pestilence that broke out. In a year they were all dead. But the evil that Genoa did to these people lived afterwards for the Genoese. These dead bodies that floated to her shores brought pestilence with them. Soon in the palaces of Genoa went up the death-cry, and in three months 20,000 of her citizens were dying or dead, and Genoa has never been the same city since. The father sowed selfishness, the children reaped sick- ness, the grandchildren reaped poverty and death. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. What you sow, another shall reap. For when the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. This principle gives us the measure of per. sonal worth. That man is worth the most to the state who sows the greatest harvests for coming generations. That man is worth least who lives for to-day and to-day alone* 316 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth " The men that we call practical are often most unpractical. Contrariwise, the men whom we call dreamers are oftentimes sturdy and practical men. When a man founds a business, he first considers the running expenses. If he makes two per cent, clear he will soon fail ; if he makes six, he pros- pers. If he makes twenty, he will soon be rich. Not otherwise is it with God's invest- ment in a man. If the individual man uses his seven days in hard work to support his family, and produce property that will soon rot or decay or rust, the man is a poor in- vestment ; he simply runs the business and brings in no increment of value or overplus for society. If the man, considered as a divine investment, can save a half -day for the great things that count, teaching the truths that abide, inspiring the discouraged, lifting up the fallen, bringing the wander- ers back, shaping the career of children and of youth, that man is reaching forward into the future and controlling far off events. In measuring a man, therefore, think of his present life, plus two generations in which his influence is continued, and then you get the full scope of his being. From this view- point there are many men whose footsteps 317 The Fortune of the Republic cause yonder city to tremble, who will in a single generation perish into utter oblivion. On the other hand, there are certain men toiling among the poor, working among our immigrants ; there are modest teachers in the mission schools, there are men in the Bible-classes on Sunday afternoon, who are training hundreds of these 3^oung foreigners, and through these newcomers, with their fine bodies, these obscure teachers will create within the next generations more wealth, ten to one, than some of those who are given a place among the great ones of earth. For good work does not perish. Truth is not lost. Example does not evaporate like the mist. The flower's perfume dissolves, but not the soul's. That abides forever. That foolish Pietro made Michael Angelo carve an angel in snow to show his gay com- panions that he could control the greatest genius in Florence. But when the work was done, Michael Angelo exclaimed, " You think my work is temporary, because it is in snow, soon melting. But know that I have created an ideal so beautiful and so pure that it is written forever upon your memory. You thought it would perish because it was in snow. Henceforth it is in the soul that 318 "One Soweth, Another Reapeth" endures. If you continue in evil, it will rise up like an avenging angel and smite you." (I do not mean that Michael Angelo ever said this — it is what I think he ought to have said, and must have said.) Xnd long afterwards the great artist's obedience and his bravery reappear, shaping Mrs. Brown- ing's poetry, colouring Kobert Browning's life. For the great are not dead. Is Eaphael dead ? His brush was never so powerful. Is Dante dead ? His songs were never so piercingly sweet. Are the reformers dead ? They live like the trees and vineyards their hands planted. Are the martyrs dead ? In our vision-hours their souls flash like the wings of the spirit of God. All these jour- ney on from generation to generation. Our parents were never so forceful in our lives as they have been since they were lifted up, while from the heavens they rain love and inspiration upon us. For our successes are theirs and theirs our virtues. They laboured, they suffered, they taught, they prayed, they achieved, they sacrificed, they died ; the golden harvests of character that they sowed we have reaped. God bless their memory forevermore I 319 The Fortune of the Republic Therefore, open your hand and sow your seed. Give out your influence as freely as the sun sows its heat and light over the dark planet. Sow a sweet atmosphere and scatter it everywhither, as the flowers pour forth their perfume. Sow to-morrow the soil with kind words and gentle bearing, even as the prairies are sown by the winds that are rich in invisible spores and seeds for future har- vests. Do not be niggardly in your life — give, that you may receive again. Be kinder to your friends. Be more generous to your children. Practice praising them and leave blame to others. Accumulate weight of man- hood, that unconsciously you may distribute treasure. It is better to have saved a news- boy from discouragement, to have recovered a clerk from his wrongdoing, to have brought a sunny hour to an invalid, to have stated a great truth to a group of children — it is better to have saved a life, than to have won a kingdom. Then, open the furrow and sow your har- vest. Sow, as you cross the continent of the years, and God's angel will follow after you, and bring in the sheaves. You may open the furrow with tears, but when the sheaves come you will rejoice with shoutings. Give 320 " One Soweth, Another Reapeth " a cup of cold water and God will give you in return of the Eiver of the Water of Life. For they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. 321 Index Ability for organiza- tion a wealth pro- ducer . 134, 135 Abraham 74, 83 Achilles 265 Adam 185 Adams 262 Adventurous spirit, decline of the . . 191 Affiliation between the state and schools of learn- ing 103 Agamemnon .... 309 Alcibiades . . . 154, 265 Alva 246 Angelo, Michael . . 132 318, 319 Annexation of Texas . 78 Arbitration and Peace Conference at Lake Mohouk . 41 Argument of Nature as a warning, The 178 Arkwright . . . 165, 261 Arnold, Matthew . . 96 Athletic spirit in our colleges, the . . 194 Austrian Emperor at Innsbruck . . 47, 48 Bach 107 Bacon, Lord . 184, 252, 261 Bakewell, Robert . . 164 Barrows, Dr 268 Beaumont & Fletcher 18 Beautiful, Influence of and diffusion of the ... . 25, 26, 27 Beeoher 35, 255 Bell, Rev. Peter, and his invention . . 312 Bernard 309 Blue Laws of Connec- ticut 249 Boccaccio 310 Braddock 92 Bradford . . 252, 260, 262 Breaking down of ra- cial and sectional barriers, the . . 12 Brewster . . 252, 260, 262 Brotherhood, the law of . . . 230, 231, 232 Brotherly love and pa- triotism in the South .... 49, 50 Brown, John .... 252 Browning, Robert . . 319 Browning, Mrs. . . . 319 Bunyan 75 Burbank 149 Burdens upon public officials .... 280 Burns, Robert . 116, 127 133, 159 Burritt, Elihu ... 56 Bushnell, Horace . . 103 Byron 287 Cabot 244 323 Index California's fruit wealth, origin of 311, 312 Calhoun 48 Calvin, John . . 39, 199 209, 210, 212 Carlyle, Thomas . 91, 104 his warning 187, 191, 259 Chamberlain, Joseph, 227 Champlain 244 Chang, Mr. (secretary of special Chinese embassy) . . . 276 Chapin 35 Christ, Jesus, His name uneclipsed 39 210 good news of, the . 40 • patriotism of . 52, 177 keeping Him alive in men .... 100 value of His vote . 104 His likeness . . . 121 His estimate of the individual . . . 126 ignored social con- dition 127 none too obscure to escape His notice 127 philosophy of indi- vidual excellence His remedy . . 128 His brotherhood with man . . 147, 230 231, 236 showing the signs of the times . 178, 179 182, 186 pointing out the cure for all ills . 187 His spirit .... 189 great simplicities, the .... 199, 213 His cross 200 Christ, His man- hood 207 ideal for His church 208 His teachings . . . 209 universality of His name 210 what He has done and will do . . 219 collapse of social schemes without Him 222 necessity for the liv- ing .... 228, 229 destruction of gladi- atorial games, the 231 greatest social re- former, the . . . 232 His emphasis of the individual ... 233 His relation to the labour problem . 233 234 His life as a carpen- ter 235 giving His life . . 239 His method . . . 240 Puritan and Cava- lier united before Him 252 His w o r 1 d-w i d e plans 263 His obscure birth . 264 universal note in His teachings, the 266 guide in prayer, a . 267 finding Him ... 270 as teacher, example and Saviour . . 271 glory and beauty of His life .... 272 power to meet the universal need . 273 power to make all souls great . . . 273 324 Index altruism of His re- ligion 274 His overflowing goodness .... 274 need of His evangel, the 275 building life into His plan .... 281 His scheme of indi- V i d u a 1 redemp- tion and social re- construction . . 282 source of conception of 284 His outlook upon our world . . . 295 universal elements in His kingdom . 299 His statement of the law 301 sowing the harvests 302 others reaping what He sows .... 303 His intellectual su- premacy .... 303 Christian educators and missionaries in the West, in- fluence of . . . 77 Christianity's affilia- tion with the arts and education . 87 Christianity a system of universals, 209, 210 Christianity, universal note in . . . 265, 266 Christianity, victories of 275 Church of the future, the .... 207, 208 Churches, the strug- gling 278 Church unity, the epoch of, now upon us . . 198, 199 Cicero 230 Civil War, burning away the barriers of 48 effects of annual re- union 50 its effects upon our nation . . 42, 43, 44 need for a perspec- tive to get its message and meaning . . .45, 46 Civilization a store house ..... Ill Class distinctions in the republic . . 157 Class hatred in France 156 Clay, Henry ... 56, 160 Clouds on our national horizon ... 63, 64 Commencement day, influence of . . 101 Commerce and trade working towards unity ... 19, 20, 21 Commercial prosperity and national de- cay often coex- istent 180 Commonwealth, social vision of the ideal 220 221, 222 Communal church, the great . 213, 214, 215 Conditions, intellec- tual, political and moral, existing in former times and in our own day . 10 Cooper 173 Copernicus 308 325 Index Cornelius 270 Corwiu, Senator . . 78 Crises, in the history of our country, three great ... 78 Crcesus . . . 101, 172 Cromwell . 254, 260, 262 Crying need of the age for inventive abil- ity, the ... . 168 Curtis, George Will- iam . . 35, 243, 255 Cutler, Manasseh . 76, 84 Cyrus 191 Daniel .... 183, 253 Dante .... 75, 81, 221, 226, 319 Darwin .... 107, 145 David 180 Davy, Sir Humphrey 160 Days without civic corruption, the . 72 Demagogue the curse of every era, the 154 Denominations, the amalgamation of the 211 Departure of the Pil- grim Fathers from Delfshaven . . 67, 68 DeSoto 244 Diffusion of books and pictures among the poor . . 152, 153 Drake 244 Dream, a German peasant's .... 86 Dreyfus decision . . 18 Dudley, Lord ... 26 Duncan, William, and the Story of Met- lakahtla .... 94 Education a conta- gion 20 Education the first fac- tor in human prog- ress ... 114, 115 Edwards, Jonathan . 39 306 Effects of the sense of ownership . . . 143 Effects of immigra- tion 57, 58 Elizabeth, Queen . 26, 245 Eliot, President's statement regard- ing the profes- sions 193 Emerson 72, 98, 107, 127 189, 191, 194 Enthusiasm for edu- cation 35 Eternity of truth, the 119 Everett, Edward . . 116 Ewald 147 Example of some few rich the hope of the future . . . 174 Evangel of God's love, final triumph of the 263 Every age and gener- ation has its own task 195 Factory and mining towns, certain conditions in . . 139 140, 141 Factory tragedy, the . 188 Failure of past dreams of the Golden Age, and the rea- sons for it . . . 222 Failure of the Beauti- ful to save men . 226 326 Index False ideas regarding wealth 163 Fathers, the, sense of righteousness and justice . . . 259, 260 achievements of the 65 temper and spirit of the 257 victory of the faith of our 258 Farraday, Michael . 160 Federated churches in Canada, Australia and New Zealand 211 Felix 253 Ferguson 160 Fiske 83 Forces working for unitv in the re- public, the . 11, 12, 14 Forefathers, the priva- tions of our . . 305 Forefathers' Day, cele- bration of . . . 241 Foreigners, the influx of 80 Forgiveness, God's ab- solute 293 Forgiveness, none where hate reigns 294 Forgiveness of sin, the 292 Fortunes won through ability 166 Foulon 156 Franklin 71 Free trade and protec- tion as factors in social salvation . 227 Future, the heritage of the 304 Garfield 56 Garibaldi .... 81, 302 Galileo 253, 308 . 327 Garrison, (Wm. Lloyd) 254 Genius of property a trust, the . . . 175 Gladstone . . 70, 86, 96 174, 255 God's method of de- veloping a nation by limitations . 74 Goethe 184 Gold discoveries in 1847, the ... 79 Golden harvests to be reaped from sym- pathy and love, the 320 Goodyear 313 Gorky, Maxim ... 55 Gough 35 Grant, (U. S.) . . . 160 Great evils still to be overthrown . . 219 Greatness and charac- ter, no royal road to 120 Great lesson of slav- ery, the ... . 109 Great generation that which is possessed by ideals, a . . 192 Green, (John Richard) 192 223 Guarding our institu- tions, the task of 99 100 Hamilton 71 Hampden . . . 260, 262 Handel .... 125, 136 Harte, Bret .... 80 Hatred between the masses and classes in Athens and in Paris 155 Hawthorne 93 Index Hector 265 Helen of Troy ... 309 Heroes in the intel- lectual realm . . 307 308, 309, 310 Heroic age in our his- tory, the .... 69 Heroic note, the . . 277 Herod ... 84, 180, 181 Herschel 266 Historian, task of the 9 Hitchcock, Dr. . . . 144 Homer . . .22, 75, 265 Hooker, Thomas . . 84 Horace 127 Howard, John ... 173 Hume 249 Huss, John . . 39, 81 Ideal for the Chris- tian Church . 204, 205 Ideal in morals, in Christianity and in liberty, the . 149 150 Immigrants, Ameri- canization of our . 61 Increasing the wage by increasing in- telligence . . . 137 Individual worth the secret of an in- creasing wage . 132 Industrious poor the bulwarks of all that is best in our civilization . . . 172 Individual excellence tested by history, theory of . . 123, 124 Individual excellence, necessity for . 121, 122 Individualism and so- cialism, the true test of 144 Influence of moral in- struction upon na- tional unity , 38, 39, 40 Influence, permanence of 318, 319 Institutions of our country a ground for patriotism . 54 Institutions arise from an individual, all great 125 Institutions, the aim of our 120 Institutions, the true test of 121 Iowa Band, the story of the . 85, 305, 306 Isaiah 194 Jackson, Stone- wall 48 Jefferson, Thomas . . 71 Jews in Spain, the . 315 316 John, the Apostle . . 283 John, the Baptist . . 194 Johnson, Samuel . . 50 Jones, Sir William . 106 Justification of our educational sys- tem 105 Keats 314 Kenilworth .... 26 Kepler 308 Kiplingj Rudyard . 110 Kossuth 81 Labour, the glory of 234, 235. 328 Index Laud, Archbishop . 199 210 Law of iufluence, jus- tice of tlie . . . 303 Law of the sower a moral and spirit- ual law, the . . 314 Law of work and in- fluence illustrated by the disciples . 301 302 Lengthening of child- hood and infancy, the .... 107, 108 Leon, Ponce de . . . 244 Lincoln, Abraham . 44, 56 58, 66, 116, 139, 141 160, 255, 262, 305 Living, itself a fine art 26 Livingstone .... 95 Lord's Prayer, the universality o f the 269 what sincere prayer is ....... 282 the germ of polit- ical and social rev- olution .... 283 fatherhood the final idea and revela- tion in conception of God 284 rewriting of all the- ology 285 what God's King- dom is 286 effect on Russia if God's Kingdom should come . . 287 288, 289 tnan's need of daily bread 290 Lord's Prayer would bring a new in- dustrial order . . 291 what would happen if it were an- swered indus- trially . . . 297, 298 Lovejoy, Owen ... 84 Lowell, James Rus- sell 63, 188 His "Sir Launfal," 189 190, 191, 193 Luther, Martin . . 81, 83 254, 292 Macaulay . - . 104, 255 Magna Charta . . . 288 Mahomet 269 Mallock .... 135, 165 Man who has come to terms with God, the ...... 292 Maudsley, Henry . . 165 Marlow 18 Marx, Karl . . .145, 221 Materialism the peril of the hour ... 97 Mazzini 81, 257 McCormick reaper, the 313 Medici, Pietro di . . 318 Memory of our dead heroes, the ... 66 "Men of Achieve- ment " and their careers, the . . . 158 Men who control New York, origin of the 88, 89 Men who make a na- tion rich, the . . 182 Milton . . 192, 193, 194 254, 261, 262 Misunderstanding the 329 Index message of proph- from our schools et and poet . . . 186 and colleges . . 105 Moral illiteracy, the Organization, results prevalence of . . 183 of 196. 197 184, 185 Organization in the Moses . . 74, 83, 85, 147 churches .... 198 his philosophy of na- Our age the age of hap- tion building . . 148 piness and good 253 fortune .... 151 Movement westward, Our era of national the 75, 76 need 190 Moral teacher, iuflu- Our Home Missionary ence of the ... 82 heroes 96 More, Sir Thomas . . 221 Our hope in the abil- 258 ity of poor boys . 169 Miiller 267, 268 Our need of new peo- ples 60 National greatness Our new territory and and happiness, new peoples . . 79 the true secret Our Western mission- of . . . 145, 146, 147 aries 91 Nation's debt to its teachers, the . . 118 Palissy 113 National prosperity, Parliament of relig- the basis of. . . 98 ions, World's . . 268 Nation's intelligence. Path of risk the path the need to doub- of glory, the . . 296 lethe Ill Paul . . . 126, 128, 253 Nature always on the Peabody .... 173, 174 track of the trans- Penelope 309 gressor .... 293 Penry, John .... 245 Nestor 309 " People of the Abyss " 188 New life, source of Personal worth, the the 271 measure of . 316, 317 Newton, Isaac . 125, 160 Personality and influ- 261, 307, 308 ence, handing for- Next step of engineer- ward 299 ing, the ... . 168 Petrarch 310 Novalis 102 Philip 2d 246 Phillips, Wendell .35, 84 One important thing 252, 254 to consecrate one's Pilgrim Fathers, story gifts to God, the . 281 of the . . . 244, 245 Optimism learned 246, 247 33<^ Index their early days in Puritan his power New England . . 248 and influence . . 25 Plato . . 19, 221, 230, 258 Pliny 117 Ealkigh, Sir Wal- Political campaigns ter 19 and discussion of Raphael 319 public questions, Reaper, invention of influence of, 22, 23, 24 the 164 Post, the Moravian Recognition of our Missionary, the heroes 307 story of Christian Reform, also a min- Frederic . . .92, 93 ister of unity . . 28 Preacher and the pas- Regenerative power of toral worker, the . 206 our institutions 56, 57 Prometheus . . .30, 31 Relations between Property a means for education and developing s o- wealth, the . . . 108 ciety and educat- Religion begins with ing mankind . . 169 prayer . ... 267 Prophecy fast becom- Religion world wide ing history . . . 275 that is not deeply • ' Protector of the Peo- altruistic, no . . 273 pie" and result Republic, soul fruits of his course, the . 237 of the 56 Ptolemy, .... 307, 308 Republic, the testing Puritanism, the spirit of the ..... 70 of 253, 254 Resources of one's Puritan Parliament, country the be- scene in the . . 259 ginning of patriot- Puritans, faults and ism, pride in the 52, 53 excellences of the 251 Result of sentiment of Puritan spirit, dis- social obligation . 217 semination of the 242 218 243 Results the test of any Puritan the founda- era . ... 196 tion of our social Rich of to-day the happiness and poor of yesterday, peace, the . . . 251 the 158 Pym 260 Rigault .... 130, 131 Righteousness, the em- QUALITIES that will phasis of civic . 258 make the ideal Riis, Jacob 58 man 252 Rivalry, results of di- Qualities that lent the vision and denom- 33^ Index inational . . 200, 201 Supreme claim of the 202 public schools, the 116 Robinson, John 67, 83 Symonds 309 209, 246, 254, 262 Eogers, Thorold . . 164 Romulus 75 Talus 256 Ruin of nations, "Ten Talent Man," causes of . . . 62, 63 course of another 237 Ruskin . 171, 173, 191, 206 238 "Ten Talent Man" who followed Savonarola . . 81, 254 Christ's ideal for Secret of the higher the people, the . 238 education the se- 239, 240 cret of national Temptation for others progress, the . . 106 as well as our- Schools and colleges, selves, avoiding . 296 influence of • • 31, 32 297 33, 34, 35 Testimony from va- Self -sacrifice, the new rious socialistic heart of .... 271 schemes 224, 225, 226 Seneca 231, 270 Theories, the true test Sewell's diary. Judge 250 for all 142 Shaftesbury . . 173, 174 Theories, two widely Shakespeare . 18, 125, 244 separated, the 261, 314 golden mean . . 129 Signs of peril in a na- Things that perfect a tion 178 nation and a man, Smeaton ...... 165 the 194 Social problem, uni- Third great epoch for versal interest in the republic, that the 216 of expansion, the 73 Society's interests one 162 Thoreau 98 Socrates ... 75, 253, 270 Thoughtful man the Solomon 180 profoundly relig- Spencer, Herbert . . 106 ious man, the . 291 107, 225, 226 Three generations Stanley, H. M. . 138, 276 needed to produce Steam engine, and its a great man . . 161 story, the ... 165 Time necessary be- Stephenson , . . 71, 160 tween seed-time Sumner, Charles . . 255 and harvest . . 300 Summer schools and Tolstoi 55 night classes . . 37 Torquemada .... 315 Index Total depravity a uni- versal fact . . . 270 Toyubee, Arnold . 28, 29 '' The Tramp of Com- ing Millious " . 73 Treasure and inherit- ance, our great- est .... 261, 262 Turner, J. M. W. . . 160 Ulysses ...... 309 Unifying power of the press ... 17, 18, 19 Unity, in what the true consists . . 213 Unity in the churches 41 Unity of language . 15 Universal element, new light on the . 266 Vane 260 Voltaire 155 Wallace, Alfeed Russell .... 184 Washington ... 58, 71 139, 141 Waste of ignorance, the 109 Waste in the pulpit . 202 Watt ... 125 165, 261 Ways of securing equality, two . . 142 Wealth, four factors in producing . . 164 Wealth, selhshness of 279 Wealth in New York City, some foun- dations of . . . 167 Wealth that is pov- erty, the ... . 182 Wealthy leisure class, the 173 Webster . 48, 76, 84, 160 242, 262 Weismann . . . 106, 107 Wesley, John . . 39, 199 210, 212 What knowledge does .... 102, 103 Whitman, Marcus . . 85 Whitney 313 Whittier .... 98, 127 159, 188 William the Silent . 246 Williams, Roger . . 210 Wisdom measures man's progress . 113 Wordsworth . .116, 194 Work alone gives con- tentment and happiness . . 170, 171 World a resting place, our 295 Xenophon . . .191, 244 333 C 310 88 THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC