IN TERMS OF LI!- 
 
 :OBURN
 
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 T C ANGILES 
 LIBRARY
 
 IN TERMS OF LIKE
 
 IN TERMS OF LIFE 
 
 SERMONS AND TALKS 
 TO COLLEGE STUDENTS 
 
 BY 
 WILBUR W. THOBURN 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR OF BIONOMICS 
 IN THR 1 KI.AXH STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 
 
 / 7 & ft 
 
 STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA 
 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 1899 
 
 FtB 1908
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET W. THOBURN. 
 
 The Murdock Press, San Francisco
 
 V 
 
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 Cop. \ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. SERMONS : 
 
 & PRAYKB (originally prefixed to the sermon 
 
 on" Our Father") 13 
 
 THE WAY (1897) 15 
 
 OUR FATHER (1898) 35 
 
 xOuR RELIGION (1898) 51 
 
 ^/NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES (1897) ... 67 
 
 THANKSGIVING (1897) 83 
 
 LIBERTY (1891) 93 
 
 FRAGMENT (1898) 107 
 
 ii. LECTURE FRAGMENTS: 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 119 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL LIFK 125 
 
 ENVIRONMENT 135 
 
 THE NEW BIRTH 139 
 
 FAITH 145 
 
 WORK 158 
 
 SERVICE 171 
 
 SYMPATHY 174 
 
 PRAYER 177 
 
 REST 186 
 
 IMMORTALITY 198 
 
 RELIGION AS A SOCIAL FACTOR 208 
 
 III. APPENDIX : 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 223
 
 PREFATORY. 
 
 Is one of his lecture talks, included in this 
 volume, Dr. Thoburn deprecates the very 
 natural desire of certain students to possess 
 his printed words. With him this was more 
 than a passing feeling. He believed in the 
 living message, and he aimed, as all good 
 teachers do, at stirring the activities rather 
 than storing the mind. The emphasis put 
 upon this point must bear some of the blame 
 that so little of all he said was written down. 
 Yet he did look forward to the possibility of 
 some time putting into print the things he 
 was struggling to formulate. And as his 
 thought ripened he seems to have felt more 
 and more the impulse to commit himself to 
 manuscript. To the last, however, the use of 
 manuscript in pulpit or lecture-room was 
 hampering, and even with his most finished 
 work the inspiration of the occasion often led 
 him in delivery to far ovei'leap the written
 
 8 In Terms of Life. 
 
 bounds. This was particularly true of his 
 lectures, which he had never set himself to 
 write out in full. 
 
 The sermons here included are all, with 
 the exception of the unnamed fragment, 
 substantially complete. The sermon on 
 Liberty, the first one given in the Univer- 
 sity Chapel, is the only one not prepared 
 specifically for the University. Its quality, 
 however, is not different from all the rest. 
 It should be noted that many of the lecture 
 fragments are also sermon fragments. Those 
 on Rest and Immortality are not very dif- 
 ferent from the sermons as actually delivered ; 
 that on Prayer is the basis of his sermon 
 on the same subject. 
 
 Of the lecture fragments not one is com- 
 plete. Several are hardly more than outline 
 fragments, included here because of some 
 characteristic tone not presented so strikingly 
 elsewhere. Religion as a Social Factor, as 
 here written, forms about half of his first 
 lecture at the Coronado Summer School of 
 1896. The others are mainly special topics 
 in his course on the Life and Teachings of
 
 Prefatory. 9 
 
 Christ, the full lectures existing merely in 
 outline. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that nothing 
 here included had been made ready for pub- 
 lication. To have done this would have 
 required, from Dr. Thoburn's point of view, 
 a severe revision, much amplification, and of 
 course the elimination of repetitions. What 
 is here fragmentary would have been rounded 
 out to something like completeness. Some 
 statements graspings at truth would 
 doubtless have been modified: he himself 
 felt often that he had failed in his formula- 
 tion, and that he should reach a more ade- 
 quate and satisfactory expression. But, after 
 all, that book would not have been different 
 from this only a larger and riper interpre- 
 tation of a life singularly sweet and whole- 
 some. It is his life in these fragments that 
 will live. To his old students and friends 
 they will bring back the unassuming, helpful 
 presence, the resonant moral atmosphere in 
 which he lived and worked; and to college 
 students who have never known his presence, 
 but who face the same problems, it does not
 
 10 In Terms of Life. 
 
 seem too much to believe that these printed 
 words will come with something of the same 
 illuminating and healing ministration. There 
 is nothing here that can hurt; there is no 
 wanton or unloving touch; all is helpful and 
 hopeful and onward. 
 
 It only remains to note the possibility of 
 misquotations, and that in some cases quota- 
 tion-marks may have been misplaced or 
 omitted altogether. These and doubtless 
 other errors have been rendered unavoidable 
 by the hasty and temporary character of the 
 
 manuscript. 
 
 O. L. E. 
 
 June, 1899.
 
 I. SERMONS
 
 Our Father Father of our Lord and 
 Master, and our Father. Wlio shall measure 
 the depth of the riches both of the ivisdom 
 and the knowledge of God! How unsearch- 
 able are his judgments, and his ways past 
 tracing out! For who hath known thy 
 mind, Lord ? or tvho hath been thy 
 counsellor? or who hath first given to thee, 
 and it shall be recompensed unto him again ? 
 For of thee and through thee and unto thee 
 are all things. Yet thou art our Father, 
 and for this cause we bow our knees unto 
 thee, of ivhom all men are named, that 
 thou ivouldst grant us, according to the 
 riches of thy glory, that we may be strength- 
 ened with power through thy spirit in the 
 inward man; that Christ may dwell in our 
 hearts by faith; to the end that ive, being 
 rooted and grounded in love, may be strong 
 to apprehend with all the good what is the 
 
 13
 
 14 In Terms of Life. 
 
 breadth and length and height and depth, 
 and to knoiv the love of Christ which 
 passeth knotvledge, that ive may be filled 
 with all the fullness of God. 
 
 May thy kingdom come and thy will be 
 done. Give us from day to day food for 
 our needs. Forsake us not in our trials. 
 Guard us from all evil. Forgive our trans- 
 gressions. Help us to be forgiving. And 
 unto thee, wlio art able, to do exceeding 
 abundantly, above all that ive can ask or 
 think, according as the power for receiv- 
 ing worketh in us, to thee be glory, for 
 ever. Amen.
 
 THE WAY
 
 THE WAY. 
 
 / 7 3 % 
 
 " I AM the Way." Christ is speaking 
 speaking of himself. A quick way to 
 know a man is to watch him when he is 
 speaking about himself. Some cannot 
 speak respectfully of themselves. They 
 deserve no respect. Others talk to their 
 own ears about themselves. They are 
 egotists. Others talk themselves to those 
 who have ears to hear. Listen to these; 
 they are like children, and deal with the 
 truth. 
 
 Christ often speaks of himself. I 
 know of no other religious teacher who 
 does so much of it. And yet one always 
 feels that his thoughts are not with him- 
 self, but with those to whom he is giving 
 himself helpfully. No one could call 
 Christ an egotist. There are teachers 
 who have wonderful power in selecting 
 beautiful thoughts and pictures out of 
 the records of the past, and passing them
 
 18 In Terms of Life. 
 
 on to others. They have an instinct for 
 ideals, and they build Utopias of them 
 
 that make this dusty world seem uncom- 
 
 tfej 
 fortable, and their intoxicated followers 
 
 never get a sober view of life without 
 turning pessimists. 
 
 Again, there are teachers who talk 
 about life and what they get out of it, 
 who exhibit the handful of nuggets they 
 have dug and tell where they found them. 
 And as we listen we are aroused to dig, 
 too. Their hopeful and successful lives 
 quicken ours. Christ belonged to this 
 second class. There is a peculiar power 
 in his "I say unto you." One feels that 
 he has lived his words and that they can 
 be lived. Solomon holds up ideals and 
 precepts, but does not live them. And 
 every view of Solomon we get through 
 his words shows a pessimist whom life 
 has soured. We feel like saying, " Solo- 
 mon, take your own medicine," "Phy- 
 sician, heal thyself." The ideal of Christ 
 is himself, and because he was so much 
 of a man and dealt so much with com- 
 monplace things, we feel that we can do 
 as he did.
 
 The Way. 19 
 
 Precepts and rules of life and high 
 ideals are useful as they mold and shape 
 us while we behold them. They are food 
 for action. They are not guides to life. 
 Habits are guides to living, and habits 
 are formed by doing. One cannot stop 
 at every cross-road to consult a note-book 
 for the proper precept. 
 
 Men are neither trained nor saved by 
 being preached at. They seem to enjoy 
 it, and often pay liberally for a weekly 
 exhibition of beautiful ideals and well- 
 worded proverbs. These delight and 
 amuse them as the bottles on the drug- 
 gist's shelves amuse a child, but they 
 make wry faces if asked to taste them. 
 
 A patriarcji, a preacher, who is sur- 
 rounded by a family of men and women, 
 said: " I never tried to talk religion to 
 my children but once. I got my little 
 girl, one Sunday afternoon, and preached 
 at her. Next week I said, ' Come, let 
 papa bilk to you.' She said, 'All right, 
 papa; but please do not talk as you did 
 last Sunday.' ' 
 
 Far more reaching than a father's 
 words and fathers are apt to be popes
 
 20 In Terms of Life. 
 
 in their families is a father's life; and 
 a mother is not a collection of fine say- 
 ings, but an eternal influence of finer 
 acts. I have heard more than one mother 
 mourn because she could not say the right 
 thing, who was all the time an incarna- 
 tion, in her world of boys and girls, of 
 the living God. Men and women are 
 molded by the silent, constant influence 
 of a home far more than by the daily 
 scolding and advising. Morning prayers 
 are a poor substitute for a day of reli- 
 gion. A home saturated with peace and 
 purity is the larger part of the training 
 of every child. Schools and universities 
 are extras to be added later. 
 
 In the old days a father built a home 
 for his family. It was complete in every 
 part, but the altar around which they 
 gathered in prayer had yet no place. 
 The mother wished it in the kitchen. 
 There she was perplexed with her many 
 cares. The father wished it in his study. 
 God seemed nearer to him among his 
 books. The son wished it in the room 
 where guests were received, that the stran- 
 ger entering might know they worshiped
 
 The Way. 21 
 
 God. So they agreed to leave the matter to 
 the youngest, who was a little child. Now, 
 the altar was a shaft of polished wood, 
 very fragrant, and the child, who loved 
 most of all to sit before the great fire 
 and see beautiful forms in the flames, 
 said, "See, the log is gone; put it there." 
 So because one would not yield to the 
 other, they obeyed, and the log was con- 
 sumed, and its sweet odors filled the 
 whole house the kitchen, the study, and 
 the guest-hall, and the child saw beau- 
 tiful forms in the flames. 
 
 We can never define or limit our influ- 
 ence upon men and women by words. 
 Good or bad, it will always vary with 
 the amount of ourselves we put into our 
 words. Far more important than any- 
 thing you learn here, than any phrases 
 or precepts you hear, is the use you 
 make of them. 
 
 You will be deceived, chiefly by your- 
 selves. These early college days are a 
 springtime with you, and the early shoots 
 of spring are larger and weaker than the 
 later summer growths. You will think 
 you are learning far more than you are
 
 22 In Terms of Life. 
 
 learning. The screaming eagle on the 
 silver does not make it worth a dollar, 
 though it may pass for one. After years 
 of talking and acting, of appearing to be, 
 of trying and failing and succeeding, you 
 will be valued at your true worth. There 
 is a premium on truthfulness; and the 
 more of ourselves we can express in our 
 living, so much more will we be useful 
 to our fellows. Personality counts. It 
 is our intrinsic worth. A bubble may 
 be a thousand times as large as a pellet 
 of lead, and far more showy, yet on 
 the scales the lead weighs down many 
 bubbles. Gravitation is never deceived 
 by appearances. The tests of life are 
 as minute and searching. At the end 
 of threescore and ten years of living 
 a man will be known very much as he 
 knows himself. His value as a social 
 factor will be measured by the force he 
 can put into the personal pronoun that 
 expresses his being. No one who is true 
 need be afraid of saying, "I say unto 
 you." I saw this room crowded nearly 
 from floor to ceiling to hear Mrs. Booth. 
 I have seen many crowds here, but never
 
 The Way. 23 
 
 one so moved as when that little woman 
 talked of that for which she stood. No 
 acting could equal it. She was her own 
 credentials. No one else could have done 
 it. Her life of truth and devotion was 
 being vocalized, and those who cared 
 little for the Salvation Army were over- 
 whelmed by the truth incarnated. It is 
 always so. It is this element in Christ's 
 teaching that gives it power. He spoke 
 himself. He was the truth. If he had 
 not been true, men would have known it. 
 We can lie with our lips, but not with our 
 lives. Christ was not killed because he 
 was false, but because other men did not 
 like the contrast between his life and 
 theirs. 
 
 Any comparison of Christ with other 
 religious teachers must notice this pecu- 
 liarity: without exception they stand and 
 point the way; they talk about the truth. 
 Christ says, I am the way, follow we: I 
 am the truth, believe me. Other teachers 
 talk about God and his attributes and 
 how to reach him, but when Philip asks 
 Christ to show him the Father, he points 
 to himself and says, "Have I been so
 
 24 In Terms of Life. 
 
 long time with you and yet hast thou 
 not known me, Philip?" "He that hath 
 seen me [that is, a true man] hath seen 
 all of God that human eyes ever can 
 see." Whatever definition of God men 
 may crave to satisfy their philosophical 
 instincts, Christ's conception of God is 
 the only one tnat men can live with. 
 Men have been led far afield by doctrines 
 about God; but when burdens are heavy 
 and the men are tired, when life is real 
 and nothing but the home-feeling can sat- 
 isfy, then they turn from definitions to 
 Christ's God and rest in the presence of 
 the Father. Eeason may laugh at it and 
 call it man-worship, and talk about ab- 
 stract and unlivable deity. But if it is a 
 weakness, it is one that strong men often 
 cultivate. The God incarnated in the 
 race is the God of Christ, the humanized 
 God of our daily experience. He brings 
 back to people the absentee deity which 
 philosophy is forever moving from one 
 corner of the universe to another, and puts 
 him once more in human hearts and says 
 to men, "There is your God; worship 
 him where and how you please, but
 
 The Way. 25 
 
 if you want him to stay with you, you 
 must stay with him and lead his life and 
 busy yourself with his business." 
 
 Within, you have the raw material to 
 make your Father's image, but you can 
 take the same stuff and make many worse 
 things of it. Christ saw this truth, and 
 pointing to himself as a son of man, liv- 
 ing his best, true, he said, "He that hath 
 seen me hath seen the Father." And any 
 one of us may do the same. We may 
 point to that in us which is good and 
 true and say, "This is the Father." I 
 hope to grow more and more of him 
 within me until I am full of him, an 
 incarnation. 
 
 Now, please do not commence to ana- 
 lyze these words and distribute them 
 among your theological pigeonholes to 
 see what kind of an arian I am, or what 
 manner of ism this is. Try it by the test 
 of life, and if it works, it is of God and 
 true. It will reveal you to yourself. It 
 will glorify your life. It will help you 
 to conquer yourself. It will show you 
 God in an expanding revelation around 
 and within you, increasing his influence
 
 26 In Terms of Life. 
 
 as you increase your touch with him, 
 reacting upon you as you act with him, 
 making your goodness the product of the 
 goodness, your truth a fragment of all 
 truth, your life eternal life. 
 
 A man can know that he is a son of 
 God only as he feels it in himself, only 
 as he sees, just as any growing boy comes 
 to see, that he and his father are made of 
 the same stuff and by the same pattern. 
 When a man learns this truth he is a 
 made man. When he sees that his affairs 
 and God's are one, when the things he 
 wants to do are the things he sees God 
 wants done, when his Father's business 
 is his business, then he is saved. It is a 
 good word, lightly and flippantly used 
 sometimes, but we can load it full of 
 meaning, saved from wastefulness, from 
 anxiety about things that last only a little 
 while, saved to live with eternal things 
 forever. 
 
 But a man is very lonely when he lives 
 apart from God. When he looks upon 
 the great world-movements as a student 
 only, from the outside, he makes an out- 
 cast and an alien of himself. When his
 
 The Way. 27 
 
 world and the world are separate, him- 
 self and his God two beings with distinct 
 purposes, he is apt to find himself go- 
 ing the wrong way and life full of snares. 
 
 I enjoy the way my two boys speak of 
 my things as ours. They are only five 
 and seven, and their theology is yet very 
 crude. In a measure I stand in God's 
 place with them. They have things they 
 call their own, some of their remote 
 ancestors must have been selfish, but 
 they own my things, too. Perhaps after 
 fifteen or twenty years I will have them 
 better trained; but it is delightful now 
 to have them feel as if they owned me, 
 just as I feel that I own them. I will 
 lose something if we grow apart. 
 
 When a man has learned to join his 
 life to God's life, it changes his attitude 
 toward his fellows. One cannot recog- 
 nize his relation and likeness to his father 
 without looking for the same traits in 
 others. Wherever we find men saying 
 " Our Father," we find them saying " My 
 brother " also. The two are inseparable. 
 This was Christ's way. He was with 
 people, busy with them, not osteuta-
 
 28 In Terms of Life. 
 
 tiously measuring and calculating bis 
 charity, but naturally, sharing their lives. 
 He did not say to a man, " Here am I, and 
 there are you; give me your burden and 
 I will bear it for you." He said, "Here 
 we are; take hold, and let us bear this 
 burden of ours." He and his gift were 
 never separated. He and the man he 
 was helping were always one. This 
 accounts for his self-forgetfulness. It is 
 a great thing to be unconscious of self in 
 one's work, to throw ourselves under a 
 burden just as if we were some one else; 
 to identify ourselves and our beneficence 
 just as God does. This was Christ's way. 
 He told a story which illustrates it. 
 There were two boys in a family. Both 
 were selfish, and both planned to have a 
 good time. One took his share of his 
 father's goods and went away from home 
 and led a fast life. People said he went 
 to the bad. The other stayed at home 
 and saved. The good time he was plan- 
 ning for was in the future, when his 
 father was dead and he would have all. 
 One day the rake came home, spent, 
 wasted, humbled. The servants were
 
 The Way. 29 
 
 told to make a feast. The older brother 
 was scandalized at his reception. " It is 
 all right to be charitable," he said; "but 
 I do not think he ought to be treated as 
 a member of the family again. I think 
 the father is too easy on him. I '11 never 
 let him forget that he is a reformed 
 prodigal." But the father took the poor 
 burned-out cinder of a life in his arms, and 
 said, "My boy, my boy!" 
 
 This was Christ's way, and those who 
 have caught his spirit are going about 
 this world saying, " These children shall 
 be my children; these men shall be my 
 brethren." And this mothering and 
 brotheriug of the race is the only way 
 of helping it. One who has learned to 
 know God in Christ's way loves others 
 just as naturally as he loves himself. 
 
 Christ says, "I am the way." He 
 means that his way is the way to live. 
 Not the way to be religious. This was 
 not a sermon, not said on Sunday. It was 
 ordinary conversation about life. Christ 
 was telling the way to live. Oh, how much 
 we lose by making a mere preacher out 
 of Christ! Religion and life are never
 
 30 In Terms of Life. 
 
 two separate occupations to the man who 
 carries his God around in his own heart. 
 You cannot take a mother and separate 
 her into her parts and say, " Here is a 
 child, here is a woman, here is the 
 motherhood." The dissection destroys 
 motherhood. So the separation of any 
 part of your life from your religion 
 destroys your religion by so much. 
 Christ's way the complete identifica- 
 tion of himself and his God is the 
 only true life. And life and religion 
 may be one. 
 
 You cannot live without a religion. 
 Many will try. Confusing religion and 
 belief, because they cannot believe as 
 other men do, they bundle all beliefs out 
 of doors and say they are not religious. 
 Do not follow these. When you are very 
 busy, your beliefs, like your clothes, will 
 wear out rapidly, and you will provide 
 yourself with new ones. But keep very 
 busy. I care less for what you believe 
 than for what you do. Eeligion is not 
 what men believe; that is philosophy. 
 Keligiou is what men do with their 
 beliefs " emotion in action," Dr. Jordan
 
 The Way. 31 
 
 defines it. Now, every man has some 
 central principle from which his emotions 
 flow. With very many it is fear. With 
 many more it is duty; the word ought be- 
 comes a kind of impersonal God, and sits 
 in judgment over every act. With others 
 it is avarice; they act because it will pay 
 them either now or hereafter. With 
 others still, it is love; all they do and 
 plan is for others. They are as unreason- 
 ably unselfish about this as a mother in 
 serving her child. But these are pleasant 
 people, and one is sure to feel better who 
 meets one of them. Christ was one of 
 these. This was his way. All lovers of 
 their fellows are Christians, too, and are 
 saving their people by serving them. 
 They may label themselves with some 
 other title, but that makes little differ- 
 ence. Their reward is the same. They 
 save men. 
 
 This is the test of any religion its 
 value as a social factor. Governor Stan- 
 ford is quoted as saying, " Whichever 
 form of religion furnishes the greatest 
 comfort, the greatest solace, is the form 
 that should be adopted, be its name what
 
 32 In Terms of Life. 
 
 it may." How shall we determine which 
 this religion is? By comparing the re- 
 ligions of the world'? We can define 
 them,- Confucianism, Buddhism, Mo- 
 hammedanism, Zoroastrianism, or Juda- 
 ism. Surely, if splendid systems could 
 form a perfect life, these would furnish 
 them. But when we come to Christ, we 
 can make no definition. There is no 
 Christism. The so-called doctrines of 
 Christ are not new. But Christ is new. 
 With an egotism that would be despicable 
 if it were not divine, he boldly pushes 
 himself before his sayings, and says, "I 
 am the way." These others formulated 
 rules and precepts. Christ gave himself. 
 Living by rule and precept is tiresome and 
 discouraging. Personality is contagious. 
 It is the contagion of Christ's personality 
 that is conquering this world. Men 
 quarrel over Christianity, but Christ's 
 way is rapidly becoming the way of the 
 whole world; not only among those who 
 call themselves Christians, but among the 
 Jews and Mohammedans and Buddhists 
 as well, the leaven is working. It makes 
 the most of every man. It puts in every
 
 The Way. 33 
 
 man's hand the key to his own life. It 
 points every man to the best and noblest 
 in his own nature and says, " Here is 
 your God-likeness, feed it." It breaks 
 down all barriers between man and his 
 God. When this is true, it is of little 
 consequence whether we label ourselves 
 by one title or another. If you wish to 
 bring the world to God, you cannot preach 
 a theology and win. Go out and live 
 God among your fellows, and they will 
 be helped to live God, too. 
 
 It is this I now urge upon you: Choose 
 Christ's way. Choose him. Go at the 
 world in his way. In the laboratory and 
 classroom, in the study, on the field, 
 among your fellows during the idle hour 
 as well as during that time every man 
 ought to spend alone make it all your 
 Father's business. I ask you to begin 
 this year of your college life as Chris- 
 tians. I do not define Christian. Do 
 that for yourself. I do not ask you 
 to surrender your individuality, except 
 as individuality must forever be sub- 
 servient to sociality. I lay down no 
 conditions, nor require any tests other
 
 34 In Terms of Life. 
 
 than those you yourself create. I say 
 nothing about joining this church or 
 that. When you are at your work in the 
 world you will find that you amount to 
 more co-operating in an organization than 
 alone, and you will find one to your liking. 
 Look at Christ, and in your own way 
 be like him. You will find many pleas- 
 ant companions going the same way. 
 Your own companionship will be pleasant 
 to you. Yonder in the forest I count 
 different kinds of vegetation by the score, 
 tall trees and clinging vines, shrubs and 
 nestling annuals, ferns and mosses in the 
 canon, grasses and many-colored blossoms 
 in the open places, each one searching 
 for its share of the same warm, bright 
 sunlight, and each making out of it its 
 best of its own kind. Consider these 
 lilies of the field; surely our Heavenly 
 Father feedeth them all. Be your best 
 self, and you will surely find God work- 
 ing with you. And you will understand 
 how Christ could say, " I and my Father 
 are one."
 
 OUR FATHER
 
 "OUK FATHER" 
 
 ONE day, when Jesus was talking about 
 God to his disciples, Philip interrupted 
 him, by asking, " Lord, show us the 
 Father and we will be satisfied." And 
 Jesus said to Philip, " Have I been so 
 long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
 known me?" "The Father and I are so 
 mixed, so amalgamated, that my loving 
 is his loving ; my goodness, his goodness ; 
 my wisdom, his wisdom. I am in the 
 Father and the Father in me, and all 
 these works that I am doing, we the 
 Father and I are doing. The words I 
 speak and the works I do are his works 
 and words." 
 
 This was the Master's way of quieting 
 Philip's fears that he could not get near 
 enough to God to feel at home with him. 
 Jesus was conscious of God. He never 
 denned him. He never sought to prove 
 his existence or establish any doctrines 
 
 37
 
 38 In Terms of Life. 
 
 about him. He assumed God, and talked 
 about him as naturally as a boy talks 
 about his father. When he was going 
 about doing good, he unquestionably rec- 
 ognized that God was doing the same; 
 so they worked together. I have noticed 
 that a boy who occasionally takes hold 
 and helps me in something I am doing 
 does not first ask for proof that I am his 
 father, nor does he insist that some one 
 point out the family likeness. He just 
 takes hold and helps, or imagines he 
 helps, and links himself to me by talking 
 a great deal about our work, and what we 
 are doing. He just assumes that I am, 
 and that our life is one, as it is. Now, 
 this is the way that Jesus always acts 
 toward God. When he is working, he 
 expects God to co-operate, and he does. 
 When he is in trouble, he cries out for 
 help, and it comes. When he is anxious 
 about leaving the crude and unripe dis- 
 ciples alone in the world, he talks the 
 whole situation over with his Father as 
 naturally as if they were sitting together 
 in the firelight before some family hearth- 
 stone. This wonderfully successful and
 
 "Our Father." 39 
 
 ideal life that Jesus led received its whole 
 explanation and impetus from this rela- 
 tionship between him and his God. We 
 cannot read about it or study his life 
 without believing that the relationship 
 was real. Whether God did his part or 
 not, we cannot escape the conclusion that 
 Jesus lived and loved and served and 
 died as he did because of his conviction 
 that he and his Father were one, one 
 in spirit, in aim, in purpose. And when 
 we think of the stupendous miracle of 
 Christianity, when we see his principles 
 abiding, his life and spirit going into all 
 the dark corners of the world, we must 
 believe that God was with him, and he 
 knew it. It is that which " works," which 
 stands the tests of time and place, w r hich 
 has God with it; and the everlasting life 
 of Jesus is the strongest proof we could 
 have that his method of conscious par- 
 ticipation with God's life is the true way 
 of living. But how often the cry comes 
 from anxious and perplexed ones, "Oh, 
 if I could only know God in this real, 
 personal way, then I could live ! " How 
 many times I have been asked, " Show
 
 40 In Terms of Life. 
 
 me the Father, and I will be satisfied,"- 
 " Show me a personal God, and I will 
 pray to him ! " Dissatisfaction always 
 waits on the soul whose aspirations are 
 limited by its own sight and understand- 
 ing. 
 
 Men may not all pray, but all men want 
 to pray. Yet prayer is communion, and 
 is impossible unless two beings recog- 
 nize common life as the basis of the 
 asking and giving. So when people lose 
 the idea of a personal God they stop 
 praying. When our intellects have ban- 
 ished God from his home in our hearts 
 and sent him out among the stars to build 
 and uphold things, then, however much 
 we may hunger for sympathy or need 
 help, we will not address our prayers to 
 the stellar spaces. We can feel no fellow- 
 ship or commonness with a being whose 
 business it is to make worlds out of 
 nebulae, or who manifests himself as 
 gravitation or chemical affinity. We can 
 know God only on ground common to 
 God and man ; not on a plane of omnipo- 
 tence, for man is not omnipotent; not 
 on a plane of omnipresence, for man
 
 "Our Father." 41 
 
 is a little creature, and must stay close 
 at home ; but on a ground common to 
 God, who makes and upholds all things, 
 and man, who can make nothing, and 
 upholds indifferently well. This must 
 l)e man's ground. Notice how my boy 
 and I meet and talk. I do not talk 
 bionomics to him or expect him to talk 
 about the laws of life to me. He does 
 not dream of such things. They are my 
 life. We talk about his things. A few 
 weeks ago it was marbles, and I had to 
 listen to " agates " and " comps," etc. 
 Now it is tops, and I am learning over 
 again the top vocabulary. I must, if I 
 keep my dominion over him. " Tops " 
 at present represents a part of our com- 
 mon ground. We live together there. 
 We have other points where w r e meet. 
 W"e sit in the same big chair before the 
 fire, and talk at each other, he talking 
 up to me, and calling me "Father," and 
 I talking down to him such things out 
 of my larger life as he will comprehend, 
 planning to give him every good thing I 
 can, and a few of the many things he asks 
 for. But all the time it is his ground we
 
 42 In Terms of Life. 
 
 meet on. Some day, when he has grown 
 up into my stature, we will talk face to 
 face, but now he finds me, if he finds me 
 at all, in his own heart and life. 
 
 Now, this common ground where we 
 meet a fragment of my life, all of his 
 is my life in him and his in me. Here 
 love dwells; here is communion. Here 
 we trade prayers for answers, knowledge 
 for ignorance, help for weakness. 
 
 Now, I want to teach a great lesson by 
 this homely illustration. The illustra- 
 tion you can all understand, because you 
 have others like it in your own lives. 
 Such things have been with you ahvays. 
 Have you not seen God in them ? When 
 Philip wanted to see God, Jesus pointed 
 to his own clean, strong, loving life and 
 said, " This is the Father in me." So 
 I want to urge you to take out of your 
 commonest daily experiences the love that 
 is there, the kindness, the truth, the hun- 
 ger for better things, the hatred for un- 
 clean things, all those aspirations that 
 draw toward a larger life, away from 
 what you now are, toward what you would 
 be, take all of these real facts out of
 
 "Our Father." 43 
 
 your life and name them " Father." When 
 you long for the sense of a personal God, 
 you mean that you want to feel that you 
 and God are alike, you want to draw on 
 him for help, and feel the help come. 
 You want to pray and talk over your life 
 with a real being like yourself, but strong, 
 not with an impersonal force. This is 
 just what Christ did. So real was God 
 to him that he called him Father, and 
 we can do the same. I do not hesitate a 
 moment to say that we can live as Jesus 
 did, immersed, consciously immersed, in 
 the presence of our Father ; and this rela- 
 tion can be just as real and tender as that 
 between me and my boy. I am speaking 
 out of my own experience now; I know 
 what I am talking about. 
 
 I could construct a theistic argument. 
 I think I could satisfy your intellects, and 
 prove that we are being made in God's 
 image, that all that draws us toward bet- 
 ter things is God's life in us. I think I 
 could prove this. I have done it for 
 myself; I think I could do it for you. 
 But it would still leave you unsatisfied. 
 You do not care to know that God is love
 
 44 In Terms of Life. 
 
 so much as you want to love God. I am 
 not appealing to your intellects this morn- 
 ing so much as to your affections. 
 
 Leave the attributes of God, law, 
 power, eternity, wisdom, leave those 
 three great impersonal omnis omnipres- 
 ent, omnipotent, and omniscient to your 
 intellect, and love God with your whole 
 heart at the same time you are loving your 
 neighbors. Do not think that you must 
 master a whole theological system before 
 you can commune with God. You talked 
 with your father, you called on him for 
 help, you worked with him and tried to 
 be like him long before you could spell 
 his name or comprehend his charac- 
 ter. The understanding comes after the 
 fact. 
 
 Let me choose out of your lives some 
 of the real things, and ask you to interpret 
 them as I do in my own life. In the first 
 place, let us consider love. I choose this 
 because the deepest, tenderest experiences 
 of life are associated with it. The best 
 things that have come to you have been 
 brought by love, and you recognize your- 
 self at your best when you are loving.
 
 "Our Father." 45 
 
 Do you remember some time when you 
 were in trouble, Avhen perhaps you went 
 near to the brink of the valley of shadows, 
 when your arm needed strength and your 
 heart sympathy '? And do you remem- 
 ber how they came ? How strong hands 
 gripped yours, how hearty words of cheer 
 drove out your loneliness, how little acts 
 multiplied, until you were surrounded 
 by loving-kindness and tender mercies? 
 We call this friendship. It is God abroad 
 in his world. He that hath seen a friend 
 hath seen God also. Do you remember 
 those broken days of childhood, when 
 you in many moods mixed good and bad 
 in the mosaic of your growing life? 
 When you were thoughtless, there was 
 one who never forgot; w r hen you were 
 wrong, there was one who was always 
 kind; when you were in tears, there was 
 one who wept with you; when you re- 
 joiced, there was one who was glad. You 
 call this sacred friend " Mother." Is it 
 possible that any of you have known a 
 mother's love and yet know not God? 
 He that hath seen a mother hath seen 
 God also.
 
 46 In Terms of Life. 
 
 Or take, for illustration, service: iden- 
 tifying our lives with the lives of our 
 fellows and doing for them. As you have 
 seen wretchedness and misery or suffer- 
 ing, has your stronger nature been drawn 
 out to help and soothe until you have 
 forgotten, perhaps, your own ease and 
 comfort in your sympathy for another's 
 pain and sorrow? Thank your God 
 for manifesting himself through you. 
 These aspirations to help another are 
 the God-life in you. He that has felt 
 sympathy and served his fellows has 
 known God and manifested him. 
 
 And these yearnings for better things, 
 this longing for more life for yourself 
 and more happiness for others, this is 
 the beginning of prayer, inarticulate, 
 dumb prayer, no doubt it often is,- but 
 cultivate it, give expression to it, and you 
 will find yourself depending more and 
 more on the sure return that comes 
 from every aspiration that rises toward 
 your Heavenly Father. Prayer is an 
 art to be cultivated. Men learn to talk 
 to the Father as they learn to speak 
 to one another. And men learn to listen
 
 "Our Father." 47 
 
 after they have learned to speak to 
 recognize and receive answers long after 
 they have commenced to beg. 
 
 My friends, this is holy ground. Let 
 me lead you reverently into my holy of 
 holies and declare out of my daily expe- 
 rience that God hears and satisfies; that 
 through these many channels, through 
 friends and children and home, through 
 those that give and those who receive, 
 through the quiet breeze that blows after 
 the heated day, through the triumph of 
 righteousness and the pain of sin, 
 through all of these channels God speaks 
 and reveals more and more of himself. 
 And when I need him and that is very 
 often my cry is heard, and in some good 
 way answered. Through these same chan- 
 nels, by some of his many messengers, 
 the answer comes. I am not always sat- 
 isfied, for I want many things, but I am 
 never deserted or allowed to feel alone 
 if I wish the Father's presence. 
 
 Ye men of Stanford, I perceive that in 
 all things you are somewhat religious. 
 But you have reasoned about God's 
 power and have studied his laws until
 
 48 In Terms of Life. 
 
 you have ceased to feel your likeness to 
 him, and have written over your altar 
 the inscription, "To the unknown God." 
 And the altar bears no sacrifice. What, 
 therefore, ye worship as agnostics, declare 
 I unto you, the God that made the world 
 and all things therein, he, being Lord of 
 heaven and earth, giveth to all life and 
 breath and all good things, and is not far 
 from each one of us. For in him we 
 live and move and have our being. When 
 man loves and serves, it is the child en- 
 deavoring to be like its father. When 
 man longs for greater, nobler, truer 
 things, it is the son recognizing his rela- 
 tion to the Parent. 
 
 Out of your lives take the love and 
 sympathy, the purity, the truth, the 
 tender things, and all that grows into 
 larger life, and put these on the cold 
 altar of your heart; then cut out those 
 empty, lonely words, "To an unknown 
 God," and write "Our Father." And 
 bow before him ; for this is your God, 
 and he will not withhold any good thing 
 from you if you walk uprightly.
 
 "Our Father." 49 
 
 Oft in the dusty coui-se it seems 
 The face of Him I am to meet 
 Is dimmed before my straining eyes; 
 And silence answers to my cries 
 Silence and doubt my questions greet. 
 
 Yet, pressing onward to my goal, 
 Some breeze will blow the dust apart. 
 'T is dust my feet have raised that hides 
 The Father's smile that e'er abides. 
 The dust has changed, but not His Heart. 
 
 The silence is my ignorance 
 When reason seeks Him to define. 
 Life's mysteries are solved by life 
 And doubts that rise in anxious strife 
 Before the Love of God decline. 
 
 We seek in wordy phrase to paint 
 The Unknown God to finite eyes. 
 Our logic kills our charity, 
 Our wisdom widens mystery, 
 Our altars bear no sacrifice. 
 
 Yet to the listening ear God speaks 
 In myriad tongues on sea and shore, 
 In childish prattle, mothers' songs, 
 When prophets cry against men's wrongs, 
 
 Or love knocks at some prison door. 
 D
 
 50 In Terms of Life. 
 
 Faith born of love and fed by hope 
 Sees God where reason's eye is dim, 
 And reason led by faith will prove 
 So strong that doubts can never move, 
 Nor clouds disturb our trust in Him. 
 
 Then courage, fainting one, take heart; 
 Thy God in clouds hides not His face, 
 The veil is thine, thine is the fear, 
 Withhold thy cries, list to his cheer, 
 And onward press, fed by His grace.
 
 OUR RELIGION
 
 OUR RELIGION. 
 
 I HAVE recently read what was intended 
 to be a criticism of the religious life of 
 the University. It was written by one 
 who evidently never graced the quad- 
 rangle with his presence or endangered 
 his morality by listening to the lectures 
 he stigmatized. Among his strictures 
 were: " Confidently putting forth, as sub- 
 stitutes for religious belief, rank agnos- 
 ticism and Darwinianism," "Belittling 
 and often irreverent use of the Scrip- 
 tures," "Evolution theories run wild," 
 "Elimination of the supernatural, and 
 making natural science superior to reve- 
 lation," etc. 
 
 It is but fair to say that we were made 
 to share these sins with the State Uni- 
 versity, and that the article was written 
 to persuade young men to go to another 
 college, where they would not be exposed 
 to such temptations, and where, as one of
 
 54 In Terms of Life. 
 
 them is quoted as saying, "he could be 
 a Christian, when he couldn't be one at 
 home." 
 
 I mention these criticisms not because 
 I am going to attempt to show that they 
 are not true, nor because I think it neces- 
 sary to answer them. I think it well to 
 know what is said of us. It helps us to 
 prove the standards we have chosen to 
 live by. Moreover, I wish to warn you 
 against the possible danger of trying to 
 live up to our bad reputation. I have 
 noticed that a small boy, told that he is 
 a "bad boy," is apt to bristle with extem- 
 porized proofs of the truthfulness of your 
 statement. And I have noticed, too, that 
 men enjoy being called skeptics and here- 
 tics, and in these happy times, when there 
 is no danger from faggot or rack, a certain 
 kind of heresy is rampant, from motives 
 that seem akin to those that actuate a 
 rampant peacock. 
 
 For those who see in our Darwinian- 
 ism deviltry, and who call our science 
 rank agnosticism, there is but one answer: 
 Let us make this altar the center and 
 source from which true men and women
 
 Our Religion. 55 
 
 shall go into the world to live the pure, 
 true life that Christ led. Let us multi- 
 ply helping hands and fit men to save 
 their fellows in the wasteful battle of life. 
 
 There [pointing to picture of Christ] 
 is our ideal, a man who dared live true, 
 though he was called heretic and traitor 
 and devil; who lived his simple, human, 
 godlike life, though his church excom- 
 municated him, his friends deserted him, 
 his people killed him; and who stands 
 to-day with one hand on our Father's 
 throne and one on the pulse of human- 
 ity, our hero, our ideal, our Saviour. 
 Let us live his life among men, and they 
 will stop talking about us and worship 
 him. 
 
 But while we are none of these bad 
 things that good people in their igno- 
 rance call us, there is that about the Uni- 
 versity which makes the four years you 
 spend here a danger period in your lives. 
 We are not so bad as we are painted, and 
 yet from the standpoint of certain people 
 we are a great deal worse than they 
 dream us to be. 
 
 In the first place, we think here,
 
 56 In Terms of Life. 
 
 think about things that are never ques- 
 tioned in some places. Thinking is a 
 dangerous pastime; try it carefully and 
 see. Many things that we imagined we 
 believed will not stand the test of thought. 
 You will realize, as you never did before, 
 the danger of accepting things without 
 thinking, of not proving all things. You 
 will find that you have been holding fast 
 to much that is not good. It will cost 
 you time and many heartaches to transfer 
 your allegiance from external idols and 
 images to internal convictions. But when 
 you have accomplished it, you will think 
 it worth all it cost. Men who have found 
 themselves have found their God; they 
 live like the stars, shining by their own 
 living light. 
 
 " Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
 
 Undistracted by the sights they see, 
 These demand not that the things without 
 
 them 
 Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 
 
 " And with joy the stars perform their 
 
 shining 
 And the sea its long moon-silvered roll,
 
 Our Religion. 57 
 
 For self-poised they live, nor pine with 
 
 noting 
 All the fever of some differing soul." 
 
 In the next place, we are separated 
 here from real living isolated. We are 
 receiving, and not giving. Even the best 
 education has in it this element of inac- 
 tivity which leads to a certain kind of 
 degeneration of a part of our nature 
 while we are developing and training 
 another. A man is only safe when he is 
 giving himself to others. This is a period 
 of accumulation. It is an expensive pro- 
 cess. It costs more than the money 
 necessary to pay our board-bills and buy 
 our books. It costs a part of our power 
 of giving. The unused function of giv- 
 ing weakens and would disappear if we 
 stayed as students too long. It will 
 return when we get to work among men 
 again. But we do not always recognize, 
 as we should, that we get out of relation- 
 ship with our fellows during this time of 
 preparation for better work among them. 
 
 I have heard people mourn because 
 students lose their enthusiasm for reli-
 
 58 In Terms of Life. 
 
 gious work while at college. It is una- 
 voidable. And no student should write 
 himself down as a backslider because he 
 cares more for his themes than he does 
 for his committee work in Christian En- 
 deavor. You cannot grind your ax and 
 chop with it at the same time. I have 
 noticed that farmers lose their enthusiasm 
 for the plow when sitting at the dinner- 
 table. But when digestion has waited 
 on appetite the plow regains its charms. 
 Let us use our common sense here. You 
 are preparing for life; you are not living. 
 I have heard some of you pray that your 
 waning interest in religious work might 
 be revived, and this while you are strug- 
 gling with fifteen or eighteen hours of 
 university work. Your business here is 
 to study, to religiously study, to study 
 Greek or history or science, in order that 
 you may do better religious work when 
 you go out. To try to maintain your effi- 
 ciency in Christian Endeavor or church 
 work while you are at the same time try- 
 ing to train yourself for living is to make 
 a jack of all trades of yourself and a 
 master of none.
 
 Our Religion. 59 
 
 But be careful here. Do not allow 
 yourself to think that you are ceasing to 
 be religious because you are giving less 
 time to prayer-meetings and more to lec- 
 tures and laboratories. The study of 
 God's works at any time providing they 
 are recognized and studied as the works 
 of God is religion. David was as reli- 
 gious when he lay among his flocks and 
 saw that the heavens declare the glory of 
 God, as when he was chopping up Philis- 
 tines, or asking God to destroy his ene- 
 mies. I would like to wipe out this 
 misleading conception, still fostered by 
 some who should condemn it, that certain 
 occupations are sacred, and others are 
 secular, and therefore profane. 
 
 Nothing that a clean, pure man can do 
 is unreligious. I do not hesitate to say 
 that the highest duty you can perform 
 while a student here is to honestly, 
 prayerfully, and in the fear of God, pile 
 up your one hundred and twenty hours 
 of credit and keep out of the hands of 
 the Committee on Doiibtful Cases. That 
 is what you are here for. If you have 
 any time left when you have done this,
 
 60 In Terms of Life. 
 
 then work along what you are pleased to 
 call a distinctively religious line, but do 
 not write anathema after your name if it 
 takes most of your time to keep up with 
 your work. It makes little difference 
 what names others call you. If you are on 
 good terms with yourself and your God, 
 rest there. Do not confine your praying 
 to your closets. Do some of it at the 
 study-table, on the athletic field, and in 
 the recitation-room. It is wonderful how 
 much the Father is concerned in all our 
 activity, if we only open our eyes to see. 
 And remember that a certain amount of 
 intellectual and spiritual disorder is sure 
 to come while you are isolated from real 
 living in this protected spot where the 
 opportunities for receiving will always be 
 greater than those for giving out. 
 
 This disturbance is part of the price 
 of your education. When you are out 
 among people again, the balance will be 
 readjusted; and if you have been faithful 
 here, your devotion will welcome any 
 field of action there. 
 
 The church and most religious work is 
 not yet adjusted to college life. The
 
 Our Religion. 01 
 
 church is a social institution, doing a 
 work among men that no other institu- 
 tion can do, and it is adjusted to the 
 social life. In proportion as our life 
 here differs from the life of the world, 
 then, are we out of touch Avith the church. 
 It is still necessary for a student to take 
 a kind of furlough if he Avishes to do 
 much Avork in any of these organizations, 
 Avhich, neA r ertheless, exercise a certain 
 kind of extra-territorial jurisdiction over 
 his conscience and his religion. I have 
 Avorked in church schools and state 
 schools, and those like our OAVU, Avhich 
 are neither, and this is true of them all. 
 It will last until the Church widens 
 her definition of service to include those 
 who study God's Avorks, and until the 
 school recognizes Avorship as a part of 
 its legitimate exercise. 
 
 I have one other thought, and it con- 
 cerns us all, students, and teachers, and 
 friends. I refer to the tendency AVC share 
 in common with all great educational 
 institutions of our time, to emphasize the 
 intellectual and suppress the emotional 
 side of our natures.
 
 62 In Terms of Life. 
 
 A wise man said many years ago that 
 faith without works is dead. He meant 
 that a religious life that did not bear 
 fruit in good deeds was no life at all, and 
 not religious. A recognition of this, 
 and the overdevelopment of the sterily 
 emotional side of religion, has led many 
 thoughtful people to turn away from the 
 religious organization and to welcome the 
 increasing opportunities for social ser- 
 vice. The new science of sociology has 
 set people to thinking about methods, to 
 talking about service, and to seeking for 
 ways of helping their fellows. I think 
 this longing to be of use to their fellows 
 is stronger among men than ever before. 
 The fact that the churches still give more 
 attention to man's future condition and 
 less to the present adds to this diver- 
 gence. There are hundreds of people 
 to-day who are doing splendid work for 
 their fellows, helping them to larger, 
 more abundant life, who hardly ever 
 enter a church or feel the need of its 
 services. 
 
 Now, here is a serious danger. Reli- 
 gion has in it two elements, one is wor-
 
 Our Religion. 63 
 
 ship, the other is service, a God side 
 and a man side. It is possible for men 
 to give so much time to the God side of 
 religion to worship, to praying, to div- 
 ing into the heavenly depths for beatific 
 visions that they become absolutely 
 useless to their fellows. Most of you 
 will grant this, because this tendency is 
 what most of you criticise in the churches. 
 Now, I wish to make another statement. 
 It is possible for men to become so me- 
 thodical and intellectual in the service of 
 their fellows that they lose the power of 
 sympathy and love. Service to our fel- 
 lows alone is not religion any more than 
 slavish toil is love. Religion engages the 
 affections of men. It unites us to our 
 fellows, not because it is a dictum of 
 sociology to be altruistic, but because we 
 love them as ourselves. 
 
 Now, love is the ground common to 
 God and man. Love is where they meet, 
 the only place where they can meet 
 face to face, just as a mother and child 
 meet and understand each other on the 
 common plane of their mutual love. On 
 this plane the mother shares her larger
 
 64 In Terms of Life. 
 
 life according to the child's capacity: 
 that is her beneficence; and on this plane 
 the child yields allegiance to the ideal 
 she partially sees in the parent above 
 her : this is her worship. 
 
 Suppose there are other children in the 
 family. Their mutual love and service 
 and homage to the kind one above them, 
 combined with parental care and sympa- 
 thy, make that incarnation of heaven on 
 earth a home. A house, a mere house 
 where people bearing the same name sit 
 down to eat together three times a day, 
 where service is rendered from policy or 
 duty or pay, is not a home just a 
 boarding-house. It takes love to make 
 a home. And in just the same way it 
 takes love to make any part of this uni- 
 verse heaven. For love is self-surrender, 
 and religion includes this element of self- 
 surrender. Just as love unites the parent 
 and child and leads to union and co- 
 operation and fellowship, so love unites 
 God and man, and this union is a vital 
 element in religion. 
 
 It includes worship, because it looks 
 up to a higher power and seeks to fellow-
 
 Our Religion. 65 
 
 ship with it. Morality and duty are both 
 included, but they are swallowed up by 
 love. But the great vitalizing element 
 that gives strength to faith and life to 
 duty is the consciousness that God is 
 working with us as we serve our fellows, 
 and that we can love him. Now, those 
 of you who are serving your fellows are 
 only claiming one half of your reward, 
 unless you are conscious of fellowship 
 with the Father in your service. You are 
 as a servant in the family where you 
 might be a child. 
 
 This is one of the dangers of student 
 life to substitute sociology, or, worse 
 still, ethics, for religion. Sociology is 
 not religion any more than the study of 
 tactics is war. The soldier does not gain 
 confidence .and trust in his commander 
 by studying the rules of war. After be- 
 ing led to victory after victory he gains 
 that reverence for his leader which, com- 
 bined with his study and drill (that is, 
 his sociology and ethics) and with his 
 experience, makes him invincible. So 
 we, working together with God in the 
 regeneration of this world, gain that
 
 66 In Terms of Life. 
 
 personal relation to him which gives 
 meaning to our work and inspiration to 
 our lives. 
 
 Let us, then, worship God; as we love 
 our neighbors as ourselves, let us also 
 love God with all our heart and soul and 
 mind. 
 
 Sympathy is shallow unless combined 
 with reverence ; works are but temporal 
 unless nurtured by faith in the eternal ; 
 service is tiring unless fed by worship ; 
 and man is an enigma unless he knows 
 God.
 
 NEW WINE AND OLD 
 BOTTLES
 
 NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES. 
 
 WHAT is our greatest danger? Per- 
 haps it is the danger of failing to live 
 true. I do not mean hypocrisy, that is 
 acting a lie, but the failure to put into 
 action what we are. 
 
 Here is a common saying: "This is 
 my ideal; I confess I do not live up to it." 
 And this often means, "I do not try." If 
 I were talking to students of zoology I 
 would say that the presence of any power 
 or organ means that it is being used; its 
 disappearance means that it is being 
 neglected. All the symmetrical forms 
 and all the grotesque and one-sided forms 
 are the products of this law. And we are 
 under this law. Its action is rapid in the 
 immaterial world. The removal of unde- 
 sirable things, and the making permanent 
 of good things, are never to be regretted; 
 but by failing to live our ideals, we lose 
 the best part of ourselves.
 
 70 In Terms of Life. 
 
 We hear much in this place about the 
 dangers that threaten the young in the 
 University. Parents and friends anx- 
 iously watch the changes that come, and 
 fear the end. College life means meta- 
 morphosis, and each stage is fraught with 
 danger. Those who anxiously watch the 
 process wonder how it is possible to get 
 an image of a man from the grotesque 
 forms that sometimes masquerade as 
 youth. Of course, the man comes, in 
 most cases. College life is not a failure, 
 though it is far from the success it 
 might be. The intellectual and spiritual 
 birth-rate exceeds the death-rate. Few 
 fail utterly; few succeed in any great de- 
 gree; but the balance is on the side of 
 success. 
 
 When a young man enters college most 
 of his standards are external. Few of 
 those who come here have lived long 
 enough to accumulate much experience. 
 The training of early years gives a trend 
 which none of us are strong enough to 
 overcome completely, even when we rec- 
 ognize its desirability. Our opinions, our 
 beliefs, our bias in social and political
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 71 
 
 and intellectual questions are derived 
 from our parents far more completely 
 than our forms and features. It is per- 
 haps the knowledge of this fact that adds 
 to the solicitude of parents when they 
 send their children away from home. 
 They know what the student does not 
 find out until later, that this training has 
 never been tested by the one whom it 
 most concerns, that the standards are 
 external, and that opinions are not yet 
 convictions. 
 
 Now, it is here, during this period of 
 intellectual living, that the change comes 
 in our attitude toward our standards of 
 living. Heretofore we have lived as 
 others directed or influenced. We are 
 here to acquire the power of directing 
 ourselves. Impulse and feeling and emo- 
 tion must here acquire some rational 
 basis. Up to this time they have been 
 the spontaneous fruits of our living. 
 Heretofore we have acted because we 
 felt like it; now we must know why we 
 act. 
 
 This analytical process destroys much 
 of our power of doing. By the time we
 
 72 In Terms of Life. 
 
 have studied our steam to find what it is, 
 it has become cold water. By the time 
 we have thought much about the emo- 
 tional and impulsive religious life which 
 we have led, the emotion is all gone, or 
 it may be that it is displaced by another. 
 Cold water that has once been steam is 
 insipid and somewhat disgusting. And 
 so a religious life that has cooled down 
 from emotionalism into rationalism often 
 gives its owner a feeling akin to nausea. 
 Some of the hardest words I have ever 
 heard spoken against religion have come 
 from those who at one time were enthu- 
 siastically religious. Some new wine has 
 been poured into old bottles and turned 
 sour. 
 
 Our beliefs grow up with us. They are 
 not entirely, not even largely, a matter of 
 the intellect. They are part of our breed- 
 ing and of our living. Many of our 
 reasons for things are inherited from our 
 parents. We do not alw r ays understand 
 how they are constructed. Like a child 
 who has received a watch, we play with it 
 and break it, but cannot mend it. Many 
 people think children ought not to play
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 73 
 
 with watches. They are for older people. 
 In the same way many people think that 
 children should not play with reason, or 
 meddle with the carefully constructed 
 thought-systems of their fathers. They 
 want them to take these systems, use 
 them, ca.ll them their own, but dread the 
 analyzing spirit that may try to find how 
 the thing is made, and so spoil it. 
 
 Many fathers and mothers say to me, 
 " If my boy will only hold on to the fun- 
 damentals" They are afraid that the 
 business of the University is to overthrow 
 fundamentals. As if fundamentals could 
 be overthrown ! What they mean by fun- 
 damentals is their own conception of the 
 truth, the basis of their own belief. They 
 want their boys to wear their clothes, 
 not the same style only, but the iden- 
 tical clothes, with all the creases and 
 wrinkles and patches in place. Now, the 
 wrinkles and creases represent experi- 
 ence and testing, and the patches are the 
 scars honorable scars of victory. And 
 I have no patience with the sophomoric 
 spirit which vaunts its reason and throws 
 into the rag-bag everything that the
 
 74 In Terms of Life. 
 
 fathers believed. We would not be here 
 to-day if our fathers had not believed 
 very close to the truth. However far 
 afield we may go in our young and cal- 
 low days, the larger part of us will be 
 found revamping the old beliefs of our 
 fathers and mothers when we go to work 
 on the world. I have taught long enough 
 to know that this is true. But the time 
 comes when the child becomes the man, 
 when he must know how his watch is made, 
 even if it costs him several watches to find 
 out, the information is worth several 
 watches. The time comes when he finds 
 himself asking, " Why do I believe this ? 
 Why do I practice this?" And because 
 he cannot at once find a reason that will 
 satisfy, many of the things he has be- 
 lieved all his life in common with his 
 father will be laid on the shelf until the 
 experiences of life lay a foundation for 
 them again. Then they will be taken 
 down. He will cease to do many of the 
 things he has customarily done, because 
 he finds that they are not the natural 
 fruit of his life. It seems like hypocrisy 
 to do them, even for the sake of father
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 75 
 
 and mother. I have letters and figures 
 from some hundreds of students that 
 show me that eighty -five per cent, of 
 them take up their old practices again 
 when their real living seeks expression. 
 But there is nothing unnatural or very 
 alarming to me in the suspension of reli- 
 gious activity, which is common among 
 young men and women at the University. 
 It is one of the penalties we pay for our 
 isolation. Student life is not real life. 
 It is a dangerous period, all climacteric 
 periods are dangerous. But they seem 
 to be part of the plan of God's world. 
 This suspension is only temporary. It is 
 largely due to the confusion of change 
 and readjustment; to the transfer of alle- 
 giance from authority to self. The change 
 rarely comes without confusion, but it 
 must come, and when it is complete it is 
 worth all it costs. A little bit of real 
 living will bring back the enthusiasm 
 and emotion, and no one can be faithful 
 and true to his ideals without finding 
 God displacing them with himself. Much 
 as I sympathize, therefore, with the more 
 or less painful processes of change, I do
 
 76 In Terms of Life. 
 
 not regard the change itself as the great- 
 est danger that threatens the young man 
 or woman here. It must come, and this 
 is the natural time for it to come. 
 
 To the one who looks in vain among 
 his books and notes for the old standards 
 by which he shaped his life, I would say, 
 " They are not there. You are here to 
 study tools and methods, and this study 
 fills a large part of your life. But the 
 study of tools and methods and the filing 
 of your wits will neither give you the 
 glow of exercise nor the emotions of liv- 
 ing ; nor will study about God ever give 
 you the confidence that working with him 
 gives." As students our position is ab- 
 normal. We get more than we give. 
 When you resume your place in the 
 world, life will bring back the emotion 
 you think you have lost, and clear up all 
 the doubts that now seem so great. We 
 all face the danger of mistaking the form 
 in which the truth was clothed for the 
 truth itself. 
 
 Calvinism and Arminianism are trifling 
 matters compared with the fact that God 
 is and that we may call him our Father.
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 77 
 
 Unitariauism, Triuitarianism are mere 
 word-quibbles compared with the fact 
 that the spirit of Christ is in the world, 
 saving it. These things are not funda- 
 mental. They are what many mean by 
 essential and fundamental, but they are 
 only terms, forged by human intellects to 
 express one phase of the truth as it ap- 
 peared to them. There will be some 
 astonished people who reach heaven and 
 find that Christ was neither Methodist nor 
 Presbyterian, Calviuist nor Arminian 
 that he cared for none of these things 
 except as they hampered and hindered 
 those who believed them instead of be- 
 lieving him, who worshiped them instead 
 of using them to serve him. 
 
 Many of you are now in a period of 
 change. Well that it should come during 
 the isolation of your college days. You 
 will never have so much time to settle 
 things as now ; yet you will find that you 
 can settle very few. Have confidence in 
 yourself. Trust your nerves to tell the 
 truth, unless you have been abusing them. 
 Some state this another way, and say,
 
 78 In Terms of Life. 
 
 " Trust in God." I mean the same thing. 
 Be sure that you believe, and do not 
 hold a mere opinion. To define is not 
 belief; experience gives belief. 
 
 God and righteousness and Christ, 
 miracles and immortality, fatherhood and 
 brotherhood, sin and redemption, these 
 are not theological words, though many 
 theologies have been written about them. 
 All are facts of experience, and as facts 
 they all touch our lives in some way. 
 Our touch with them is our knowledge of 
 them. But do you not see it? We can- 
 not talk about them and compare notes 
 about them without changing our ideas 
 of them and modifying our definitions. 
 
 Many think it impossible to separate 
 these things from the philosophy about 
 them, wicked to try. We must try. We 
 will ask Christ and history and literature 
 and life what they say about these great 
 facts. When we get their answers, for 
 they all speak of them, we will probably 
 construct another philosophy in place of 
 the old. It will seem better to us than 
 the old, though perhaps not very differ- 
 ent, because it expresses things that we
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 79 
 
 believe, not what we have been told to 
 believe. 
 
 Believe iii yourself. If a statement or 
 a fact appeals to you as true, believe it. 
 Be your own authority. Bottle your own 
 wine. Friends will stand around with 
 old bottles and beg you to put your new 
 wine in them. They are wrong in asking, 
 and you are wrong to try. Your new 
 wine needs aging. It must be worked 
 over and must swell up and settle down 
 and be tested to see if it is worth any- 
 thing before it can be put in anything 
 but a new, elastic bottle. Bottle it for 
 yourself. It is the best wine in the 
 world for you. Perhaps when it has 
 aged it will be just like that in the old 
 bottles, but you must cling to it as it is. 
 It is yours. 
 
 So I ask you not to be afraid of the fruit 
 of your own thoughts. We here study 
 together these great truths of life, 
 God and Christ and man, sin and life 
 and death and immortality. It is far more 
 important that you should be sincere with 
 yourself than that you should believe 
 something that somebody has told you.
 
 80 In Terms of Life. 
 
 There is no final test of truth but this 
 one its appeal to our lives. Coleridge 
 says somewhere that the pre-eminence of 
 the Bible lies in the fact that it finds us. 
 By this test judge all truth, does it 
 find you ? Do not wait to reason it out. 
 The fundamentals, the real fundamentals 
 the basis of all belief cannot be 
 reasoned out. 
 
 The fatherhood of God, the divinity of 
 man, the reality of righteousness, the 
 spiritual life, immortality, the ideality of 
 Christ, these are some of the funda- 
 mentals. We apprehend them. Just as 
 we get up in the morning and throw open 
 the blinds and know that the sun is there, 
 so these great facts appeal to us when we 
 squarely face them. But the greatest 
 danger that may threaten a young man 
 or woman is the failure to put into action 
 the truth he does believe. 
 
 I sat by the side lines the other even- 
 ing when the ball was driven almost to 
 my feet, and those twenty-two demons 
 whose breathing nearly burst their can- 
 vas sides stood puffing a moment before 
 they sprang at each other's throats. I
 
 New Wine and Old Bottles. 81 
 
 almost stampeded; I did long to be 
 one of them again. But I only sat and 
 shivered there on the bleachers with 
 another football philosopher, and we told 
 each other how to play the game. 
 
 A young man said to me the other 
 day, "I have not been in church for 
 three years." I looked him over as a 
 curiosity and asked him why. His reply 
 was, "The glaring inconsistencies of 
 church members made me sick. I could 
 not stand it and just stayed away." How 
 consistent ! Here was such a good church 
 member that he never went to church. 
 A man who imagined he had an ideal 
 standing with his back to it. Ideals are 
 to run races with. The moment we stop 
 chasing them they sit down become 
 opinions. 
 
 If the old channel through which your 
 best life flowed is filled up, find another 
 one. If you cannot put your new wine 
 into old bottles, find new ones. Bottle it 
 or lose it. If you cannot serve God and 
 man through the church or Christian 
 Endeavor because the inconsistencies 
 there glare at you, let your truth glare
 
 82 In Terms of Life. 
 
 somewhere that men seeing how consistent 
 a man can be, may be led to think how 
 true God is. If you have new light on 
 old questions, let that light shine. If 
 you put it under a bushel it will go out. 
 " If therefore the light that is in thee be 
 darkness, how great is that darkness." 
 
 The time comes more than once in a 
 man's life when he must know what he 
 believes, when the truth that is in his 
 own heart is all that he can find. But 
 no truth is ours until we first live it, 
 until it enters into our lives and we 
 become it.
 
 THANKSGIVING
 
 THANKSGIVING. 
 
 AT their best the lives of men are but 
 the lives of children; God must view 
 them as such. To him our wisdom must 
 be foolishness ; our strength, weakness ; 
 and our best endeavor crude and incom- 
 plete. 
 
 I have watched children at their play. 
 Everything they do willingly is play; 
 they groan and fret over things they do 
 not like to do, and make burdens of 
 them. But the things they do gladly fill 
 their lives so full they can see nothing 
 else, and they leave undone many things 
 they ought to do, and would suffer for 
 their lack if loving hands did not do for 
 them. All day long they play, planning 
 much that is never done and doing much 
 they never planned, happy so long as they 
 are busy, and busy until sleep snatches 
 them from the midst of a bedtime romp, 
 unconscious of their sleepiness.
 
 86 In Terms of Life. 
 
 They may not know that their play 
 is directed and controlled. They think 
 little of the love that guards and guides. 
 They toil not, and yet they are fed ; they 
 spin not, and yet are clothed. Almost 
 unconscious of the great father- and - 
 mother world, in the midst of which 
 they live, they know it only where it 
 touches their immediate needs, or seems 
 to interfere with their desires. They 
 never know how much more they re- 
 ceive than they earn, or how much less 
 they suffer than they deserve. Love they 
 know, but only its smiling face. They 
 have not yet identified it with self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 They have their sorrows; for loss and 
 gain, seed-time and harvest are never 
 separate from life, and these sorrows 
 seem very big, and fill their whole world 
 full of tears. For, child-like, they do 
 not realize that the tears are in their 
 eyes alone, nor do they know that the 
 kind heart, above which their despair lies 
 helpless, already has new joys and larger 
 life to occupy them. It does not make 
 the pain hurt less to be told that it will
 
 Thanksgiving. 87 
 
 not last, and the child cannot understand 
 how it can live without that which it has 
 lost. But the mother understands for it, 
 and has already provided other things 
 to fill the life that is emptied of all but 
 memory. And the mother is not surprised 
 to see smiles returning through the tears, 
 and the baby's face, a little older for its 
 grief, contented again. 
 
 So children live and move and have 
 their being in a world of love which they 
 hardly know and never understand until 
 they themselves become the love that sur- 
 rounds and blesses other lives. Blessed, 
 thrice blessed is the man who has awak- 
 ened into the likeness of his father and 
 his mother, and still has them with him 
 to receive the burden of his gratitude. 
 
 Life is a parable, and they who know 
 it best see in its tenderest relations the 
 key to the eternal mysteries of God. Are 
 we not, at our very best, but children in the 
 dark, short -sighted, self -centered, filled 
 with our own affairs, unconscious of the 
 Providence that surrounds us, more con- 
 scious of our losses than of our bless- 
 ings, and receiving more than we can give
 
 88 In Terms of Life. 
 
 away. Does not God look at us as we 
 overlook our children, planning and 
 leading, doing for us the things that we 
 leave undone to our hurt, " preventing us 
 by the blessings of his goodness"? Do 
 we not understand him best when we put 
 aside our definitions and dogmas and cry 
 "Father"? 
 
 It is for this glimpse of God that 
 Thanksgiving days come. Every life 
 should have many of them. Not that 
 we should work ourselves into a state of 
 blind optimism by enumerating our bless- 
 ings, and blindly refusing to see our sor- 
 rows. We cannot understand God fully 
 except through the medium of sorrow. 
 And these blessings, of which we all can 
 name so many, are not a salve to deaden 
 pain, but strength to help us bear it. 
 
 The feeling above all others that 
 should possess us to-day is, that in this 
 busy world we are, after all, at home 
 with our Father, watched over and guided 
 and blest just as we used to be in that 
 other home where love withheld so many 
 things that we wanted and gave so much 
 more than we needed.
 
 Thanksgiving. 89 
 
 Do you remember in the "Bonnie Brier 
 Bush" how Carmichael preached his first 
 sermon? It was the evangel of the Lord 
 Jesus. He and his people were together 
 caught up into the higher heaven, and the 
 orphaned boy saw there something that 
 made him hurry home and throw him- 
 self on his aunt's shoulder crying, "Oh, 
 Auntie, if she could have been there ! " 
 That was Carmichael's thanksgiving. 
 Through the first-fruit of his life he 
 began to know his mother. 
 
 So we, as we grow older and wiser, 
 turn from the plaudits of our friends and 
 praise our Heavenly Father; so we drop 
 our garnered treasures and lift our empty 
 hands in gratitude to him who made the 
 harvest possible ; so we link our lives 
 with our Father's in everything we do, and 
 see that his love is making our life possi- 
 ble in greater and greater fullness ; so we 
 come to see that all our time and business, 
 our friends and our power, our stores and 
 our knowledge, our joys and our sorrows, 
 our failures and our victories, are all a 
 part of the great home-making of which 
 our good Father is the center.
 
 90 In Terms of Life. 
 
 This is why thanksgiving is healthful 
 and meet. We learn to know God in 
 the only way man can ever know him, 
 through the recognition of his great love 
 and many blessings. 
 
 It is the selfish child who forgets to 
 say "Thank you." Generous natures say 
 it easily. Those who are doing most for 
 their fellows are those whose hearts are 
 full of gratitude. Some of you may say 
 this morning, "I have no part in this 
 service; I am here as a spectator; this is 
 not my thanksgiving." Is it not because 
 you are not helping God make a home 
 for the men and women in this world that 
 you do not see how much he has done for 
 you ? Like that young man who took his 
 possessions into the far country, you are 
 out of the Father's reach and cannot know 
 his kindness, and you have little or noth- 
 ing left to give. Come back home ! Take 
 hold and help the Father in his home- 
 making, and you will grow to know him 
 so well as you work together, giving 
 more abundant life to your fellows, that 
 your heart will overflow with praise and 
 thankfulness to him who has given you
 
 Thanksgiving. 91 
 
 a part in ;i life so glorious. "Beloved, 
 now are we the sons of God, and it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be ; but we 
 know that when he shall appear we shall 
 be like him, for \ve shall see him as he 
 is."
 
 LIBEKTY
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 "If the, Son therefore shall make you free, 
 ye. shall be free indeed." 
 
 THE history of man is a story of a 
 struggle for freedom. Oppression is one 
 cause of every war, love of freedom the 
 other. Ages before Pharaoh made the 
 lives of the Israelites bitter with hard 
 bondage, the slave had cried out with 
 the weight of his chains. The moan 
 of the oppressed, the clank of his bonds, 
 the harsh voice of the cruel taskmaster 
 form an unbroken monotone in the midst 
 of which History's obligato is often 
 nearly drowned. 
 
 And the heaviest chains have not always 
 been of iron. Superstition and ignorance 
 have held men captive, and conscience, 
 always in advance of man's development, 
 has cut deeper than the oppressor's lash. 
 
 Men have never been free. They have 
 broken through dungeon walls to find 
 
 95
 
 96 In Terms of Life. 
 
 other wider walls arcmnd them. Knowl- 
 edge reveals ignorance, and righteousness 
 makes sin most hideous. Put your ear 
 against the bosom of humanity at any 
 time and interpret the secret of its throb- 
 bing prisoner, and you find the hope of 
 freedom back of all its struggles, free- 
 dom from hunger, from poverty, from 
 suffering or pain, from ignorance or fear, 
 freedom from appetite and avarice and 
 passion and its own baser nature. And 
 this hope, so large a part of man's nature, 
 the strongest incentive to struggle and 
 growth, has been fed and nourished by 
 prophet and priest. The goal of all the 
 ages has been liberty. Christ's first ser- 
 mon proclaimed deliverance to captives 
 and liberty to them that are bruised. 
 
 Man is made to resent oppression. He 
 can be led better than he can be driven. 
 It is his God-given independence, not sin, 
 which causes his whole nature to array 
 itself against a command. Fear is not a 
 good master. It never breeds love. Man 
 can never be happy unless he does what 
 he wants to do. A perfect man cannot be 
 made by the Ten Commandments. " Thou
 
 Liberty. 97 
 
 shalt not do" often makes man want to 
 do. God made man independent and with 
 a will, and made his will free allowed 
 him to do as he pleases. And when 
 we come to him, he does not wish us 
 to pluck out our wills and throw them 
 away, and come to him as slaves, as 
 human machines. He wants men, men 
 who have wills, men who are free, men 
 who can do as they please men who 
 please to come to him. And Christ rec- 
 ognized man's nature, his Godlike power 
 of willing, when he wrote across the 
 decalogue the single word LOVE, which 
 forever blotted out the command and 
 substituted an entreaty. "Thou shalt" 
 and "Thou shalt not" became "Come 
 unto me." Instead of sitting afar off in 
 the heavens and trying to reform men 
 from the outside in, to drive them by 
 fear and duty, the Almighty Kuler 
 revealed his love through Jesus Christ 
 and came down to our level and lived 
 our life, and setting his face heavenward 
 he said : " Follow me. I am the way, 
 the truth, and the life. Ye shall know 
 the truth, and the truth shall make you
 
 98 In Terms of Life. 
 
 free. If the Son therefore shall make 
 you free, ye shall be free indeed." 
 
 What is it to be free? What is the 
 freedom which Christ offers? 
 
 I stood one sunny day on a coral reef 
 in the harbor of Vera Cruz. The hazy 
 blue air was full of sunshine and the 
 healthy odors of the sea. Birds were 
 tumbling about overhead in the perfect 
 abandon of strength and room and trop- 
 ical comfort. The white rocks and blue 
 sea were mixing in a line of fleecy foam 
 until the coral seemed to flow away on 
 the wave crests. It was a perfect day, 
 such as God sends us often when he lets 
 heaven down to rest on earth for a little 
 while. At my feet was a square hole cut 
 out of the rock. Across it were bars of 
 iron. I put my face down, and when my 
 eyes became accustomed to the darkness 
 below, I could see human forms there, 
 men in chains, standing in water ankle- 
 deep, with the ocean ceaselessly pound- 
 ing overhead, its hoarse laugh reminding 
 them that they would be throAvn to the 
 sharks when they were dead. I could 
 see their haggard faces turned up toward
 
 Liberty. 99 
 
 the little barred square of light, which 
 was all of the great free outside world 
 they could see. Since that day that Mexi- 
 can prison has been the background 
 against which I have set my ideal of 
 freedom. Chained hand and foot, in- 
 closed by rocky walls, dependent upon 
 their masters for food and drink and air 
 and life, these men were slaves. 
 
 And yet not all slaves are in chains or 
 behind prison bars. Standing beside me 
 in the group that looked into that dismal 
 hole was a young American. He seemed 
 free. He could go where he pleased. He 
 could gratify his appetites and desires. 
 He was on his way to his Northern home 
 to wed a pure-hearted girl who was wait- 
 ing for him there. He read me from one 
 of her letters, and one could see that he 
 was her ideal of manhood. Yet the 
 night before he spent in a Vera Cruz 
 brothel. The purity he was taking home 
 to his betrothed was only acted. His 
 manhood was only on the surface. The 
 truth was not in him. He was not what 
 he seemed to be. He was afraid lest he 
 should seem to be what he was. He was
 
 100 In Terms of Life. 
 
 chained by his sins and imprisoned by 
 the wall of falsehood he had built around 
 himself until he could walk the paths of 
 truth only in great fear lest the rattle of 
 his secret chains would reveal his cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 A man is not always free when he 
 seems to do as he pleases. It depends 
 upon what he pleases to do. Nor are 
 outward chains the only badge of slavery. 
 It is true that wherever Christ has gone, 
 emancipation has followed. " Imperial- 
 ism has given way to democracy, and 
 slavery to free labor." Peter slept in 
 prison, and an angel came and set him 
 free ; but this is not the way Christ's 
 freemen are liberated. No angel touches 
 the sleeping prisoner that the chains may 
 drop from his galled wrists, but a divine 
 strength has been imparted to the bond- 
 man until, like Samson, he has risen from 
 his slumber and shaken himself, and his 
 withes have parted like tow in the flames. 
 The reformation of Christ has been 
 peculiar in this. It has reformed men by 
 making them strong enough to reform 
 themselves. The angel came in the night
 
 Liberty. 101 
 
 and touched Peter, and his chains fell off 
 and he was free. This is the old way of 
 liberating. The spirit of Jesus Christ in 
 Paul made him victor over his own baser 
 nature, and set him free from the despo- 
 tism of his own folly and the mastership 
 of the Evil One. That is Christ's way. 
 His reformation is from the inside out. 
 Man becomes a partner in the process. 
 And though the reformation is from 
 within, man has not that within him 
 which can effect it. It must be imparted 
 from without. It is God-given. Have 
 you ever tried self-reformation? Have 
 you ever tried by taking thought to add 
 one cubit to your stature ? To lift your- 
 self by the hair of your head? Have 
 you ever on January first resolved to cast 
 away the old sin that has so long tyran- 
 nized you and made you its slave? And 
 have you on January second seen the 
 tempter dangling the old sin, which he 
 had caught? And as he held it before 
 you, you have tried to look away, and 
 have put out your hand to push it away, 
 but have grasped it instead and brought 
 it to your bosom and embraced it there.
 
 102 In Terms of Life. 
 
 Have you known what it is to cry out, 
 like Paul, " O wretched man that I am ! 
 who shall deliver me from this body of 
 death?" That which is so hard, even 
 impossible for you, is made easy for you 
 by Christ. He displaces your weakness 
 by his might, and whom he makes free 
 is free indeed. A physician in Illinois 
 claims to have discovered a medicine 
 which when given to a drunkard will 
 make him loathe alcohol. Our Great 
 Physician imparts to us his own nature, 
 and we hate sin as he hated it. 
 
 By far the severest struggles of men 
 for liberty have been against sin and un- 
 righteousness, severest because they 
 have been secret. The battle has been 
 fought alone. No touching of elbows 
 and bracing of shoulders and strength of 
 comradeship, which add so much to man's 
 power of standing before the missiles of 
 the enemy ; but instead the still hours of 
 a sleepless night, or, alone in the multi- 
 tude, behind the thin mask we put on 
 over our sins because we are ashamed of 
 them. Men always try to do right. It 
 is not natural for man to sin. He is made
 
 Liberty. 103 
 
 to be free, and the chaiiis of sin gall as 
 much as chains of iron. In the heart of 
 every man four motives drive toward 
 righteousness fear, duty, hope, and 
 love. He tries to do right because he 
 is afraid of the punishment of wrong- 
 doing, or because he feels that he ought 
 to do right, or because he hopes for the 
 reward of right-doing, or because he 
 loves to do right. Three of these motives 
 are poor masters. Christ's motive is by 
 far the best one. 
 
 The man who does right because he is 
 afraid of punishment is not free. The 
 man who will not steal because he sees 
 the prison bars is a thief nevertheless. 
 The man who is set free from drink by 
 a policeman standing guard over each 
 saloon is not free indeed. Nor does it 
 matter what form the restraint takes. 
 Fear is always a master, and he who 
 fears is always a slave. If you are 
 honest because it is the best policy, your 
 honesty is assumed, not real. If you 
 attend church because it is respectable, 
 the church is your prison, and public 
 opinion your jailer. If you walk the
 
 104 In Terms of Life. 
 
 strait path when with your wife or 
 neighbor, when away from their protec- 
 tion you will probably attend the theater 
 instead of the church, and indulge the 
 appetite from which shame or fear alone 
 defended you. 
 
 The motive of duty is higher, but far 
 from perfect. Moreover, it is a cold, 
 heartless master. Do you love your wife 
 because it is your duty? Are you kind 
 to your neighbor because you ought to 
 be? Do you try to hold appetite and 
 passion and desire in check because you 
 are morally obliged to? You are like 
 that one-talent man who brought to his 
 Lord his debt of duty, and lost principal 
 as well as interest and received no word 
 of commendation. 
 
 Some men do right because of the 
 hope of reward. The delights of the 
 Eternal City are always before them. 
 They try to hate this world and all it 
 contains of opportunity and training. 
 They try to buy their way to heaven by 
 deeds of righteousness. This is merce- 
 nary. Do you remember the young man 
 who came to Jesus by night? He had
 
 Liberty. 105 
 
 put the tables of stone in one pan of the 
 balance, and hoped to see Eternal Life 
 rise in the other. From his youth up 
 he had been working for a reward, yet 
 the first command to love sent him away 
 sorrowing. 
 
 Christ offers the freedom of love. He 
 does not demand a service of fear. Per- 
 fect love casts out fear. He does not 
 demand a service of duty. That which 
 the law could not do in that it was weak, 
 the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 
 made us free from. Indeed, Christ de- 
 mands no service whatever. We are no 
 longer servants, but friends. We are 
 adopted. We become members of God's 
 family, and therefore his work is our 
 work. We do right because we please 
 to do right. He changes us into his 
 image so that we hate sin and love right- 
 eousness. 
 
 The service of love does not question 
 does not count the cost. There is no 
 friction in love. It requires no process 
 of cold reasoning to make you cherish 
 your mother or your wife. You never 
 think of service when making your child
 
 106 In Terms of Life. 
 
 happy. Love hides reason, and crowds 
 out even the thought of sacrifice. Love 
 makes it possible for us to grow without 
 taking thought, makes righteousness nat- 
 ural, makes us free indeed. 
 
 "I am the way, the truth, and the 
 life. . . . And ye shall know the truth, 
 and the truth shall make you free."
 
 FRAGMENT
 
 FRAGMENT.* 
 
 A VERY large part of the intellectual 
 class finds itself to-day between the horns 
 of a dilemma. On the one hand, the mind 
 is dominated by inheritance and training 
 until it identifies religion with its insti- 
 tutions, its dogmas, its forms, its figures 
 of speech; on the other, this mind is 
 trained by the methods and literature of 
 the age to war with the institutions of 
 religion, to ignore her forms and reject 
 her dogmas. The dilemma is not a new 
 one, though its present dimensions belong 
 to the latter half of this century. 
 
 By this dilemma one who would be 
 religious is tempted to separate his reli- 
 gion from his intellectual life to the great 
 disturbance of the former, or to close his 
 eyes to what they see and distrust reason 
 and experience so far as they lead him 
 aAvay from his faith. This is a form of 
 
 Written probably in November or December, 1898, but 
 not delivered. 
 109
 
 110 In Terms of Life. 
 
 intellectual dishonesty not so common 
 now as a few years ago. By this same 
 dilemma one who would be rational is 
 tempted to hoodwink himself by imagin- 
 ing that he believes what he knows he 
 doubts, or to classify himself as unreli- 
 gious altogether because he is not like 
 some people, who say they believe what 
 he must doubt, and who loudly affirm 
 their own religion. The dilemma is not 
 a new one, but to those whose expanding 
 intellectual life leads them to it for the 
 first time it is new and very real. Of 
 these there are many in our midst. I 
 speak chiefly for these. 
 
 I believe that every man can and ought 
 to be religious. I do not think he is a 
 complete man until he is religious. If 
 you will accept my definition of religion, 
 you will think so too. I cannot make 
 you religious. I would not if I could. 
 That is your part. Being is not born 
 of hearing, but of doing. But I have 
 learned some things in my experience 
 with young men and women that have 
 been very helpful to me and to others to 
 whom I have given them. Some of these
 
 Fragment. Ill 
 
 things I bring to you, hoping they may be 
 needed. I like to bring to this chapel 
 platform the best my life gives me, and 
 the best thing out of my experience is 
 that the life Jesus Christ lived is the 
 best life for any man or woman. People 
 do not readily believe this. When we 
 remember how quickly men throw away 
 old things for newer and better, how 
 rapidly new inventions are adopted the 
 world over, we can but wonder that the 
 best life has so slowly commended itself 
 to the race. But I think we are begin- 
 ning to see that the world has had but 
 imperfect and few glimpses of the real 
 life of Jesus. An artificial, man-made 
 Jesus, constructed of Greek philosophy, 
 Oriental mysticism, and Roman legalism, 
 has grown up between the real Jesus and 
 a harassed people who yet instinctively 
 feel that there is a living being within the 
 mass of stuff associated with his name. 
 
 With most people to-day the terms 
 Christianity and Religion are synony- 
 mous. Even the Jew of to-day will 
 speak of the civilization which he him- 
 self has so well helped to build as
 
 112 In Terms of Life. 
 
 a Christian civilization. The adjective 
 Christian and the term Christianity are 
 used to designate and define that move- 
 ment which, wider than any church, 
 broader than any creed, has carried our 
 moral and social and intellectual life far 
 in advance of that of any other age. 
 Even men who would rather believe like 
 Buddha or Confucius prefer to live like 
 Christians. Christianity is one of the 
 very few universal things in the world 
 to-day, until we seek to define it then 
 Babel ensues. Now, the reason for this 
 confusion and lack of agreement is the 
 fact that men do not base their definitions 
 upon the reality, but upon deductions 
 and doctrines which from their very 
 nature can never be tested by experience. 
 This confusion of tongues has turned 
 many true men and women away from 
 Christianity. Go to them and say, in 
 Jesus' name, " Well done, good and faith- 
 ful servant; you are a Christian." And 
 they will answer, "I never was baptized, 
 never joined the church, never recited 
 the creed, and never said, Lord, Lord." 
 Then you may answer, " But I was hun-
 
 Fragment. 113 
 
 gry, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty, 
 and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger 
 (homesick and lonely), and ye took me 
 into your home. I was naked, and ye 
 clothed me. I was sick, and ye visited 
 me. I was in prison, and ye came unto 
 me." This kingdom is made of such as 
 these. If we would use Christ's test of 
 a Christian and separate the men-serving 
 sheep from the do-nothing goats, there 
 are. not enough churches in this world to 
 house the host of Christians, not even 
 allowing for the church space that the 
 goats would have to vacate. 
 
 It is pathetic to see how the world is 
 struggling toward the Christian ideals 
 almost in spite of the great institutions 
 which have so long stood as the repre- 
 sentatives of Christ. The pulpit no longer 
 has a monopoly in proclaiming the truth. 
 The truest religious life finds expression 
 now in a thousand ways that have not yet 
 been adopted by any institution. 
 
 Ten years ago Phillips Brooks said, 
 "The great mass of men do not to-day 
 belong in associated relations to the 
 
 Christian Church." He shows that this 
 H
 
 114 In Terms of Life. 
 
 is because the Church has confined her- 
 self to the few partial phases of religious 
 activity she now displays, and is so 
 largely a mere conserver of dogma and 
 forms of worship. This condition has 
 certainly not changed for the better since 
 1888, so far as the conventional church is 
 concerned. There have been wonderful 
 strides along philanthropic and socio- 
 logical lines which have enlisted thou- 
 sands of idle hands in service ; and 
 institutional churches with walls as 
 broad as human activities are springing 
 up outside of the established channels. 
 "True religion is mightily stirring and 
 strenuously laboring in all these various 
 directions : and certainly if the Church 
 does not soon w r ake to an adequate sense 
 of her great privilege, facilities, and duty, 
 she will be left in the rear, instead of 
 being the leader of the universal move- 
 ment toward better things." 
 
 For the Church this means that it loses 
 that great body of true and earnest men 
 who do not recognize their ideal of hu- 
 manity in it. But for many of these true 
 and earnest men, lovers of their fellows,
 
 Fragment. 115 
 
 it means that they classify themselves as 
 heretics and outcasts and unreligious. 
 This in itself does not make them so 
 except so far as a man unconsciously 
 lives up to the reputation he makes for 
 himself. Custom has so identified reli- 
 gion with its institutions in our minds 
 that it is difficult to think of one without 
 the other. It is a sign of vitality when 
 a man inside of a church, or outside, 
 recognizes his religion as his life inde- 
 pendent of any means of expression. 
 The commendation "well done " will give 
 certain self-approval to any one who faith- 
 fully works with the trend of things, but 
 it will come sooner if he knows he has a 
 right to expect it. Many people come to 
 know Christ by their righteous lives who 
 would never know him through what 
 often seems to them the fantastic and 
 irrational processes of Christian institu- 
 tions. Kindness and sympathy and mercy 
 and love are eternal graces and know their 
 kind wherever found, and are known by 
 them. 
 
 But must I not believe this or that 
 about God or Christ before I am reli-
 
 116 In Terms of Life. 
 
 gious ? Most certainly not : only so much 
 as finds a response in your own life. It 
 is only that part of God or Jesus that we 
 can appropriate, assimilate, and recognize 
 as possible and attainable incur own lives 
 that is of any use to us. 
 
 I have wished many times that religion 
 might be put upon a more natural and 
 commonplace basis; that so much of the 
 supernatural as is not founded on our 
 daily experiences or suggested by our 
 living might be removed. 
 
 The instinct of worship is indestructi- 
 ble in man's nature. 
 
 Religion is the activity of our sym- 
 pathies, the feeding of our hopes, the 
 strengthening of our knowledge of the 
 trend of things. 
 
 "Men worship best together, but they 
 philosophize best alone." 
 
 But you say, "If I believe a part of 
 Jesus' life, must not I believe it all?" 
 No. Your life is founded upon so much 
 of truth as you apprehend; the rest is 
 mystery to you, and whatever your atti- 
 tude toward it, you do not keep it to 
 live with.
 
 II. LECTURE FRAGMENTS
 
 INTRODUCTOKY.* 
 
 MY purpose in this course is, (1) to 
 study the actual life of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, Christ as he was, not what men 
 have thought he ought to be ; (2) to study 
 his words just as they were uttered and 
 independent of commentaries and deduc- 
 tions, seeking to translate them into the 
 terms of our life to-day ; (3) to study the 
 movement called Christianity, which, tak- 
 ing its name from its founder and its char- 
 acter from his principles, is without doubt 
 the controlling force in our civilization 
 to-day. 
 
 I recognize fully a certain limitation 
 and embarrassment because the subject 
 is so intimately connected with the reli- 
 gious life and thoughts of so many people. 
 We dread to talk out loud about the 
 things we associate with our churches 
 
 Fragment of a lecture given at the beginning of the 
 secoiul semester in the course on the Life and Teachings 
 of Christ. 
 
 119
 
 120 In Terms of Life. 
 
 and our prayers. We fear to bring into 
 the glare of the sunlight those objects 
 which seem so mysterious in the gloom 
 of the cathedral. (Their healthy growth 
 depends upon the amount of airing we 
 give them.) Yet, in spite of these limi- 
 tations, we will seek to study Christ and 
 Christianity with our common senses, to 
 test them by our human standards, than 
 which we, after all, have no other, and 
 to use them for our human and every-day 
 necessities, which are the only ones that 
 are real and important. 
 
 We will always worship, if we worship 
 at all, that which is highest and truest in 
 our lives. Nothing outside of our lives, 
 however grand and noble, will ever be an 
 object of worship. 
 
 We love to abstract ourselves from our 
 bodies and our gods from our hearts and 
 let the two flit off together into thin-aired 
 heights where there is nothing to do be- 
 cause there is nothing to bother. But 
 the God whom we serve and seek and 
 pray to is concrete and anthropomor- 
 phic, in us and not without us. 
 
 If Christ is an important factor in our
 
 Introductory. 121 
 
 social life, and he is without doubt the 
 most important, why should we not 
 study him as we study Shakespeare, or 
 Luther, or Ca?sar, and in exactly the same 
 spirit? If Christianity summarizes the 
 great forces which control and direct and 
 shape our civilization, why, then, should 
 we not study it as we would the French 
 Revolution, and in exactly the same 
 spirit? 
 
 In studying the person of Christ, his 
 biography and his character, we must do 
 it here in human terms. That is not say- 
 ing that there are no other terms. But 
 the object of these lectures is to empha- 
 size the humanity of Christ. There is a 
 theology of Christ ; its study belongs to 
 metaphysics. There is a psychology of 
 Christ ; its study belongs in its particular 
 place. Our study here is never distinct 
 from these two phases, but it is never 
 distinctly either. I shall endeavor to 
 exhibit the strong and pure, the success- 
 ful, the virile nature, the picture of whose 
 life makes every true man stand taller 
 and every weak heart stronger. 
 
 It is a fact that no man can ever stand
 
 122 In Terms of Life. 
 
 true under the severest tests of life with- 
 out increasing the self-respect of every 
 other man who knows it. I never hear 
 or see such instances without feeling 
 proud that the human race can commit 
 such virtue. So, setting aside all doc- 
 trines about Christ's nature and office, 
 not for the reason that we do not hold 
 them, but because they are not for us to 
 study here, we will use this wonderfully 
 simple and natural teacher's life as a key 
 to solve the mysteries of our own lives. 
 
 A violet looking at the sun can know 
 only its violet rays. Its knowledge fades 
 on the one hand into actinic darkness ; on 
 the other, it is lost in the blues. Its 
 knowledge of the great sun is limited by 
 the work the sun has done in it, by its 
 coincidence with the sun. 
 
 So with any ideal, with any friend. 
 Friendship is but the common ground 
 you and another occupy. Your best 
 friend is he who widens this common 
 ground and quickens your whole being, 
 the one who makes you live the most. 
 You do not measure your friendships by 
 your brains, but by your pulse-beats.
 
 Introductory. 123 
 
 Some of you say that you cannot recon- 
 cile your intellectual and your spiritual 
 lives. I think you never will, if by recon- 
 cile you mean coincide. The head can 
 never understand the heart, and the heart 
 will always be doing such unreasonable 
 things. But if the head is right in its 
 sphere, it will find that the heart in its 
 sphere is right also, much harm may 
 come from trying to identify them. Enter, 
 then, into this study of Christ's life with 
 your whole life, not your head only. 
 You will satisfy me and my roll-book 
 probably if you use your heads alone, 
 but you yourself will be unsatisfied. In 
 the clear light of Christ's teaching and 
 life, study your own life, your appetites 
 and ambitious, your social relations, all 
 your relations to God and to man. Apply 
 to him the same tests that apply to your 
 own life ; apply to yourself his standards 
 of life. In this way only can we profit- 
 ably deal with the facts of his life and 
 the truths of his teaching. . . . 
 
 Christ talked in the language and 
 figures of the every-day life of his time. 
 To the people who listened he was not
 
 124 In Terms of Life. 
 
 using the language of the temple, but of 
 the street, of the field, of the lake-shore. 
 He talked to be understood by people 
 whom he understood. We can only com- 
 prehend his meaning by understanding 
 the conditions of the time, the people, 
 the figures of speech, the changes that 
 have come to the words he used. . . . 
 
 The words of Christ were not religious 
 in his day any more or less than a lecture 
 in hygiene is to-day. We expect to hear 
 them in church or connect them with reli- 
 gion, but they were not such words as his 
 audiences were accustomed to hear in 
 the synagogues. They have become so 
 largely the ecclesiastical language of our 
 time that it is hard for us to realize that 
 they were not ecclesiastical then. "He 
 taught not as the scribes taught." We 
 can only get the meaning of these words 
 by taking from them the ecclesiastical 
 setting and expressing them in our own 
 phraseology. . . .
 
 THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 MOST of us have a thought-world where 
 we love to retreat and dream a fair 
 and happy land, where sweet fields are 
 arrayed in living green and rivers with 
 milk and honey flow, where this world 
 as we know it is reproduced in fancy with 
 all that is evil and uncomfortable and 
 wearing left out. It is no larger than 
 this world. It is no grander. It is not 
 peopled by giants and heroes, but by 
 men and women like ourselves, disem- 
 bodied, we think, but just like ourselves 
 in size, interests, attainments, loves, and 
 hates, and differing from this only in the 
 one particular, namely, that it is made of 
 dreams, and contains only what seems 
 attractive and desirable to us, while this 
 is real, is worked in matter, and is full 
 of restrictions and laws that hamper and 
 limit, We call that our spiritual life, 
 this our temporal ; and because things
 
 126 In Terms of Life. 
 
 seem to run so smoothly there and so 
 roughly here, and especially because we 
 have to give so much of our time to this 
 and find it so hard to abstract ourselves 
 and dream of that, we argue that these 
 two are at war and it will be a grand day 
 when we are freed from this prison-house 
 and its hard labor. We argue so ; and 
 yet we hardly believe it, for we have lots 
 of good times here, and when this ghostly 
 presence is not with us, reminding us 
 that this world is all a fleeting show, we 
 live this life to the full, and whenever 
 we forget ourselves we are often very 
 happy. 
 
 We have located most that we mean 
 by religion in that spiritual and unreal 
 world. The Bible, church service, prayer, 
 and much that we call duty, seems to be 
 reached down like a great good out of 
 that ethereal realm of mystery; and we 
 compel ourselves to do things without 
 reason, just because custom has connected 
 them with religion, and religion is spiri- 
 tual, which often means also irrational. 
 
 We are told by preacher and teacher, 
 by friend and conscience, that we must
 
 The Spiritual Life. 127 
 
 cultivate our spiritual natures, and so we 
 pore over our Bibles, hoping to absorb 
 spirituality. We drop our tasks and try 
 to think of other things, to clothe our 
 fleshly bodies in figures of speech. We 
 put ourselves in unnatural, unspoutaueous 
 positions or activities and think they de- 
 velop the supernatural and spiritual, and 
 then we splash back into our native 
 element like a panting fish that has 
 leaped into the air to catch a sunbeam. 
 What is wrong? If the spiritual life is 
 something taken out of this life of sense, 
 something I must prepare for by extra 
 exertions above and beyond those needed 
 to keep me alive and fed and clothed and 
 useful in this life of physical activity, 
 then the struggle is too hard for me. I 
 cannot divide my energies. I have not 
 time to stop living and go to church or 
 prayer-meeting, or to exercise my spiri- 
 tual senses. All such time is pilfered 
 from this life that I am leading, and I 
 will fall behind in the race if I permit 
 such waste. Now, I am sure that one, if 
 not the only, reason church services or 
 prayer - meetings are not attended by
 
 128 In Terms of Life. 
 
 crowds, is because they have to do so 
 largely with a theological and therefore 
 unreal world. They supply no demand. 
 
 Many of us see no difference between 
 this unreality and what we mean by spiri- 
 tuality. We abuse our own consciences 
 and brand ourselves as heretics because 
 we do not enjoy and find food in what we 
 have been educated to believe is meat and 
 drink for the spiritual life. If we exam- 
 ine the case with care, we will find that 
 the trouble grows out of a misconception 
 of the spiritual life. What, then, is the 
 spiritual life? 
 
 In the first place, a spiritual life is 
 activity not dreaming. It is the refine- 
 ment of this life - - not for a moment or 
 by a hair's-breadth now or ever separated 
 from it. It is this life, if it is anything 
 at all. It is wrong to speak of it as a 
 separate life at all ; it is this life, spiri- 
 tualized. "It is the activity of the soul 
 in its sensitiveness to the unseen world." 
 But that unseen world is the world that 
 expresses itself in the forms and forces 
 and lives we see and handle and struggle 
 with and help and hinder all about us.
 
 The Spiritual Life. 129 
 
 It is that part of me that is not confined 
 to my body, that part of me that leaps 
 from my heart outward toward men and 
 God and his world, not some dream of 
 future happiness hidden in the inner 
 chambers of my imagination to be real- 
 ized when my disembodied spirit joins 
 the favored circle inside the pearly gates. 
 That is refined selfishness, and though it 
 is called Heaven, it is gross materialism. 
 Building our dream-castles out of pearls 
 and gold and furnishing them with beds 
 of ease is as harmful to character as 
 if built like a sty and furnished with 
 troughs. Let me illustrate : You and I 
 have a common life not our features, 
 or stature, or appetites, or physical 
 powers of any kind. These all vary 
 infinitely, and, moreover, they are all 
 things we cannot share. But we stand 
 on common ground and exchange our 
 thoughts; words fly back and forth, and 
 they are not always empty. I talk to 
 you, and so much of your life as is 
 moved is mine, my dominion in you. I 
 pick a thought from my heart and throw 
 it into the air. Instantly a dozen of you
 
 130 In Terms of Life. 
 
 catch it; it is yours too; we are alike, 
 we have that in common, we are to that 
 extent attuned one with another. Now, 
 nothing no thing passes from me to 
 you. Yet one's whole life may be 
 changed by such experiences. They are 
 the cream of living. Within ourselves 
 we may be struggling for possessions, 
 for existence. Here is a " neutral ground " 
 for barter. Widen the "neutral ground.'' 
 [Husband and wife. Completely united. 
 Extend this to the world, to include all 
 men. It can include all men. Sound 
 men for it, and you always find it.J This 
 is the life of the world, the common life, 
 that will come and does come just in 
 proportion as men make other people's 
 lives their lives. I do not mean doing 
 things for other people as outside of our- 
 selves, for conscience' sake, or what not. 
 That again is selfishness, though it is 
 often called charity. But it does mean 
 living a life common with other people, 
 just as a mother makes the child's life 
 her own, and as he will make hers his 
 own when he is a man, joined to her, not 
 by any material bands or physical cords,
 
 The Spiritual Life. 131 
 
 but by a spiritual and a common love. 
 This is real charity, this is altruism, and 
 is possible only to that part of us that 
 dwells in the spiritual world, the only 
 part that we can have in common, even 
 with our best friend. 
 
 Now, this spiritual life is as wide as 
 the world. It develops as we add life 
 by life to our life, not only the lives that 
 are now on earth, but all who have left 
 messages to be read centuries after they 
 are gone. I read Emerson. Sentence 
 after sentence sets chords quivering in 
 my soul until I think and feel like Emer- 
 son I am Emerson. I read words 
 spoken by Jesus. Again the throbbing 
 common life tells me we are one. I look 
 into the face of a friend. Soul meets 
 soul even before the tardy tongue can 
 speak and we share our common life. 
 So we find the world is a spirit-world, 
 and as we live on this common ground of 
 love and altruism more and more do we 
 know that the spiritual is developing in 
 us, that this life includes and swallows 
 up all other life. 
 
 More than this, we find men have
 
 132 In Terms of Life. 
 
 common aspirations, all upward. Their 
 ideals all face the same way toward 
 the heavens. They are being led, perhaps 
 driven, in the same direction, and Nature 
 not always master, is more often father, 
 and speaks messages which the spirit of 
 man understands. A great world-spirit, 
 a universal life, is abroad, whispering the 
 same words to all men, leading men in 
 the same path, teaching the same laws of 
 righteousness, and brooding lovingly over 
 men to show them that they are one with 
 each other and one with it. Is not this 
 the Holy Spirit God communing with 
 his children ? Just as I share with you 
 my life, we together share his life. 
 
 Now, suppose your life is complete in 
 itself. You give all your time to your 
 studies day after day adding to your 
 knowledge, studying machines, skeletons, 
 laws, perfecting your tools, not with any 
 one or for any one, but for yourself. 
 Blind to the messages that flash from 
 faces and from Nature, dead to the pulses 
 of power that throb around you, do you 
 not descend to the level of the machine 
 you study and cut off the common thing
 
 The Spiritual Life. 133 
 
 that would link you with men aud with 
 God? You, then, have no spirituality. 
 
 Anything that you do for yourself, 
 that centers in yourself, that is out of 
 touch with the great world-life, is selfish ; 
 it is material, and it will never, can never, 
 link you with the life of the world. Un- 
 selfishness, spirituality, usefulness, power 
 of giving aud receiving, come through 
 sharing, and we can share only what is 
 spiritual. If we really have this com- 
 mon life in us, and it is life, will we not 
 enjoy and desire to exercise it together? 
 And how shall we cultivate it ? Is it not 
 a very natural thing I have been speaking 
 of? Just as I develop and cultivate any 
 other power of my being, will I, by 
 activity, by living, feed this life until it 
 links me with all men and with God. 
 
 Religion belongs here. Identify her 
 with her stuff, and she ceases to be 
 religion. Religion is the activity of 
 one's sympathies, the feeding of hope, 
 the strengthening of one's knowledge of 
 the trend of things on which we ground 
 our faith. Formalism of any kind kills 
 this life ; spontaneity is necessary to its
 
 134 In Terms of Life. 
 
 existence. Spontaneity is the overflow 
 of a full life. Like all life, it is fed by 
 exercise with its kind. The greater the 
 freedom and the wider the range of one's 
 activities, then, the larger will be one's 
 hold on spiritual things. This explains 
 Christ's constant warfare Avith the ritual- 
 ism and rigid Temple system in his 
 time, and the battle which must be fought 
 with ecclesiasticism at all times. 
 
 When people come to believe that pay- 
 ing the expenses of a church is a chief 
 part of religion, or uttering certain words 
 is worship, or saying speeches in stated 
 meetings is service, or doing anything for 
 the sake of doing -it, and not because it 
 really expresses life, then the spiritual 
 life disappears, and cold and formal and 
 sterile is that which remains.
 
 ENVIRONMENT. 
 
 . . . GOD, iii the sense of Father, 
 and all its derivatives, is not in the envi- 
 ronment of the animal at all. Nor is my 
 God in the environment of lower men. 
 There is a God in their environment; 
 they fear, they recognize sequences, but 
 they have not risen into fellowship with 
 him, nor detected personality. . . . 
 
 Growth is possible only by the putting 
 away of old things, and old things are 
 put away because new things are offered. 
 It is not easy to put away old things 
 regeneration is not a painless process, 
 and it is a continuous one. Fitness to 
 live, socially or spiritually, is demon- 
 started only by sacrifice and breaking 
 with the past. 
 
 We grasp some great thought to-day, 
 and we must readjust our lives to it 
 rise into its level. Angels of light hold 
 greater thoughts over our heads. We 
 
 135
 
 136 In Terms of Life. 
 
 can strive for them, and so grow taller, 
 or we can spend our time with what we 
 have, and after a while the angels will 
 stop coming. 
 
 When angel hands, at God's behest, 
 
 Reach from the light o'erhead 
 The viands rare, from tables where 
 
 The sons of God are fed, 
 The children grow, who strive to grasp; 
 
 The Father's love is guiding. 
 And men grow tall who upward reach 
 
 For that the clouds are hiding. 
 
 Nature is constantly putting a premium 
 on new things. . . . The worst enemy 
 of the better is the good. So if new 
 thoughts are thrown into your life which 
 show you something better than you ever 
 knew before, that which was best before 
 becomes wrong. 
 
 Christ at Nazareth made every man in 
 the village unchristian, whatever his life 
 may have been before. The pilgrims, 
 with their higher civilization, made it 
 impossible for Indians to live, as savages, 
 in North America. That Nature saw it 
 so, is proved by their disappearance. A
 
 Environment. 137 
 
 knowledge of medicine and the laws of 
 health makes it a crime to ignore this 
 knowledge, and trust to charms or incan- 
 tations. In other words, increase the 
 environment of a man, and he must 
 adapt himself to the wider life, or lose 
 what he has. 
 
 But mere proximity nearness of an 
 object to an individual does not mean 
 that it is in his environment. An ignorant 
 man may live in a great library, and learn 
 nothing from it. A church in the slums 
 is not necessarily among the influences 
 that act upon the lives of the people 
 there ; it must first touch their lives. 
 
 God, to be in man's environment, must 
 be reduced to human terms incarnated. 
 We must, if we would be helpers of men, 
 get into their lives. We must talk to 
 people, if we wish to get our message 
 into their environment, in their own lan- 
 guage. Ask a boy to be a Christian, and 
 he may not know what you mean. Begin 
 by asking him to be good to his mother, 
 or kind to his sister, and when he has 
 achieved these in a very small degree he 
 will by them be lifted into higher possi-
 
 138 In Terms of Life. 
 
 bilities. I sometimes wonder if we do 
 well, in the pulpit, to hold up in so 
 large a measure, ideal conditions of life. 
 Would it not be wiser to take out of 
 people's lives the best, and show how it 
 may be made a little better ? 
 
 I know a plucky little fellow who could 
 hardly keep back the tears one day be- 
 cause he could not walk his big brother's 
 stilts, but grew very happy walking some 
 smaller ones made to fit him. And one 
 day he came running with joy in his 
 eyes, crying, "Oh, father, I can walk 
 Harold's stilts!" Those high stilts had 
 been in his environment all the time, but 
 he had learned to walk them by walking 
 his own.
 
 THE NEW BIRTH. 
 
 I AM going to try to tell you what Christ 
 meant by these words: "Ye must be born 
 from above," and "partake of the king- 
 dom of God." I shall talk very simply, 
 because the subject is exceedingly pro- 
 found, and we run great danger of leaving 
 things we know and talking about things 
 we imagine. 
 
 There is a doctrine of the new birth. 
 Under many forms and names it is much 
 talked about and wrangled over. Doc- 
 trines have to do with the causes of things 
 and the how of things, and here where w- 
 have to do with facts alone we have noth- 
 ing to do with doctrines about them. I 
 shall speak of the fact of the birth from 
 above. It is not a doctrine to be quar- 
 reled about, but an experience to be 
 tested by any one who wishes to earn the 
 right to talk about it. 
 
 In the first place, the kingdom of God 
 
 139
 
 140 In Terms of Life. 
 
 that Christ speaks of here is a figure, a 
 Jewish figure. Christ always means by 
 it the ideal order, when right and justice 
 and truth and purity will prevail here 
 among men, when the things we feel 
 ought to be will be, when man will 
 voluntarily do the things God is doing, 
 and the ideal conditions that we make 
 heaven of will really exist here on earth. 
 This kingdom of God really exists on 
 earth in a very small degree. In some 
 degree we have worked it into our pri- 
 vate lives and our social lives. Our 
 institutions and our practices are much 
 nearer the ideal than those of our fathers, 
 and this progress represents so much 
 growth toward the real presence of the 
 kingdom here. But it is so very, very 
 small, when we compare it with the 
 ideal state of affairs, that we have not 
 yet much cause for pride. 
 
 So the kingdom of God is something 
 that exists chiefly in our minds, not 
 wholly, for some of it is incarnated in 
 men and women, and conditions and laws. 
 And in spite of our ignorance and weak- 
 ness and perversity, we are working it
 
 The New Birth. 141 
 
 out of our minds into the real fabric of 
 life every day. But most of it is still 
 unreal, and exists in our minds, or is 
 drawn out as a working plan, very much 
 as an architect draws the structure and 
 makes a blue-print of it before he 
 begins to embody it in stone and wood. 
 It has a certain existence, and when a 
 man is helping place the stones and build 
 the structure according to the plans, its 
 reality grows on him daily, but we can 
 neither weigh it nor handle it. Its exist- 
 ence is spiritual. Not every man who 
 dresses the stones that are to form its 
 walls can comprehend the plans. They 
 are meaningless to the carrier of brick 
 or the mixer of mortar. Show them to 
 these lower minds, and they would find 
 them incomprehensible. I saw a hod- 
 carrier take up a blue-print and pu/xle 
 over it sheepishly for a while, and then 
 put it down and go back to his mud- 
 mixing unenlightened. I was a little 
 nearer the architect in my culture, and 
 could see, from my higher ground, that 
 this child of the mind was going to be 
 worked out in brick and the verv mortar
 
 142 In Terms of Life. 
 
 that that laborer was mixing. I had some 
 knowledge that he had not, yet I had 
 nothing to show for it that would serve as 
 a means of making my understanding his. 
 
 Now, in much the same way we can 
 detect the plans of the Being who is 
 building his mind and will into our 
 world. 
 
 We. may see no more than the xtuff we 
 work with. We may think only in terms 
 of matter and its laws, or we may rise 
 into a very close fellowship with the 
 Builder himself. And these purposes of 
 his, these plans he is working out, are 
 the kingdom of God that Christ speaks 
 of. It is a spiritual kingdom, and while 
 it may be known, yet its limits cannot be 
 stated in terms of matter. This spiritual 
 ideal kingdom is very real to some, while 
 others are hardly conscious of its exist- 
 ence. Some live in it all the time, and 
 neglect all other living, so that the spiri- 
 tual work itself dies because it lacks the 
 material it builds with. The mixer of 
 mud is just as necessary to the master 
 builder as the master is to the mixer of 
 mud. And some who are faithfully and
 
 The New Birth. 143 
 
 truthfully working on some of the parts 
 never see themselves as a part of the 
 great whole, and so lose the inspiration 
 which comes to all who partake of the 
 kingdom. When all is as it should be, 
 the hod-carrier and the stone-cutter will 
 dignify their labors by entering into the 
 plans of the master. 
 
 Now, Christ says that if we would be 
 partakers of this kingdom that is coming 
 into the world we must be born from 
 above. He means that a change in us 
 must come which will enable us to see 
 God's understanding of the things we do. 
 
 A child helps in some household task 
 because it is told to do so. But after a 
 while it catches some of its mother's 
 spirit of unselfishness, and now it helps 
 because it realizes that its life and the 
 home life are one. Something new has 
 come to it, come from its higher mother- 
 life. The child will develop this until it 
 will be completely united with its mother. 
 Tt has been born again from above. 
 
 Or to take the former illustration. Sup- 
 pose a strike : the hod-carriers are out; 
 the master builder away, perhaps misun-
 
 144 In Terms of Life. 
 
 derstood. Some friend of labor sits down 
 beside the hod-carrier, explains the plans, 
 and shows the purpose of the master, 
 shows how necessary co-operation is, in- 
 troduces master and laborer, so they can 
 talk over matters. The laborer sees things 
 in a new light. He is willing now to work 
 for the glory of it. He has caught the 
 spirit of the thing; the building is his. 
 He has been born again. He does not 
 cease to be a laborer. This new spiri- 
 tual life is not a substitute for his other 
 life. It is added to it. He lives more 
 than he did before. This friend who 
 understood the heart of the builder and 
 the heart of the laborer has brought to 
 the hod-carrier new life which is more 
 abundant than the old. Now, some such 
 change as this must come to every one 
 who washes to enter into any kind of a 
 sympathetic understanding of God's work. 
 His life is not a satisfied one until he 
 feels that the thing he is busy with is a 
 part of God's system and that he and all 
 good livers are working at the same thing. 
 When this comes a man is a member 
 of the kingdom and is born from above.
 
 FAITH. 
 
 I WISH, at the outset, to secure your 
 interest in tins word. 
 
 It is not an attractive subject, for faith is 
 made a mystery a something intangible, 
 which it is difficult for us to understand. 
 It is supposed to be unrelated to natural 
 causes to be God-given, and bestowed 
 on man for the asking. A lack of faith 
 is often given as a reason for God's with- 
 holding it. It is urged upon all who 
 would be religious, and is made a neces- 
 sity upon which all blessings depend; 
 yet, unlike all other necessities, it is 
 difficult to acquire, and easy to lose. 
 
 Now, faith is a perfectly real thing 
 as real as religion. I wish to show as 
 plainly as I am able, how important and 
 vital it is to our religious lives. Many 
 people who do not understand how they 
 can have faith in God, when they have 
 never tried him or tested him, will corn- 
 
 14. r > J
 
 146 In Terms of Life. 
 
 prehend what I mean by faith in one's 
 self. I wish to show, first, that these 
 expressions mean the same. 
 
 Our ideals, our plans, our hopes all 
 lead us toward the unseen. Between us 
 and God, representing more than any- 
 thing else the hold God has upon us, are 
 the dreams we hope to realize during 
 our university course. Our religious 
 lives are identified with these dreams. 
 
 Show me the things you hope for, and 
 I will write a definition of your God. 
 Some can see God only through their 
 own wishes and self-centered desires. 
 Others rise so far above themselves that 
 they seem to look back at the world 
 through God's eyes and to see what other 
 people want, and just where and how to 
 help. To me, our school life is religious. 
 Where one is pulling wires toward him- 
 self, a score are trying to make others 
 comfortable and happy. And the good 
 feeling which comes from this is really 
 God-feeling, and would not come unless 
 we had forgotten ourselves in the pursuit 
 of the ideal life where the interests are 
 common.
 
 Faith. 147 
 
 The pursuit of our ideals is a large 
 part of our religion; it needs but the 
 added element of worship to make it 
 complete. And this will come when we 
 recognize that these leadings toward 
 better things these ideals, these things 
 we hope for are, one and all, God touch- 
 ing us and manifesting himself to us. 
 
 When we can look our ideal in the 
 face and say, "My Lord and my God," 
 then we have become religious. The 
 thing I most long for here, is to see 
 that you each identify the good you 
 tind within the best you recognize in 
 your own lives with the All-father 
 without. 
 
 You will never really believe that God 
 is your Father or recognize your own 
 sonship, until you see that you want to 
 do things as God does them, that good- 
 ness and truth mean just the same for 
 you as they mean for him who rules all 
 things. Then, like a very little child, 
 you say, "Why, I am like my Father; I 
 do things the way he does." No man can 
 be of much use to the world until he can 
 call the Creator the great force back of
 
 148 In Terms of Life. 
 
 all things Father. " Father " includes 
 the recognition of likeness, the identi- 
 fication of our ideals the things we 
 hope for with God. It includes the 
 implication of sonship. Do you remem- 
 ber when you reached up so far to take 
 hold of one finger of your father's hand, 
 and tried to step as far as he did, and 
 understood that you could grow like 
 him and do the things he did ? 
 
 It is a great event in a boy's life when 
 he can say, "I and my father are one." 
 It is greater, when a man finds that he 
 can keep step with God; that he wants to 
 do, and can do, the things that God is 
 doing. But the term father includes one 
 thing more. It brings in the family feel- 
 ing, that links our lives to the lives of 
 others and makes our interests common. 
 I have gloried in the development of a 
 child from the period where her inter- 
 ests were in her own affairs to that where 
 she cared for the things her brothers 
 needed. I have said, "We have another 
 member of the family, another partner." 
 
 So in the University life, when I see a 
 student interested in the lives of his fel-
 
 Faith. 149 
 
 lows, I know he has caught the spirit of 
 the University, and that our great body 
 is stronger by another member. 
 
 Now, there is an esprit de corps for the 
 race. When a man feels the same kind 
 of interest in his fellows that he feels in 
 the members of his own household, 
 when he cares whether his brother is 
 well housed, or well clothed, or well 
 educated, he has caught this racial 
 wprit de carps, and feels toward the race 
 just as God feels. For God is bringing 
 it to pass that all men shall be well 
 cared-for. You can judge of your faith, 
 therefore, and define it, by studying your 
 own attitude toward these great ques- 
 tions God, and self, and man. 
 
 Faith is the hold you have on the 
 ideal, the distinctness of your vision of 
 these relationships. It is the evidence 
 you have that your plans and desires and 
 hopes will be realized. You surely would 
 not give much time to service of God or 
 of fellows unless you believed it would 
 pay. If you believe that you and God 
 are alike and one, it is because your life 
 is proving it to you. If you look ahead
 
 150 In Terms of Life. 
 
 into the future, and see how you can be 
 of some use, and make something of 
 yourself, and become like the dream of 
 the father there is within you, and if you 
 are willing to work here four years to 
 realize your dream, your hope is founded 
 upon some real evidence that things will 
 go your way. That evidence is your 
 faith. It represents what you are, and 
 connects your past with your future. 
 
 When men search with so much heart- 
 ache for faith in order that they may 
 believe, they think they are groping in 
 the darkness to find God. They think if 
 they can only find him, they will get 
 faith from him. It is not faith in God 
 that they need, but faith in themselves. 
 They know God will do his part. They 
 have perfect confidence that he will run 
 the universe all right. It is self-confi- 
 dence that men need, belief that they can 
 do their part. No man ever falls away 
 from God and loses confidence in him 
 until he has first warped and twisted his 
 life by falling away from himself. In 
 other words, faith does not depend upon 
 anything God does or may do, in answer
 
 Faith. 151 
 
 to our prayers, but upon us, upon 
 our training, our experience, our knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 The University has much to give us; 
 our power to take depends upon our- 
 selves. Heaven will not supply the lack- 
 ing of a lazy life. It is full of blessings 
 for those who seek them, great arm- 
 fuls waiting for great arms to reach 
 them. Puny, untrained arms can carry 
 only little loads, and Heaven is not 
 responsible for untrained arms. People 
 who expect to receive much, must be 
 prepared to receive much. If you go to 
 the well with a little bucket, you must 
 expect to draw only a little water. 
 
 As the will is the man willing, so 
 belief is the man believing. A man in 
 the full possession of all his powers is a 
 man of faith. 
 
 And yet men confess lack of faith with 
 so little shame ! They are content to act 
 like babes in religious matters. They 
 would not dare confess that they were 
 ignorant, would not speak above a 
 whisper, if they told you that they were 
 bankrupt, but yet exhibit a kind of pious,
 
 152 In Terms of Life. 
 
 though melancholy, pride in telling you 
 that they are religious fizzles. As if God 
 were responsible ! Just so, an habitual 
 loafer will always blame the Government 
 if he is out of work. 
 
 The danger that some fear from social- 
 ism and kindred movements, will never 
 come from those who vote their con- 
 victions. They are patriots; forgetting 
 themselves, remembering their country. 
 The danger will come from those who 
 blame the Government for their own 
 failures and seek to vote the accumula- 
 tions of industry into the hands of idle- 
 ness. They are parasites, not patriots, 
 who cling to new movements, misrepre- 
 senting them, and misusing them for 
 selfish ends. And so with the Church. 
 She must go before the world with a 
 load of weaklings who importune Heaven 
 for that which they should themselves 
 supply. They think that keeping them- 
 selves humble and inefficient is "being 
 like little children," and have not yet 
 learned the truth that the power of a 
 church depends upon the character of 
 its men and women just as much as the
 
 Faith. 1 53 
 
 power of a banking-house depends upon 
 the integrity of its employees. 
 
 Here are two views of faith : A little 
 girl once woke from an unpleasant 
 dream, left her bed, and passed out 
 into the hall calling to her father. He 
 stepped into the hall below, and seeing 
 above him the little sunny-haired, white- 
 robed figure, thought to test her confi- 
 dence in him. Reaching out his arms to 
 her, he said, "Jump, Gertie," and with- 
 out an instant's hesitation, she jumped 
 into the darkness and was safe in her 
 father s arms. This was not faith, but 
 inexperience ; she believed in her father, 
 not in herself. 
 
 To me there is no better example of 
 faith than in the words of the Psalmist, 
 who had tested God through a long life : 
 " I have been young, and now am I old ; 
 yet have I not seen the righteous for- 
 saken, nor his seed begging bread." Or 
 the twenty-third Psalm: "Yea, though 
 I walk through the valley of the shadow 
 of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou 
 art with me; thy rod and thy stafl' 
 they comfort me. Surely goodness and
 
 154 In Terms of Life. 
 
 mercy shall follow me all the days of 
 my life." 
 
 So I make this assertion, that faith 
 faith in self, faith that puts God to the 
 test, faith that links God and man, and 
 is the key to all the riches of heaven- 
 is the result of experience, and is to be 
 won like any other power, by persistent 
 and constant exercise. You, and you 
 alone, hold the key to your heaven. 
 
 I will try to show how this is true. 
 Carlyle says, "Hope is the great constant 
 in a man's life." We live not for what 
 we have, but for what we want hope 
 for. " This is a great truth ; it uncovers 
 the divine part of us. To live with only 
 a recognition of our present possibilities, 
 to draw all our joy and comfort from 
 such things as we can now get under our 
 touch and sight, as so many are telling 
 us, this, I conceive to be thoroughly 
 brutish. It makes man but another bird 
 among the trees, or another insect hum- 
 ming in the evening air. But to hope 
 and wait for the highest and best we can 
 conceive, this expands life, and makes 
 it as large as infinity. This affords a
 
 Faith. 155 
 
 field for the solution of its mysteries, for 
 the cure of its ills, for regaining some of 
 the lost things, for realizing the complete 
 union with God for which man always 
 strives." 
 
 But how do we know that these enchant- 
 ing dreams will ever be realized? It is 
 easy to build air-castles, another thing to 
 believe they will become real. 
 
 Is there any evidence for these things 
 we hope for? First, examine the future. 
 It is dark. We peer into its formless 
 void, and tremble before its emptiness. 
 We call God, and hear the taunting 
 echoes of our own despair. Hope is 
 not a bird of night that pushes across 
 that dark gulf, and expects us to follow. 
 Hope is one of the three things that 
 abide with us. We get nothing from the 
 future ; let us look behind. There much 
 becomes clear. Some of us have been a 
 long time with the past, and have learned 
 to see God in it. Life has been a period 
 of testing. We have been tested, and we 
 have tested God. He has never failed. 
 We have never found him anywhere but 
 at our sides. We have sought him, in
 
 156 In Terms of Life. 
 
 the heaven away from our life, and have 
 cried many times, like Philip, " Show us 
 the Father." 
 
 But we have always found him in some 
 incarnation who stands by our side, or 
 rests in our hearts. As we have failed, 
 we find that our confidence, our belief in 
 self and in our future, is shaken. We 
 hope for much, but do not have the evi- 
 dence that makes its coming certain. As 
 we have stood unflinching, and have quit 
 ourselves like men, we have come to be- 
 lieve in ourselves, and have acquired a 
 strong confidence in regard to the future. 
 We have abundant evidence from the 
 past -we have grown a man of belief 
 within us. So, when the future asks its 
 questions, we look within and find the 
 answer there. So we acquire the power 
 of walking without fear or question into 
 the future, because the past has made us 
 believers. And our belief, our faith, is 
 the evidence that the things we hope for 
 shall come to pass. We are daily mak- 
 ing our past laying the foundation for 
 hope, 'if we daily walk with God, the 
 future will be full of God.
 
 Faith. 157 
 
 But some one says, " This puts the 
 whole responsibility of my religious life 
 and my future life upon me." That is just 
 where it ought to be. Instead of putting 
 ourselves in the attitude of pensioners 
 on God's bounty, let us be what all true 
 children are partners and co-laborers. 
 
 The weakest can be stronger if he will, 
 and as we acquire belief in ourselves 
 doubts will vanish. Faith is the momen- 
 tum of a life of righteousness; the dis- 
 tance into the future a life can run that 
 has been running right in the past.
 
 WOKK. 
 
 AN iron-foundry, a flour-mill, a brick- 
 kiln derive their names and their char- 
 acters not from the rough material they 
 receive, but from the articles they give 
 out. It is so with men. We measure 
 them not by their accumulations or their 
 knowledge ; they are just what they give 
 out to us. 
 
 Character seems to be made, more by 
 the "output" of our lives than by the 
 "intake." It is well to learn; it is better 
 to teach. It is well to receive ; it is bet- 
 ter to give. Often we overlook this, and 
 when we find ourselves suffering from 
 spiritual ennui or disordered religiously, 
 we rush to some soothing-syrup. That 
 brings artificial feeling of comfort and 
 ease, but fails to attack the disease at its 
 very roots. 
 
 For it is a disease. I have no good 
 name for it, but it is common. There 
 
 158
 
 Work. 159 
 
 are many people who can eat great 
 hearty meals and do nothing whatever 
 with them, unless sitting with kindred 
 spirits magnifying gnats until they are 
 as big as elephants, or mole-hills until 
 they swell mountain high, is doing some- 
 thing. 
 
 Or sometimes the disease passes 
 through another phase and affects the 
 brain. Great thoughts, abstracted from 
 life by master hands, are taken in until 
 the gorged intellect, confused and dazed, 
 sees visions and dreams dreams that life 
 can never realize, and that unfit the un- 
 happy victim for social fellowship with 
 those who toil and bear burdens. 
 
 We hear. We store our minds and 
 note-books with rules and maxims. We 
 know how to live. But this is not life. 
 When our knowledge becomes motive, 
 and only as it becomes motive, does it 
 pay us for its getting. Only that part of 
 our knowledge or our conviction which 
 becomes action solidities into character. 
 All the rest is like the sand, blown by 
 the winds, mountain-high at times, but 
 fleeting.
 
 160 In Terms of Life. 
 
 There is a class, and many of us belong 
 to it, that is especially tempted to lead 
 an unnatural life. All of us have to give 
 a certain portion of our time to living, to 
 bread and butter and clothes and taking 
 care of our bodies. During that time we 
 are safe. We are working for what we 
 receive. That is always perfectly safe. 
 It is of the remaining time that I speak 
 
 the time you have left after this neces- 
 sary work is done, your spare time, 
 that is, over and above what you give to 
 maintain your body. This time is beset 
 with danger. It is so easy to become a 
 recipient, to read good things and listen 
 to good things. It is really hard to be- 
 come a giver. We have to compel our- 
 selves. Our natural laziness, fed by this 
 atmosphere of laziness, would keep us 
 lolling about the easy chairs all day long, 
 did we not drive ourselves into exercise. 
 
 And there is a certain kind of apathy 
 
 fed by lecture courses, sometimes 
 that makes it easy for us to keep our 
 best thoughts to ourselves, and hard for 
 us to hunt up some fellow and give them 
 to him.
 
 Work. 161 
 
 When we overeat at the table our 
 obliging and much-abused stomachs take 
 care of the material as long as they can, 
 work it over, pass it into the system until 
 all the store-chambers are full ; then our 
 heads get to aching, and our eyes are 
 blurred, and blue devils keep us com- 
 pany, and we cannot see things clearly. 
 So some analogous symptoms are always 
 found in those who hear and do not do. 
 The disordered mind begins to doubt 
 and fear, and sees strange visions of 
 esoteric unrealities and grotesque phil- 
 osophies. And theories that never can 
 be lived cloud the life. 
 
 Our doubts and fears and vagaries will 
 vanish when we begin living again just 
 as clouded eyes and dull aches will dis- 
 appear when we take a day's outing. 
 
 I need not further emphasize the call 
 to work. Surely I have done that in 
 these lectures. I have tried to show 
 that it is laid upon every living thing, 
 and upon every part of every living 
 thing necessary to our very existence. 
 It is more important that men should be 
 given something to do than something to
 
 162 In Terms of Life. 
 
 eat. We learn far more through activity 
 than through meditation or reading or 
 listening to sermons or lectures. 
 
 Some of you have wished that these 
 words of mine were printed that you 
 might read them over and talk them 
 over. I should rather fear the result. 
 The only good that can come to any of 
 you through these lectures is to forget 
 the words and put into action the emo- 
 tion. If you have been changed, the 
 change is the important thing. Let the 
 words go. 
 
 Now, I wish to show you that in the 
 "Kingdom" work is the primary thing, 
 activity is the essential thing. Pay that 
 is of secondary importance. How many 
 people waste their lives working for pay, 
 instead of working for work. Was it 
 Lessing who said, "If God should put 
 in one hand all truth and in the other 
 the search for truth, I would throw away 
 the truth, and spend eternity in the 
 search"? 
 
 We carry our misconception into the 
 religious life, and make sensation and 
 emotion the end of religious activity.
 
 Work. 163 
 
 We perform tasks in order that we may 
 feel good. We praise that meeting that 
 arouses our emotions, as if a man or 
 woman had no other reason for being 
 than to feel good. Religious enjoy- 
 ment, like every other enjoyment, is only 
 incidental. Many try, and succeed too, 
 in purchasing feeling by working for it. 
 They exchange services or rituals for 
 emotion just as they would give money 
 for a narcotic so much sensation for so 
 many pennies. 
 
 The church is not a mere club to pro- 
 mote enjoyment; nor is its work pri- 
 marily to promote the devotion and 
 worship of its members. The church is 
 to disciple all nations, reform all society, 
 enlighten all moral darkness, alleviate 
 all distress. Let it do that work, and it 
 cannot escape emotion and increased de- 
 votion. Take hold and help, and you 
 will have more emotion than you know 
 what to do with. To try to be religious 
 while neglecting urgent duty is to begin 
 at the wrong end. Religion must be 
 thoroughly mixed with usefulness to 
 keep it wholesome.
 
 164 In Terms of Life. 
 
 There are two views of life. We may 
 choose either. 
 
 One is to ask, " How much am I worth ? 
 What have I done? How much will my 
 services purchase me? What can I get 
 out of the world?" The other is to ask, 
 "What am I? How much can I give? 
 How much can I do?" Work is the 
 means the end is man. Enjoyment or 
 position are incidental accompaniments 
 that Always come when you work a man. 
 
 The man who works for pay is not the 
 best worker. A teacher whose object in 
 teaching is to draw a salary is not cap- 
 able of imparting to his pupils what they 
 need. But if he enters earnestly into 
 his task and teaches for the sake of 
 teaching, he forgets the pay, and excels 
 in his work. This truth holds in reli- 
 gion. He who does good because it 
 pays may not be good, but he who is 
 good does good without thought of re- 
 ward. 
 
 Bargaining prevents being. The man 
 who goes through life thinking only of 
 the heaven at the end of it, is apt to 
 experience many of the tortures of hell
 
 Work. 165 
 
 on his journey. It is hard enough to 
 lay by money. It is far harder to lay by 
 character and good deeds with which 
 to purchase eternal life. The young 
 man who came to Jesus and asked, 
 "What good thing shall I do that I may 
 have eternal life?" had spent his life 
 accumulating virtues, but had forgotten 
 to be. 
 
 We look to heaven for the mysterious 
 wedding garment, and hope that it may 
 tit us when we put it on. We overlook 
 the fact that it is being formed now in 
 our very tissues, fitting us as closely as 
 our habits, and more nearly like us than 
 our shadows. 
 
 " Long, long ago there lived a saint so 
 good that the astonished angels came 
 down from heaven to see how a mortal 
 could be so godly. He simply went 
 about his daily life, diffusing virtue as 
 the star diffuses light, and the flower 
 perfume, without even being aware of 
 it. Two words summed up his day: he 
 gave, he forgave. Yet these words never 
 fell from his lips; they were expressed
 
 166 In Terms of Life. 
 
 in his ready smile, in his kindness, for- 
 bearance, and charity. 
 
 "The angels said to God, 'O Lord, 
 grant him the gift of miracles!' God 
 replied, 'I consent; ask him what he 
 wishes.' 
 
 "So they said to the saint, 'Should 
 you like the touch of your hands to heal 
 the sick?' 'No,' answered the saint; 'I 
 would rather God should do that.' 
 'Should you like to convert guilty souls, 
 and bring back wandering hearts to the 
 right path?' 'No; that is the mission 
 of angels. I pray I do not convert.' 
 'Should you like to become a model of 
 patience, attracting men by the luster of 
 your virtues and thus glorifying God?' 
 'No,' replied the saint; 'if men should 
 be attached to me, they would become 
 estranged from God. The Lord has 
 other means of glorifying himself.' 
 'What do you desire then?' cried the 
 angels. 'What can I wish for?' asked 
 the saint, smiling. 'That God gives me 
 his grace; with that shall I not have 
 everything?' 
 
 " But the angels insisted, ' You must
 
 Work. 167 
 
 ask for a miracle, or one will be forced 
 upon you.' 'Very well,' said the saint; 
 'that I may do a great deal of good 
 without ever knowing it!' 
 
 "The angels were greatly perplexed. 
 They took counsel together, and resolved 
 upon the following plan: Every time 
 the saint's shadow should fall behind 
 him or at either side, so that he could 
 not see it, it should have the power to 
 cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort 
 sorrow. 
 
 "And so it came to pass. When the 
 saint walked along, his shadow, thrown 
 on the ground on either side or behind 
 him, made arid paths green, caused 
 withered plants to bloom, gave clear 
 water to dried-up brooks, fresh color to 
 pale little children, and joy to unhappy 
 mothers. 
 
 " But the saint simply went about his 
 daily life, diffusing virtue as the star 
 diffuses light, and the flower perfume, 
 without ever being aware of it. And the 
 people, respecting his humility, followed 
 him silently, never speaking to him about 
 his miracles. Little by little, they even
 
 168 In Terms of Life. 
 
 came to forget his name, and called him 
 only 'The Holy Shadow.'" 
 
 So the power of the helper lies first 
 in his power of becoming unconscious, 
 of forgetting himself and any reward, 
 and losing himself in his work. And 
 this faculty for losing one's self in work 
 can come only by practice. Begin to 
 carry other people's burdens, and look 
 for trials and chances to help; you will 
 be awkward at first, as when you first 
 rode a wheel, but you will soon become 
 expert and unconscious. And if you ever 
 have time to examine yourself for feel- 
 ing, you will find you are wonderfully 
 happy. 
 
 "But what can I do?" so many ask. 
 They look for some great thing. Big 
 sacrifices are easier than little ones. You 
 probably are not fit for a great work, or 
 you would be doing it. But you are 
 working in the truest sense when you 
 identify the lives of others with your 
 own. And I mean the whole life. We 
 narrow the conception of religious work, 
 and make it mean teaching a Sunday-
 
 Work. 169 
 
 school class, or visiting the poor and the 
 prisons. Do you know that some of the 
 Lord's poor sit in palaces with their 
 hands chained by luxury, and so im- 
 prisoned by social customs that the God 
 in them is dying? And you, if you touch 
 them at all, might take the poor sick 
 divinity out walking for a while. A new 
 thought will do it a breath of the fresh 
 air of life. 
 
 Anything whatever that widens the 
 horizon of a man, that makes two rush- 
 lights burn where but one burned before, 
 that sweetens a moment of life, the least 
 drop you take from the bitterness that 
 tills so many lives this is religious 
 work. Do it with your might. But be 
 tactful. It requires endless tact to help. 
 No one can be a helper and not think 
 and plan and contrive. It costs to sym- 
 pathize, for true, helpful sympathy means 
 literally feeling just as others do a 
 sensible participation in their joy or 
 woe. And we cannot become real help- 
 ers until we sympathize. Look for the 
 fruits of your work not in what you do, 
 nor in what you give. A large share of
 
 170 In Terms of Life. 
 
 these will always be hidden. Look into 
 your heart. Measure your work by your 
 life. 
 
 For God withholds the harvest store 
 From hands that cast the seed, 
 
 And hides the golden treasures in 
 The heart that felt the need. 
 
 We never know how many fold 
 
 The grain has multiplied; 
 How many little mouths have fed, 
 
 How much has failed or died. 
 
 But we may know the wealth and joy 
 That spring from freely giving; 
 
 The gladdest, maddest joys of life 
 Are those that come from living. 
 
 Count not your garnered treasures o'er, 
 They are but seed for sowing; 
 
 Throw them broadcast into the world, 
 And know the joy of growing. 
 
 Toil not to increase your stores, 
 God's gifts exceed your suing, 
 
 But toil that ye may Godlike be, 
 Being is born of doing.
 
 SERVICE. 
 
 IT is a mistake common to us all to 
 think that looking at pleasing aspects of 
 the truth, subjecting ourselves to sensa- 
 tions, hearing good things about things, 
 is adding to our power and developing 
 our character. 
 
 Sensations are within the reach of all. 
 Preachers deal in them sometimes. Our 
 rituals and our choirs give them. There 
 are books that pile up great waves of 
 emotion in us almost as real as if we had 
 earned them. I have read of battles that 
 were so vividly portrayed that my cold 
 blood grew hot and I felt like a hero; but 
 I cooled down, a little more weary than 
 before, that was all. I have listened 
 to great preachers who talked so famil- 
 iarly of holy things and made them so 
 real that earth has seemed dreary when 
 1 touched it again. Emotions are dan- 
 gerous things unless they find an outlet 
 in action. We can so narcotize ourselves 
 
 171
 
 172 In Terms of Life. 
 
 with holy things that our senses will lie 
 to us. We can read these sayings of the 
 Master until we can feel like Christians. 
 We can, as the Buddhist urges, meditate 
 on holy things until we feel as though 
 we were holy too. But periods of rude 
 awakening come. We find we have been 
 hearing and not doing, saying Lord ! 
 Lord! and not doing God's will. 
 
 I would not appear to condemn our 
 emotions, but to show how little they 
 mean, nay, how they are even harmful, 
 if we do not work them off in service. 
 So large a part of our religion is emo- 
 tional that we are apt to think this is all 
 there is of religion. We cry, " Could we 
 but stand where Moses stood," wishing 
 we might live all the year round in the 
 Holy of Holies instead of once a year. 
 
 I would not live where men are not. 
 But turn from Holiest Place 
 
 To let the lower brother see 
 The glory in my face. 
 
 Nor could I dwell on Sinai's top 
 Alone with God most high; 
 
 I must love him whose lower lot 
 Knows less of God than I.
 
 Service. 173 
 
 Religion has in it two elements 
 receiving and giving. We are in danger 
 of thinking too much of what God can 
 give us, of what our church is to us, of 
 how we can change our lives and build 
 our characters. This is the only way not 
 to receive. 
 
 Exercise the angel; do not try to exor- 
 cise the devil. No animal lives for itself, 
 or is allowed to live for itself. Nature 
 executes drones. Until a man has learned 
 to give and to train himself for giving, to 
 work for others, to plan and study for 
 others, to live for others and spend him- 
 self for others, and save nothing for him- 
 self, nature exacts pound after pound of 
 flesh until only enough remains to make 
 a fossil. Men groan over a tenth. The 
 God of nature exacts all. Our nature 
 exacts all. "Use it, or lose it." All 
 your learning, achievement, discovery, 
 your good times, your blessed experi- 
 ences have not found the reason for 
 their existence until you touch the heart 
 of humanity. Our hands may lose all 
 we give our hearts lose nothing.
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 EVERYWHERE to-day the cry of the 
 suffering is not, "Oh, for somebody to 
 pity me ! " but, "If only somebody could 
 understand ! " 
 
 Sympathy is what the world needs 
 rather than pity. Sympathy requires a 
 free use of the imagination, to compre- 
 hend the experience and condition of 
 another. People long more than any- 
 thing else to be understood. " Put your- 
 self in his place " is old advice, and it 
 tits most of the relations of life. It 
 measures the power of the speaker over 
 his audience, the politician over his 
 party, the preacher over the pew, the 
 teacher over his students, and your power 
 over those you would help. 
 
 Putting yourself in his place is sym- 
 pathy, nothing else can be. And if you 
 are planning for dominion over men in 
 any way, your dominion will be measured 
 
 174
 
 Sympathy. 175 
 
 by your understanding of them. The 
 fisherman who understands things from 
 the standpoint of the trout, is the one 
 who comes home with a full basket. The 
 teacher who talks from the student's 
 standpoint, is the good teacher. The 
 friend who can put himself in your 
 place, is the friend you love most. And 
 so it goes. To be sure, this kind of sym- 
 pathy costs. People in trouble do not 
 want you to say, "Poor thing!" any 
 one can say that. A student talking over 
 a burden heavier than most students 
 bear, offered me no way of helping. 
 "What can I do?" I asked. "Nothing; 
 I knew you would understand," was the 
 answer. Since I have learned that my 
 power to help people rests entirely on 
 my ability to see things from their stand- 
 point, I have been very glad for some of 
 my deepest losses, because they have ex- 
 plained the losses of others to me. 
 
 But you are not going to be able to 
 help men without weighting yourself with 
 their burdens. This is what sympathy 
 means suffering with those who suffer. 
 You will have an easier time if you do
 
 176 In Terms of Life. 
 
 not take my advice in this matter. Do 
 not cultivate your sympathetic nature, 
 and none of the pains or troubles of 
 life will come to you except your own. 
 But it is also true that a thousand joys 
 and the riches of noble natures will be 
 unknown to you. 
 
 Sympathy is our touch with our fel- 
 lows ; and we are made by our fellows 
 far more than we realize, far more than 
 by any other influence whatever. So, as 
 a part of your training for life, I urge 
 you to cultivate and develop your sym- 
 pathies. 
 
 "Follow me, and I will make you 
 fishers of men," is a call to service, 
 not a call to be religious only, but to 
 toil, labor, love. And it involves sacri- 
 fice. One mark of the authenticity of 
 any call is not so much, will it pay? as 
 will it cost? "If you do not buy the 
 world with your blood, you will never 
 buy it."
 
 PKAYER. 
 
 PRAYER is the heart of religion. I 
 recognize the fact that there are dangers 
 attending the discussion of this subject, 
 and I hope not to arouse doubts in your 
 minds. By reaching a better understand- 
 ing of the nature of prayer, we may per- 
 haps remove some of the difficulties. 
 
 This is an age of questioning, and we 
 are all apt to mislead ourselves, to think 
 that our little back yards are God's uni- 
 verse. If we work with matter, we over- 
 look spirit. If we dwell much apart with 
 spiritual things, we are prone to deny 
 matter. Now, I believe that perfect har- 
 mony and rest can be found only when 
 these two realms are equally represented 
 in our lives. 
 
 The question is often asked, "Does not 
 science make prayer impossible ? " or, 
 "Does not evolution destroy prayer?" 
 Yes; it does destroy a certain kind of 
 
 177
 
 178 In Terms of Life. 
 
 prayer. For those whose God is away 
 outside of this world, whose prayer is a 
 sort of beggary, who have not yet risen 
 into the conception of Fatherhood and 
 sonship, who do not participate in the 
 divine life of the world, but hold them- 
 selves off to one side as spectators and 
 aliens, for all such, science does destroy 
 prayer. It ought to. 
 
 But real prayer is not beggary; it is 
 communion. That is, two beings who 
 have the same natures and desires and 
 language get on common ground. That 
 is communion, and that is prayer. 
 
 Our idea of prayer is intimately con- 
 nected with our idea of God. God adapts 
 himself to men. Many pray, "Thy will 
 be done" who really mean, "My will be 
 done." It is strange, marvelous, how 
 this, the holiest and at the same time 
 the most powerful agent within man's 
 reach, is degraded by selfishness until it 
 becomes the means of separating those 
 whom it should join. 
 
 We build our homes, and fill them with 
 our idols, and surround them with our 
 desires, and then cry to God, "Here is
 
 Prayer. 179 
 
 my life; these are my precious things; 
 take care of them, and I will bless thee ; 
 grant my desire, and I will extol thee." 
 
 And then when we are led out into a 
 larger life, and have to leave some of our 
 choicest treasures behind, we cry aloud, 
 " O Lord, where art thou ? Why hast 
 thou forsaken me ? " It often takes a 
 long life to realize that God may desert 
 our stuff, that he may refuse to live in 
 our air-castle, but that he never deserts 
 us. The first view of the relation be- 
 tween God and man is the child's view.. 
 All centers in self. The love-light in 
 the mother's eyes shines but to bless ; 
 the child asks and expects everything. 
 After a while, when he has risen into 
 the realm of fellowship, he and his 
 mother talk over the things that are best 
 for both of them. 
 
 Man can conform to God's will when 
 he grasps the great idea that he is the 
 child of God, being made in his imago, 
 having his very nature, and capable of 
 infinite growth toward him. Then he 
 understands that his chief business in 
 life is to find God's will and do it. When
 
 180 In Terms of Life. 
 
 he realizes that his whole life is wrapped 
 up in God, that he can exist only as he 
 conforms to God's will, that he can suc- 
 ceed in nothing that is contrary, and in 
 everything that is parallel, to that will, 
 then his prayer is not "Give me my 
 way," but "Thy will be done." 
 
 God's definition of righteousness and 
 man's are the same. What is true and 
 right and best for God is also true and 
 right and best for man. Man may not 
 have risen very far toward God's concep- 
 tion of these things, but far enough to 
 know that right, so far as he knows it, is 
 right. 
 
 God's superior knowledge, combined 
 with his righteousness, makes him im- 
 mutable. I mean he is perfectly consist- 
 ent with himself, unchangeable; constant 
 as sunshine, but constantly good; almost 
 forcing us by penalties and warnings to 
 choose the good. This is the God of 
 science, and of the Bible, and of experi- 
 ence, though not always of theology. Do 
 we not see his counterpart in a wise 
 father who knows when to say Yes, and 
 how to say No, and always says what is
 
 Prayer. 181 
 
 best ; not yielding to teasing, withhold- 
 ing even when it hurts, yet giving all 
 that is needed, and many things that are 
 not prayed for ? 
 
 In times of great stress it is natural 
 that man should cry for special things; 
 but we must never forget, when we think 
 God is forsaking us, that such a thing is 
 an impossibility. Our very conception 
 and definition of man includes the God 
 in his environment. "The hope of the 
 future lies in the realization by individ- 
 uals that none are ever for a moment 
 forsaken by God; that the ministry of 
 his spirit is constant, impartial, pervasive, 
 and never-failing." 
 
 But I hear some asking, "What is the 
 use of prayer? If God will not give 
 what we want unless it is best for us, if 
 he will give what we need whether we 
 ask it or not, why not sit back and stoic- 
 ally take life as it comes ? " I hope I 
 have suggested the answer in previous 
 lectures, where I have endeavored to 
 show how far man may grow, and how 
 large a part he has in his own develop- 
 ment. The object of prayer is the union
 
 182 In Terms of Life. 
 
 of God and man, and this is possible in 
 two ways: by changing the will of God, 
 or by modifying the will of man. The 
 Father may go to the prodigal and, if we 
 can imagine such a thing, live on husks 
 with him, and help him feed swine, or 
 the son may go to the Father and change 
 his life to adapt it to the life of the 
 Father. "The essential element of prayer 
 is to bring two things into unison, the will 
 of God and the will of man. Supersti- 
 tion imagined, no doubt, that prayer 
 would change the will of God; but the 
 more spiritually minded have always 
 understood that the will which must be 
 modified, was the will of man." 
 
 I do not believe that real prayer is 
 ever wasted. No man who has talked 
 with God, whatever God's message to 
 him may be, whether he has granted or 
 denied that man's requests, can ever come 
 back to the same level of existence. He 
 is a little higher, a little nearer his 
 Father, for that communion. 
 
 The elements of prayer are these : 
 God's will, man's will, "I will." The 
 first represents a knowledge of all things
 
 Prayer. 183 
 
 good and evil; the second represents a 
 choice of some things by the finite one ; 
 and the third represents man's obedience 
 to God. 
 
 Let us consider some objections to this 
 view of prayer. One asks, "Cannot God 
 overrule his own laws ? " Why should 
 he, if those laws express his nature ? "If 
 God should wink at a single act of injus- 
 tice, the universe would fall to pieces." 
 
 And another argues, "If God's laws 
 are immutable, then men are not free ; 
 they are driven whether they would or 
 not." This is fatalism; and to such a 
 one I would answer, we are free under 
 gravitation or any law of physics or 
 chemistry, yet we cannot change those 
 laws. 
 
 And yet another exclaims, "But God 
 is unapproachable. I cannot understand 
 how prayer can be of any use. Every 
 individual is apparently under inflexible 
 laws, and is, in the end, what heredity and 
 environment make him." That is true; 
 but so far from making the case des- 
 perate, I am going to show that in that 
 very fact just stilted lies the foundation
 
 184 In Terms of Life. 
 
 of our assurance. Man is the product 
 largely of heredity and environment, but 
 God is in the environment. A man said 
 recently, "I do not believe in prayer or 
 churches, but I never get off on the ocean 
 without experiencing a kind of uplift 
 that leaves me a better man." Now, by 
 "uplift" he did not mean seasickness, 
 he was an old sailor. He meant, though 
 he did not say it, that God's spirit and 
 his spirit came together and held com- 
 munion. God is in our environment, and 
 will be more and more so as we grow 
 and pray. 
 
 " Oh, that the scales from our blind eyes 
 
 Would fall, and let us see 
 The Father's hand on rock or cliff, 
 
 On bird or flower or tree ! 
 * Qla, that our deadened ears might hear 
 
 The Omnipresent One 
 Whose pulse-beat echoes in our hearts 
 When we are most alone ! " 
 
 Let me ask again, What constitutes 
 human environment ? Nature is a part 
 of it; also men both in 'their corporate 
 and spiritual relations. And, beside
 
 Prayer. 185 
 
 these, there is an environment of spirit, 
 which we call God. 
 
 The influences that mold men are not 
 all material. Society is not made up of 
 a lot of physical bodies. " Not bodies, 
 but spirits, constitute the social environ- 
 ment. The Christian doctrine of the 
 Holy Spirit means not only that each 
 man is surrounded by human spirits, but 
 also that his days are passed in the 
 presence of the absolute, the Universal 
 Spirit immanent in the universe." 
 
 Now, it is just as surely true that the 
 spirit of man can commune with God, 
 and learn his will, as it is true that 
 friend can commune with friend. And 
 this communion is prayer. It is only as 
 we are materialists that we fail to under- 
 stand prayer. As we rise into the spiri- 
 tual realm, prayer becomes a 
 And there is an active element in 
 It is itself the chief agency by which 
 God answers prayer. It is not an emo- 
 tion alone. Prayer which does not lead 
 to action is unworthy the name. Prayer 
 is an activity of the whole being. We 
 answer many of our own prayers.
 
 BEST. 
 
 How lightly we play with eternal things 
 sometimes ! In our religious talk great 
 big words are emptied of their infinite 
 significance and thrown back and forth 
 as lightly as tennis-balls. We talk of 
 heaven as glibly as if it were in the next 
 county, and describe the inner workings 
 of the heart of the Eternal as though it 
 were our own. As we grow wiser, we 
 talk less, and our words grow heavy with 
 thought. There is one word I wish to 
 load with heavier meaning. . . . 
 
 We perhaps have, each one of us, a 
 meaning for rest. I, of course, do not 
 ean to discuss here the various devices 
 for doing nothing. Men w r ork harder 
 sometimes doing nothing than in the per- 
 formance of a task. But by rest I mean 
 freedom from care and worry, from fear 
 that things are not going right chafing 
 and fretting, worries great and small. 
 
 186
 
 Rest 187 
 
 Would it not be a grand thing to be rid 
 of all of these ? We think it would, 
 though, as I shall show, many of us have 
 really a good time with our woes, and 
 would be at a great loss to know what to 
 talk about if we did not have them. 
 Note the melancholy strain running 
 through our talk sometimes ; and in our 
 hymnals we find such words as these : 
 
 "Oh, where shall rest be found, 
 
 Rest for the weary soul ? 
 T were vaiu the ocean-depths to sound, 
 Or pierce to either pole. 
 
 " The world can never give 
 
 The bliss for which we sigh; 
 'T is not the whole of life to live, 
 Nor all of death to die. 
 
 " Beyond this vale of tears 
 
 There is a life above, 
 Unmeasured by the flight of years; 
 And all that life is love." 
 
 Is the world a vile world ? Is the 
 body a leprous thing to which man is 
 chained? I love it, especially when I 
 have mastered it. Is life a long night-
 
 188 In Terms of Life. 
 
 mare, of which it is a crime to rid our- 
 selves, and a blessing to be rid of? I 
 love life. There is so much more sweet 
 than bitter for those that look for nectar. 
 I have great affection for my body, 
 troublesome as it sometimes is. We 
 have gone through so much together, 
 that we are used to each other, and I 
 really like to gratify it and treat it fairly 
 well. And the world, the dear old world, 
 has so many more angels than devils in 
 it, and grows such rare flowers of prom- 
 ise on its grave-mold, that I would not 
 trade places with the greatest archangel. 
 Why, then, is this melancholy wail so 
 prominent in religious conversation and 
 literature ? Is it true that faith and hope 
 do not abide, while pain and sorrow do ? 
 The answer is complex. Men love, in a 
 a certain way, gloom and melancholy. 
 Weeds of mourning give a peculiar com- 
 fort, and the hideous side of life appeals 
 to a part of our nature. Men love mys- 
 tery, and cling with marvelous conserv- 
 atism to superstitions long after their 
 intellectual powers have outgrown them. 
 The modern quack or miracle-worker
 
 Rest. 189 
 
 finds followers everywhere. It is a fact 
 as strange as it is paradoxical, that pro- 
 gress toward brighter light and wider 
 liberty has always been accomplished in 
 spite of the inertia and opposition of the 
 great mass of people who have stoned 
 their prophets and crucified their Mes- 
 siahs chiefly because they were disturb- 
 ers and turned the world upside down. 
 
 Men love ease and rest. Their busiest 
 moments are when, like ants, they rush 
 frantically about to settle their disturbed 
 nests. Will man evolve himself ? Was 
 Godlikeness wrapped up in some prime- 
 val savage, and has it gradually and 
 easily unrolled itself until a Godlike 
 man is the result? No. If human his- 
 tory shows progress, it is not to man's 
 credit. Man has been a fighter all his 
 life, and not a willing one ; he has fought 
 for peace and ease, but has never found 
 them. Instead, power has come to him. 
 Enlarged borders mean heavier respon- 
 sibilities new burdens for empty shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 Left alone, man would never progress. 
 His body would become the slave of
 
 190 In Terms of Life. 
 
 habit, his mind an encyclopedia, his reli- 
 gion a dead skeleton of theology, wired 
 by some creed or system of morality. 
 The world-movement which we identify 
 with the name of Christ is not an up- 
 swelling of the life of humanity. The 
 tides are caused by external forces. 
 " Whatever amount of power an organ- 
 ism expends is the correlate and equiva- 
 lent of a power that is taken into it from 
 without." 
 
 The leaven of Christ is working 
 throughout the world; it has become a 
 part of man's environment, and there is 
 no rest for man until he has conformed 
 to this environment and measured up to 
 the standard of Christ. It is evident, 
 then, that the rest of having nothing to 
 do will never come in this life, or in any 
 other. If we are to look for happiness, 
 it must be of another kind. 
 
 In contradiction to Montgomery's hymn, 
 "Oh, where shall rest be found?" I af- 
 firm that rest, that is, absence of worry, 
 and wear, and weariness, recuperating, 
 invigorating, and bringing content, can 
 be found here, in this world, in this body,
 
 Rest. 191 
 
 and during this life. This world with- 
 holds bliss from those only who sigh. It 
 is a vale of tears for those only who will 
 not look for the rainbow tints reflected 
 from the falling drops. 
 
 The old view of life was a vicious one. 
 It directed man away from the only 
 source of happiness and peace, made his 
 standards external, forced upon him com- 
 mandments and creeds, made his religion 
 a life of hard service and restriction, 
 made character seem like a library or a 
 collection of curiosities an accumula- 
 tion of virtues. It withdrew men from 
 the only field where character could be 
 won. It destroyed man's faith in him- 
 self. He was guided by authority and 
 ruled by precedent. There are many who 
 want conduct decided for them, who want 
 a prop to lean on; to them such a reli- 
 gion would appeal, and for them such a 
 religion means moral destruction. This 
 has been the great error of the Roman 
 Catholic Church: she does not have 
 faith in men. 
 
 It set men to watching their own con- 
 duct and stiidying themselves, enumerat-
 
 192 In Terms of Life. 
 
 ing their virtues, and selfishly parading 
 their ills. Spontaneity was destroyed by 
 it, and there is no happiness where spon- 
 taneity is lacking. It made happiness an 
 end, and caused men to "take thought" 
 for life. 
 
 Happiness, which means peace, rest, 
 contentment, is not something to be 
 worked for; it comes only as one of the 
 results of living. Make it the goal of 
 your life, and you never reach it. For- 
 get it live! and lo ! happiness is by 
 your side, your most efficient helper. 
 The peace of God is the peace of living 
 and growing. 
 
 External] sm placing all our depend- 
 ence upon rules, precedent, creeds, and 
 doctrines this brings unrest and worry. 
 We fear when these seem to fail. The 
 greatest sin is not ignorance, but lazi- 
 ness; not in not knowing what to do, but 
 in not doing what we know. Happy is 
 that man who has within himself all that 
 is necessary for life. 
 
 These words of Christ, "The king- 
 dom of God is within you," were mo- 
 mentous words. He did not say the
 
 Rest. 1 93 
 
 kingdom of God is to be found in 
 heaven by those who can get through 
 this vile world. It is not to be found 
 in any organization whose rigid walls 
 separate sheep and goats, nor in any 
 system of rules or belief by which a fal- 
 tering hand can steer through life when 
 judgment wavers. It does not come to 
 us through any possession; the rarest 
 jewels lose their charm when once pos- 
 sessed. Nor is it to be found in pomp, 
 or power, or ambitions realized in accu- 
 mulations that permit gratification and 
 ease. Care-worn faces and aching hearts 
 are linked with these. Kingdoms built 
 on these have crumbled, and no human 
 institution has yet been able to withstand 
 the mighty power of those seven words. 
 
 How can I have the kingdom within 
 me '? By drawing to myself the choicest 
 things of the world ? Beholding its 
 beautiful pictures, reading its wisest 
 books, singing its glorious songs ? By 
 erecting in my heart a shrine to each of 
 the gods, or enthroning there Jehovah 
 himself ? By defining right, by decrying 
 wrong? By ruling myself with a rod of
 
 194 In Terms of Life. 
 
 iron, and removing myself from tempta- 
 tion and trial in a life of asceticism ? No. 
 My little life is soon filled, and grows 
 morbid from overcrowding when I seek 
 to accumulate. And when I seek to build 
 a secret altar to a god in my heart, I find 
 it some caricature of self I have seated 
 there. And rules for living are tiresome 
 things that keep me asking, "What lack 
 I yet ? " The kingdom is not like these. 
 
 I saw one day a mountain spring come 
 bubbling up among the pebbles and sand. 
 As it piled up the water, it was gurgling 
 like a child, and sparkling. Its stream 
 flowed down the mountain-side, bathing 
 the roots of ferns and trees. The birds 
 drank, and thanked God; the herds and 
 the tired laborers satisfied their thirst. 
 Away on the mountain the spring knew 
 nothing of its overflow. It took what 
 came, and eagerly passed it on. It lived 
 and was happy. 
 
 " Man in his inmost being is not keyed 
 to the temporal, but to the eternal." Rest 
 for him lies in the realm above and be- 
 yond material things. If he would lead 
 an unfettered existence, he must throw
 
 Rest. 195 
 
 away his fetters. We can live with our 
 aches and pains, but why should the 
 spirit of man be confined with diseased 
 organs and aching bones, uttering plain- 
 tive ohs and ouches all day long, when it 
 can, if it will, be free and roam all the 
 world for sweets. 
 
 The desire for rest planted in the heart 
 of man is no sensual or unworthy one. 
 It is an evidence of our likeness to God. 
 It is a proof that we are the children of 
 God. I believe that it is proof also 
 that a rest remaineth for the children of 
 God. But it can and does come to us 
 only as we become Godlike. If we are 
 made in God's image, we must share 
 God's condition, eternally active, yet 
 eternally at rest. 
 
 "If it be said that man can never attain 
 this repose because he can never reach the 
 eternal perfection and power, it may be 
 answered that it does not depend upon the 
 proportions of the being, but upon the har- 
 mony of his powers, and upon his adjust- 
 ment to his external condition." If we 
 could be and keep in perfect harmony with 
 our environment, we would know rest.
 
 196 In Terms of Life. 
 
 But we cannot have this perfect har- 
 mony with our material world. Our 
 bodies are full of animal tendencies and 
 repeatedly and constantly urge us to do 
 things that we will not do. We are at war 
 with our bodies and mean to hold them 
 with firm hands and keep them in sub- 
 jection so long as we have them. It is 
 good for us, this struggle. It brings 
 pain and suffering and some evil, but it 
 is divinely appointed and has much of 
 blessing and a soul of goodness in it. 
 
 But we are more than our bodies, and 
 if we cannot be at peace with them ex- 
 cept as we hold them in subjection, let 
 us seek it elsewhere. The butterfly 
 escaping from its chrysalis illustrates 
 our condition. It is dying to its old 
 caterpillar world, but, oh, how happy 
 it must be rising into its higher life ! 
 So it finds rest in becoming. So with 
 you and me. As the real man or woman 
 within, whom the world does not know, 
 but whom we know, swells until it fits its 
 environment and adjusts itself to all that 
 draws it out, then we shall know rest. 
 
 "Weariness does not come from action,
 
 Rest. 197 
 
 but from restraint put upon action." Any- 
 thing, then, that hinders your growth, 
 prevents your realization of your self, 
 and brings weariness and toil. Unham- 
 pered growth into God's image is the 
 rest that remaineth for the children of 
 God. " Man is, properly speaking, based 
 on hope ; he has no other possession but 
 hope. This world of his is emphatically 
 the place of hope." 
 
 " Host is not quitting 
 
 The busy career. 
 Rest is the fitting 
 
 Of self to its sphere. 
 
 " 'Tis the brook's motion, 
 
 Clear without strife, 
 Fleeing to ocean 
 After its life. 
 
 "'Tis loving and serving 
 The highest and best. 
 'Tis onward unswerving, 
 And that is true rest."
 
 IMMOETALITY. 
 
 THEEE is perhaps no other question in 
 which the world is so deeply interested 
 as in this. The human mind has always 
 held to the belief in immortality, and 
 yet has always doubted it. But the truth 
 of it is not discredited by this fact. 
 
 That which can survive so much doubt 
 and so many attacks must have a basis 
 of truth. There is a reason for this 
 struggle, and a reason why we can never 
 be intellectually beyond doubt on this 
 question. 
 
 Immortality is a spiritual fact, asserted 
 and demanded by the mind and moral 
 nature of man. Consciousness knows no 
 sleeping or waking. We do not sleep. 
 Our bodies cease to bring us reports 
 from the outside world, and yet we know 
 that the real / goes on living while it 
 waits for me to waken. 
 
 You cannot think of yourself as not 
 
 198
 
 Immortality. 199 
 
 being; you try to identify death and 
 annihilation, and you are standing off at 
 one side contemplating the ruin you have 
 wrought. We cannot be conscious of our 
 minds without being conscious of our in- 
 dependence of time and death. This is 
 one side of the question. Our bodies 
 furnish the other. They are constantly 
 reminding us of death and decay; the 
 sense of our bodily condition is always 
 suggesting the impossibility of immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Belief and doubt are the result of an 
 unending warfare between matter and 
 spirit. The strength of belief or doubt 
 in any mind depends entirely upon that 
 mind's relation to the two domains of 
 matter and spirit. If matter and its laws 
 are supreme in the activity of a man, it 
 will be difficult for him to see any reason 
 for a belief in immortality. If he lives 
 in the world-life and knows the spiritual 
 world, then you cannot convince him of 
 mortality. Immortality is a fact with him 
 that needs no proof. 
 
 We know that the mind is supreme 
 over matter, yet this supremacy is limited
 
 200 In Terms of Life. 
 
 by its close subjection to matter. Under 
 such conditions do we apprehend all high 
 truths, ethical, mental, and spiritual. No 
 fact is actually known unless it is stated 
 in mathematical terms, and with ques- 
 tions such as this no demonstration is 
 possible. It can never become directly 
 a scientific question, for Science deals 
 with matter; so, in her attitude toward 
 this question, she is agnostic. Attempts 
 to demonstrate this truth degrade it. 
 Before you can prove it, you must first 
 bring it down out of the region where 
 things require no proof to the level of 
 common things that can be proved. You 
 may know a stone, or a bit of metal, 
 you will never weigh love. 
 
 Immortality is not proved by Nature. 
 Nature is full of suggestions and analo- 
 gies, but analogies prove nothing. Ho- 
 mologies prove. If we can trace a 
 homology between any element of our 
 character and the great nature-world, if 
 we can find in the great beneficent heart 
 of God a homology to the heart of man, 
 we have commenced to build the demon- 
 stration of the fact of immortality.
 
 Immortality. '201 
 
 This I wish to do; but first let me 
 refer to some errors in our treatment of 
 the question. Belief in immortality must 
 not be merely a sentiment. By sentiment 
 I mean thought prompted by passion, or 
 desire, or feeling. Primarily, of course, 
 sentiment refers to that state of mind 
 produced by the co-operation of our 
 rational and our moral natures. I refer 
 here to the common indulgence of our 
 emotions, either without a rational basis, 
 or in spite of contradictory rational lead- 
 ings. When reason fails, we can take 
 refuge in a feeling purely artificial and 
 imaginary. We can produce a feeling of 
 health by the use of stimulants, but it is 
 counterfeit and useless for action. And 
 an artificial feeling of immortality can be 
 produced by the use of stimulants, such 
 as our hymns beginning "There is a 
 happy laud, far, far away," or "Sweet 
 fields arrayed in living green," or by 
 the use of what we may call balloon 
 philosophy, which locates both premises 
 and conclusions at such altitudes that the 
 dizzy brain mistakes exaltation for con- 
 viction.
 
 202 In Terms of Life. 
 
 In religion we sometimes indulge our 
 sensibilities for the mere excitement of 
 indulgence, allow our imagination to rove 
 for the pleasure of creating scenes of 
 ideal enjoyment and gazing at the airy 
 creation we have made. Here religion 
 has been prostituted, and heavens of sen- 
 suality have been interposed between 
 man and the realities of life. 
 
 Poetry transformed into a narcotic and 
 emotion produced by a song are often 
 mistaken for the evidence of life. I 
 have already traced the disastrous effects 
 of artificiality of any kind. I think you 
 will require no proof when I say that 
 dreams of Heaven held before a toiling, 
 suffering fellow, do not make toil lighter 
 or suffering less. Do you help a home- 
 sick friend by talking to him of home, or 
 by giving him something else to think 
 about or something to do ? 
 
 Another mistake is to treat immortality 
 as an abstraction, as something sepa- 
 rated from this life, unconnected with 
 it, something to be assumed when we 
 get through here. This view of the sub- 
 ject possesses all the evils of sentimen-
 
 Immortality. 203 
 
 tality and one more. It divides life, 
 subtracts from the energy and interest we 
 should throw into everything we do. It 
 leads us to temporize ; it detracts from the 
 importance of every act, and cultivates 
 low motives, by conditioning our con- 
 dition hereafter on our behavior here. 
 Immortal life must be very closely 
 identified with this life ; life must be 
 immortal, if it is a factor in human 
 development. 
 
 So, if I appear to destroy the heaven 
 of your dreams, let me try to show you 
 that in its place may be put a heaven 
 which knows no present or future. 
 
 If man is ever to be an immortal being, 
 he is one when he begins to live his divin- 
 ity. If you have risen to that height where 
 you feel sure that you know God in this 
 world, and in your life, and in the lives 
 of your fellows, be very sure that you 
 know your own immortality. For it is 
 life eternal to know God, and his incar- 
 nations in Christ and in your brethren. 
 And if you know God now, you know 
 your immortality now. You know that 
 you are something that cannot die. How
 
 204 In Terms of Life. 
 
 did Christ view this question ? He offers 
 no proof of immortality, but simply 
 assumes it. He talks much about love, 
 faith, obedience, prayer. He might have 
 shown that each presupposes immortality, 
 but he did not. Life was so real to him, 
 that the thought of its ending never seems 
 to have occurred to him. He was alive, 
 and that meant alive forever. Death was 
 only an incident connected with man's 
 body, and to Christ man was not a body, 
 but a soul, using matter for a while, 
 but not identified with it. If his life 
 had been to any extent identified with 
 matter, we might have expected him to 
 fear death; for we know perfectly that 
 death will separate us from material 
 things. But he loved things in men that 
 death could not touch; he lived and 
 worked with characters, not bodies. So 
 death to him was simply a change of 
 clothes; the life went on. So he wasted 
 no time in reasoning about things that 
 are not to be settled by reason. He 
 assumed God, and God is. To demon- 
 strate immortality would have been to 
 him irrelevant. He was alive, forever,
 
 Immortality. 205 
 
 self-evident. He assumed it, and built 
 his whole teaching on that assumption. 
 
 Do you say that assumption is 110 
 proof? It is a statement of conviction. 
 The biologist is convinced that there is 
 such a thing as life ; he assumes it, 
 and works upon that assumption. The 
 chemist is convinced that there is such 
 a thing as an atom; he assumes it, and 
 works upon that assumption. So Christ 
 assumes that man is MW-mortal. He does 
 not speak of life hereafter; life is now 
 now and forever. Life and eternal life 
 are the same. 
 
 This was the reason he talked so much 
 about it. The important thing with him 
 was not that man might through much 
 suffering and trial weather the storms 
 of life, and then have an easy course 
 through all eternity. The vital point 
 with him was, that man should not post- 
 pone his good time until after his own 
 funeral, but should begin his eternity 
 now. 
 
 So he sought to give meaning to life. 
 Not knowledge, or power, or riches, or 
 position, but character, is what counts.
 
 206 In Terms of Life. 
 
 And when life begins to be true, it 
 announces itself as eternal to the mind. 
 "As a caged bird, when let loose into the 
 sky, might say: 'Now I know that my 
 wings are made to beat the air in flight ; ' 
 and no logic could ever persuade the 
 bird that it was not designed to fly ; but 
 when caged, it might have doubted, at 
 times, as it beat the bars of its prison 
 with unavailing stroke, if its wings were 
 made for flight." So when a man begins 
 to live Jove, deny himself, serve he 
 understands what life is, and knows that 
 death cannot touch it. But all of these 
 activities are what may be called spiri- 
 tual activities. When the spiritual nature 
 is brought into exercise, it generates not 
 only faith in eternal life, but reasons 
 for it. 
 
 In proportion as man's life is identified 
 with things that change and decay is his 
 faith weakened. But if one's ideals are 
 in the realm of character, death is not 
 one of their attributes. Faith has a 
 wonderful assimilating power; we are 
 like what we believe. Faith may be 
 called the workman, our object in life
 
 Immortality. 207 
 
 the pattern, and we are the clay. There 
 is no need that men should be labeled ; 
 they confess their faith in feature. By 
 this principle, Christ unites himself to 
 men. Fellowship brings likeness, and 
 likeness means that we take ourselves 
 his attitude toward life. What was his 
 attitude ? Love. To the lawyer who 
 tempted him, Christ answered, "Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and 
 thy neighbor as thyself. This do, and 
 thou shalt live." This is another way of 
 saying life is love, and love is life eternal. 
 Only he who loves lives. Wisdom is vain 
 unless our knowledge is turned into love. 
 Love for men and this soon passes 
 into love for God lifts man above the 
 physical where death is, into the spiritual 
 life everlasting.
 
 KELIGION AS A SOCIAL FACTOR 
 
 THE object of this lecture is to indi- 
 cate as briefly as the scope of the subject 
 will permit, the part religion may play 
 in the evolution of society. The complex 
 nature of the discussion requires that we 
 should quite clearly understand at the 
 outset the meaning of the terms religion 
 and society, and something also of the 
 laws that govern the growth of each. 
 Both have suffered because of confusion 
 with other terms, some of which at least 
 have no relation whatever with these 
 whose place they usurp. Many in denn- 
 ing religion will give a definition of ethics 
 or of theology ; and the socialist, the com- 
 munist, and the anarchist each insists on 
 a different definition of society. Let us, 
 then, as carefully as is possible in this 
 limited time, submit each term with its 
 perversions to an analysis that will show 
 us what we mean, and what we do not 
 
 208
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 209 
 
 mean, by the words religion and society. 
 Preliminary to this discussion, however, 
 it is important to note that both religion 
 and society have all the characters of liv- 
 ing things. And one peculiarity of living 
 things is that no concise and inclusive and 
 limiting definition of them can be writ- 
 ten. Allowance must be made for growth 
 and change. 
 
 If there is ever any place for dogmatiz- 
 ing, for insisting on final definitions, it is 
 certainly never found here. And here, 
 more than in any other field of knowl- 
 edge, is one made conscious of mystery. 
 There is so little, comparatively speaking, 
 that is founded on fact and experience, that 
 the temptation to forsake the little that 
 is known for the much that may be con- 
 jectured is very strong. Now the ten- 
 dency to dogmatize increases as the 
 subject discussed is lifted out of the 
 field of experience into that of specula- 
 tion. Where nothing can be proved, it 
 is also true that nothing can be dis- 
 proved. Consequently it is true of reli- 
 gion in particular that it carries a great 
 weight of ghosts and goblins who do
 
 210 In Terms of Life. 
 
 much to hide its real foundation on fact 
 and experience. It is still regarded by 
 many as man's relation to the supernat- 
 ural. 
 
 Every one of the natural sciences to-day 
 has earned the right to be called natural 
 by long warfare with uncanny dogmas 
 that usurped the place of law and linked 
 superstition and religion in a most unholy 
 struggle to limit the dominion of the 
 mind. We have lived to see the angels 
 chased from astronomy, the devils from 
 geology, and the ghosts from chemistry. 
 Judging from the advertising columns of 
 our papers, physics still has some work 
 to do with magnetic and electric imps. 
 But we see mysterious life itself arran- 
 ging its facts under the domain of law. 
 
 In religion alone do angels and ghosts 
 and devils yet hold their supernatural 
 sway. But it is only because in religion 
 man thinks less than in any other field 
 of his activity. Men of apparently strong 
 common sense will become very freaks in 
 the name of religion, and act in the house 
 of worship with a thoughtlessness that 
 would seem insane in the house of busi-
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 211 
 
 ness. Not because they are either freaks 
 or fools; they simply prefer not to 
 think, not to use the same common 
 sense to regulate their relations to their 
 fellow-men and their God that they are 
 quick to use in their business and polit- 
 ical relations. From their standpoint, 
 religion is a separate and distinct field 
 of activity. To enter it means that they 
 have by so much widened their responsi- 
 bility and multiplied their burdens. They 
 prefer to escape both by relegating the 
 whole question to the realm of the super- 
 natural. This shifts responsibility. For 
 common sense knows perfectly that it has 
 no control over the supernatural, and so 
 it gives place to what I would call if 
 I will not be wrongly interpreted non- 
 sense. Yet religion, too, will be brought 
 out of the region of the supernatural. 
 No authority on earth can, and no power 
 in Heaven will, withstand man's effort to 
 be a rational being. The more rationally 
 man lives, the more distasteful and use- 
 less will the realm of speculation become, 
 and, I hasten to add, the more divine will 
 be the natural.
 
 212 In Terms of Life. 
 
 And Religion will lose nothing by the 
 process. She will gain immensely. Just 
 as we can extend the laws of life into the 
 sphere of religion, just so far will its 
 utility be recognized as a factor in social 
 development. As much as modern chem- 
 istry is superior to the useless vagaries 
 of alchemy, will the new religion, now 
 broadening in the world, be superior to 
 the mysticism, the vague emotionalism, 
 the self-deception and spiritual laziness 
 which has too often borne her name. 
 
 In prophesying that the future will 
 recognize no other difference between 
 natural and supernatural than between 
 known and unknown, I do not mean that 
 all mystery will vanish. Mystery will 
 never vanish. As the circle of our 
 knowledge widens, the horizon of our 
 world of mystery will widen also. But 
 I do mean that we will cease trying to 
 think of the unknown world except in 
 terms of this world. All that we know 
 of Heaven is here on earth. All that we 
 know of God is in the world of sense 
 and experience. Indeed, w r e might write 
 a definition of God and say that he is our
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 213 
 
 ideal of goodness and truth and power 
 projected into infinity. When we call 
 him Father, we mean that he is as a per- 
 fect father would be ; and so with all the 
 attributes we ascribe to him. To be 
 sure, we can and do define him in meta- 
 physical terms, and by so doing make 
 him a metaphysical nonentity, useless in 
 the affairs of men, and affecting them 
 only as a dead weight. If we define our 
 religion as a real social factor, it must 
 be in terms of social life, and God must 
 be recognized as dwelling in men, and 
 not bowed out of his universe before he 
 is made an object of worship. 
 
 How pathetic was Christ's attempt to 
 teach his disciples this great truth ! 
 Philip, speaking for the twelve, begged 
 him to rend .apart the ciirtains of Heaven 
 and show them the Father; and Jesus 
 says, "Have / been so long time with 
 you, and yet hast thou not known me, 
 Philip ? " 
 
 The only God with whom men can 
 enter into personal relations, then, is to 
 be looked for among men. If he is 
 revealed to men at all, it is in human
 
 214 In Terms of Life. 
 
 terms. And the religion which is to be 
 a prominent factor in the regeneration of 
 society must have a great deal to do with 
 the affairs of this world, and compara- 
 tively little to do with the affairs of 
 another world. 
 
 It requires but a superficial study of 
 the history of religion to see that one or 
 the other of the two tendencies referred 
 to the tendency toward metaphysics and 
 the tendency toward submission to au- 
 thority has always threatened the use- 
 fulness of religion. There are many 
 so-called churches to-day that are little 
 more than philosophical debating socie- 
 ties or ethical clubs. The same set of 
 people, more or less select, will meet 
 occasionally to consider the affairs of this 
 world and the next, both at long range, 
 and narcotize themselves by pleasant in- 
 tellectual stimulants. They are as prom- 
 inent as social factors as would be 
 articulated skeletons. And again, there 
 are churches so dominated by authority 
 and by dogma that thought is stifled and 
 society is made like a drove of sheep. 
 "Whenever metaphysics usurps the place
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 215 
 
 of religion, the result is spiritual steril- 
 ity. When authority takes the place of 
 reason, the result is intellectual barren- 
 ness." Much that passes for religion 
 to-day is cursed by the metaphysical 
 formulas of the ancient Greek Church 
 without the philosophy which gave them 
 meaning, and by the Latin distrust of 
 reason without the authority which, while 
 it enslaved the individual, yet made 
 dogmatism effective. Any definition of 
 religion then must oppose these two 
 tendencies. 
 
 Now, the only remedy for metaphysical 
 sterility is life. And the only cure for an 
 intellectually barren slavery to authority 
 is reason. 
 
 Religion then must be defined as both 
 vital and rational. Its vitality will be 
 shown by what it does; its rationality 
 by its methods and its belief. Its theol- 
 ogy must be tempered by the elasticity 
 of life. Theology it must have, as the 
 body must have a skeleton. And vitality 
 it must have, if it is to touch the affairs 
 of men. 
 
 The union of these two elements, vital-
 
 216 In Terms of Life. 
 
 ity and rationality, is possible only when 
 founded on life and experience. Remove 
 religion to a sphere of its own, make it 
 necessary for man to stop doing some- 
 thing else in order to be religious, make 
 it a part of his life, and not all of it, and 
 you devitalize it. It begins to die of heart 
 failure. Lift it above the plane of fact, 
 make faith mean something not in touch 
 with experience, dogmatize when reason 
 fails, and irrational excrescences digni- 
 fied by metaphysical terms burden the 
 enslaved mind of the superstitious de- 
 votee. 
 
 We can reason only from the facts and 
 experiences of life from things which 
 we touch and handle and feel and know. 
 Any system of speculation that starts in 
 the clouds, be it ever so grand, will 
 remain in the clouds and not touch men. 
 And any system of theology to be work- 
 able, or any definition of religion that 
 can be lived, must be founded on the 
 experiences of this life, not upon a sup- 
 posititious life in another realm or here- 
 after. If the kingdom of Heaven is ever 
 to be realized, it will be as a kingdom on
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 217 
 
 earth ; not yonder among the angels and 
 archangels, but here on earth among men 
 and women who, made in God's image, 
 are trying to live like gods. 
 
 But let us press closer to our final 
 definition of religion. Religion in the 
 past has been pre-eminently theological. 
 The religion of the present is rapidly 
 becoming a social movement. A defini- 
 tion of religion from the theological side 
 would be "The doing of something by 
 which God, or the superior power, is 
 affected in feeling towards us." God is 
 angry, and must be appeased ; we pur- 
 chase forgiveness by service or sacrifice. 
 Or we need superhuman help ; we secure 
 it by certain services which are supposed 
 to be pleasing to Deity. 
 
 Now, I am going to deny the adequacy 
 of this definition ; but in doing so I must 
 not overlook its element of truth. Sin 
 is a fact of human experience. But all 
 that part of religion which belongs to 
 sacrifice, or the propitiation of the auger 
 of God, belongs to the imagination. It 
 may have been reasoned into a system as 
 elaborate as Calvinism, but it is founded
 
 218 In Terms of Life. 
 
 on an imaginary hypothesis. The sacri- 
 fice of a beast upon an altar, or of a Son 
 of God upon a cross, for the purpose of 
 averting just retribution from any one, 
 rests upon an imaginary basis which we 
 know is opposed to nature. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I believe 
 in the atonement. But my conception is 
 far grander than this. Better lift the race 
 above the possibility of sinning than 
 allow it to sin and then lift it above the 
 consequences. Society built upon this 
 hypothesis has always been a society 
 content with its sins. The imagination 
 even a cultivated one offers no abiding 
 healthful foundation for practical life ; 
 it is an aid to reason, never a safe sub- 
 stitute. 
 
 A definition of religion from the 
 standpoint of society would be "Turning 
 from that which is evil to that which is 
 good." It is not a matter of the imagina- 
 tion, but of the heart; not theological or 
 Godward, but sociological or manward. 
 God needs no change man must change. 
 "Pure religion and undefiled before our 
 God and Father is this, to visit the father-
 
 Religion as a Social Factor. 219 
 
 less and widows in their affliction, and to 
 keep himself unspotted from the world." 
 Religion impractical love, personal purity. 
 As a man doeth these things he is reli- 
 gious. This is rational and scientific, 
 practical and vital, and capable of un- 
 limited expansion. . . .
 
 III. APPENDIX
 
 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 [Professor Murray, in the Stanford Sequoia, January 20, 
 1899.] 
 
 DURING this last holiday season the hand of 
 death has been laid upon the sweetest spirit 
 in our midst, and W. W. Thoburn has been 
 taken from us. He died at his home in 
 Palo Alto shortly after eleven o'clock on 
 Friday night, January 6th. 
 
 Mr. Thoburn was born June 10, 1859, in 
 Belmont County, Ohio. In 18G9 he went to 
 Cincinnati to live, and in 1871 to Washing- 
 ton, D. C. He entered the preparatory 
 department of Columbian University in 1874, 
 and Allegheny College in 187G. In 1881 
 he graduated with the degree of A. B., and 
 during the succeeding three years held the 
 position of teacher of Natural Science in 
 the Pennsylvania State Normal School. In 
 1884 he was elected to the chair of Geology 
 and Botany in Illinois Wesleyau University. 
 He pursued a post graduate course of study 
 in biology at Allegheny College, receiving 
 the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. in 1888.
 
 224 In Memoriam. 
 
 In the same year he was elected to the chair 
 of Geology and Biology in the University 
 of the Pacific, at College Park, Cal., which 
 position he held till the autumn of 1891. 
 He had been received into the California 
 Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church in 1888, was ordained deacon in 
 1890, and elder in 1892. After severing his 
 connection with the University of the Pa- 
 cific in 1891, he was appointed to the pastor- 
 ate of the Methodist Church in Mayfield. 
 
 It was while holding this position that he 
 first came into contact with Stanford Uni- 
 versity, where he pursued courses of study, 
 even while occupied with the duties of his 
 pastorate. None could have foretold then 
 the place he was to assume among us, but 
 two years later he resigned his charge to 
 accept the position of instructor in zoology 
 and curator of the museum, and definitely 
 took up his work in our University commu- 
 nity. From this modest beginning he was 
 advanced until the new department of Bio- 
 nomics was created and put under his charge. 
 This professorship he held at the time of 
 his death. 
 
 He was not yet forty, and he had for years 
 been far from strong; yet it was permitted 
 him to accomplish much, to make himself
 
 In Memoriam. 225 
 
 a power. He made those who knew him 
 love him and love the things he stood for 
 earnestness, simplicity, sincerity, and truth; 
 and those who knew him best loved him 
 best. In many ways, unique as was his 
 position, he was representative of the spirit 
 that obtains among us, and which he loved 
 to call the Stanford spirit : a spirit of ear- 
 nestness and of tolerance; a spirit that, 
 passing over forms, seeks to emphasize the 
 underlying truth; a spirit that knits to- 
 gether in close union all the various ele- 
 ments of our community. And who shall 
 say how much of this is due to him? 
 
 There were few whom he did not touch, 
 be it as teacher, as friend, or as spiritual 
 helper. And yet it would have been a grief 
 to him to have any one say he was the best- 
 beloved among us, the one whose influence 
 was most uplifting. We may say and to 
 know that this was our feeling was a joy to 
 him that he was one who, in personal 
 intercourse, in the classroom, and in the 
 pulpit, made his wide influence tell, not for 
 scholarship, not for righteousness only", but 
 for godliness. To measure his work and 
 his influence is impossible; to number those 
 in whom he first awakened the desire for 
 better things; whose eyes he opened to the 
 o
 
 226 In Memoriam. 
 
 noble seriousness of life; those with trou- 
 bled hearts to whom his own serene and 
 confident faith brought comfort. For the 
 burden of the mystery seemed never to 
 weigh upon his spirit; he was always bright, 
 always cheery, always helpful. 
 
 We all looked to him as the one about 
 whom the spiritual life of our community 
 centered. It was easy to talk with him of 
 what lay nearest the heart, or of what 
 weighed heaviest on the heart; it was easy 
 to cherish high ideals, to put away the mean 
 and the low; easy to cling with a vital faith 
 to the divine love whereof he spoke. For 
 some reflection of that love shone in his 
 own face. 
 
 Grieve for his loss we must; but as to have 
 known him and loved him has been our 
 privilege, so to carry on his work in meas- 
 ure, by consecrating our own lives to high 
 ends is now our duty. It is thus that he 
 would have us show our love for him and 
 honor his memory.
 
 In Memoriam. 227 
 
 [President Jordan, at the Memorial Service in the 
 University Chapel. January 29, 1899.] 
 
 ONCE when a wise and good man died, 
 these words were said of him: " In whatever 
 part of God's kingdom he may find himself, 
 he will be a hopeful man, looking upward 
 and not downward, looking forward and not 
 backward, ever ready to lend a helping hand, 
 and not afraid to die." In words like these 
 we may express the moving spirit of Tho- 
 burn's life. The problems of existence he 
 met simply and seriously, trusting that all 
 truth is God's truth, and all living beings are 
 God's creatures, to be studied and helped, 
 to be studied in order that they may be 
 wisely helped. To study is the function of 
 science; to help is the mission of religion; 
 and in wisdom and helpfulness lies their true 
 reconciliation. 
 
 Thoburn's great intellectual virtue was 
 his open-mindedness. He feared nothing 
 which was true. He cherished nothing which 
 was false. He had learned the difficult les- 
 son that while truth is as broad as the uni- 
 verse, which no mind can span, the line of 
 righteous conduct is as narrow as a footpath 
 compassed by the stride of the child.
 
 228 In Memoriam. 
 
 In these days knowledge accumulates as 
 never before in all the ages, because men 
 have learned to work together in their search 
 for wisdom. Much that was once wisdom 
 is now superstition. Much that our fathers 
 cherished we cast on the rubbish-heap. Much 
 of the lore of the ancients is but old wives' 
 tales. The narrow creeds which once held 
 religion are too cramped for the new wine 
 of to-day. The life has gone out of the old 
 ceremonies. The old rewards cease to in- 
 cite to goodness; the old punishments no 
 longer deter from sin. We climb higher 
 each day on the mountain of knowledge, 
 and we look on life in broader and broader 
 perspective. The problem of living truth 
 seems to grow difficult. So many new paths 
 open before us, we know not which it is 
 right to choose, and many have come to 
 doubt whether there be any right path of 
 action. 
 
 With all this breadth of knowledge there 
 is no change in man's duty. To do the best 
 he can, moment by moment, day by day, is 
 just as insistent as it ever was. Righteous- 
 ness is not out of date, nor is piety obsolete. 
 The moral law is just as strenuous to-day as 
 when the stern Hebrew prophets knew of 
 nothing else in the universe. Though creeds
 
 In Memoriam. 229 
 
 lose their validity, and ceremonies fade away, 
 the essence of religion cannot change. 
 
 "Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, 
 A humble and a contrite heart." 
 
 The art of receiving new truth with the 
 same simple reverent thankfulness with which 
 he held the oldest truth was one of which 
 Dr. Thoburn was master. He was broad- 
 minded without laxity, tolerant without 
 indifference, free without irreverence. He 
 rejoiced in the winds of freedom, but no 
 part of his religion was blown away by 
 freedom's wayward breezes. 
 
 Greater than his intellectual work, greater 
 than his influence as a teacher was the 
 inspiration of his personal life. His own 
 sermons he lived, and this in simple uncon- 
 sciousness, "as the sun gives light, or the 
 flower fragrance." "As the flowers of 
 to-day are the embodiment of past sun- 
 shine," this was one of his sayings, " so 
 is the virtue and the happiness of to-day 
 the fruit of the love and altruism of the 
 past." To live again in the virtue and 
 happiness of his students was his greatest 
 ambition as a teacher. And the students 
 knew that they had no wiser adviser, no 
 better friend. 
 
 From a letter just received from one of
 
 230 In Memoriam. 
 
 them, I take these words : " Dr. Thoburn 
 was the religious force of our University. 
 The greatest of all truths was his to show 
 man's strength in God. Though frail of 
 body, he used faithfully the strength he 
 had, and the little became mighty to serve 
 men. His education was scientific; his ex- 
 perience was deeply human. Because he 
 knew both science and man he could work 
 effectively in an atmosphere of science to 
 reach the heart of men. In our Stanford 
 nook he was our builder, helping us under 
 God's laws to frame solidly housing for our- 
 selves. Science cuts life into facts, and it 
 is our need at Stanford that we should put 
 these together, lest all we take away with 
 us be but a bundle of facts. 
 
 "There is danger that Science shall sit 
 in her chair with her cold comment: 'Such 
 is the necessary process of things; let all 
 things take their course.' Love flies to the 
 rescue and stops the bleeding wounds of 
 humanity, by methods Science has revealed. 
 Faith, Hope, and Love drive knowledge into 
 action. To make science a living force for 
 good was Dr. Thoburn's mission. Under 
 such influences Stanford will send out 
 reformers, priests, and poets: zealous men, 
 with warm hearts and trained minds, to save
 
 In Memoriam. 231 
 
 their kind from repeating the sins of yes- 
 terday. Souls starving on the dry husks 
 of theology need to be fed with truth fresh 
 seen in the light of this age of science, fresh 
 born from the experience of to-day." 
 
 It was Dr. Thoburn's lesson that men 
 should not believe less, but more. Fewer 
 formulated statements, fewer dogmas, it may 
 be, but more deeply, more intensely, more 
 broadly to believe, and to carry all belief 
 over into action. 
 
 The place which Dr. Thoburn held in the 
 University was one which made itself. He 
 did not ask to be called as professor of 
 human life, nor did the authorities go out 
 to seek him as such. 
 
 He entered the University in 1891 as a 
 graduate student with the rest of the pio- 
 neers. When we knew his scholarship we 
 made him assistant in zoology, and from this 
 minor work his own character called him 
 onward. His thoughts and influence were 
 bounded by no chair, and it was not long 
 before his studies broadened to the compass 
 of human life. In a playful way, his col- 
 leagues spoke of him as their " spiritual 
 adviser," but behind this jest was perfect 
 seriousness. 
 
 He was our spiritual guide, the most
 
 232 In Memoriam. 
 
 esteemed adviser, the best beloved friend, 
 the one whose loyalty to friendship, whose 
 loyalty to the University, whose loyalty to 
 Christianity, to righteousness and truth, 
 was never questioned. In adding my word 
 to-day, I have not wished to speak of myself, 
 but I cannot refrain from one expression: 
 There is no one who owes Dr. Thoburn a 
 greater debt than I, though I was not the first 
 to realize it or to acknowledge it. In the 
 old garden of the Franciscans, in a far-away 
 city, I received the sad and tender message 
 from Dr. Gilbert: " Our dear friend Tho- 
 burn is dead." I was overwhelmed with 
 inexpressible sadness and a feeling almost of 
 discouragement. He was one the University 
 could not spare. All at once the warmth 
 went out from the tropical sunshine. The 
 shadows fell on the white mountain - tops. 
 The delightful tour in the quaint cities around 
 the tall volcanoes, which Dr. Thoburn him- 
 self, who knew and loved Mexico, had 
 helped us to plan, seemed to lose its charm. 
 Each of us had lost from the light of this 
 world a dear friend. But we all felt more 
 than this. Our beloved University had lost 
 its strongest, its most vital influence for good. 
 
 "The gap in our picked and chosen, 
 The long years may not fill."
 
 In Memoriam. 233 
 
 The place he made is one that must be 
 forever vacant. Other wise and good and 
 Christian men will come and go. Other 
 men will lecture on the unity of life and the 
 soundness of God's universe; but there can 
 be but one Thoburn, and his place in the 
 University must be his alone. 
 
 And now we may say again, "In whatever 
 part of God's kingdom he may find himself 
 he will be a hopeful man, looking upward 
 and not downward, looking forward and 
 not backward, ever ready to lend a helping 
 hand, and not afraid to die."
 
 234 In Memoriam. 
 
 [Dr. Elliott, at the Memorial Service in the University 
 Chapel, January 29, 1899.] 
 
 THE first time I ever saw Mr. Thoburn 
 was in the golden summer of 1891. I think 
 he merely passed through my office to talk 
 with President Jordan about the graduate 
 work he hoped to do. He was to be ap- 
 pointed to the pastor's charge at Mayfield, 
 and had as yet no point of contact with the 
 University except the student side of him. 
 And so, when the University opened, he 
 was enrolled in the Department of Zoology. 
 But even at the first he could not remain 
 to us merely a student, and on the twenty- 
 ninth of November, 1891, by invitation of 
 President Jordan, he preached his first ser- 
 mon in the Chapel on " Liberty." For two 
 years he maintained the student relation, 
 and then quietly and modestly took his 
 place among us, his life expanding into all 
 the avenues of university activity, his infhi- 
 ence widening and deepening as the years 
 went on. 
 
 What all this meant to the University in 
 its plastic days we shall realize better by 
 and by. Just now it is the personal side 
 that touches us most keenly; and the inevi-
 
 In Memoriam. 235 
 
 table dwelling upon these personal relations 
 is both our pain and our consolation. 
 
 His leadership was unmistakable. And 
 yet, it is a word we shall probably use now 
 for the first time. To him the characteriza- 
 tion would have seemed absurd; for what 
 he did was without the slightest parade of 
 command. Even in matters where his mas- 
 tery was undoubted he seemed to trust him- 
 self but timidly. Not that he hesitated 
 about doing the thing that needed to be 
 done, but he seemed to depend upon and 
 to need to feel the close-following loyalty 
 of those about him: he could not be quite 
 conscious of the strength and decision which 
 he constantly exhibited. In truth, his leader- 
 ship was the natural primacy of a full-stat- 
 ured man whose life was rooted in unselfish 
 doing and thinking. He was wise in the 
 deep things of the soul, not by virtue of 
 any subtle philosophy, but through simple, 
 direct living, with open countenance toward 
 the truth wherever he found it. He never 
 met anybody's need by phrases or by subter- 
 fuges. He never assumed to solve any prob- 
 lems for you which he had not solved for 
 himself. But he saw into deep depths, and 
 he loved to the uttermost. That he was 
 rewarded by affection, by the trust and
 
 236 In Memoriam. 
 
 confidence of those Avho doubted and were 
 bewildered, and by a more and more general 
 recognition of the pre-eminence, the sim- 
 plicity and robustness of his moral leader- 
 ship, was so natural and spontaneous that we 
 accepted it all without remark and almost 
 without observation. 
 
 Some men have religious sides to them. 
 It may be that they are religious intellec- 
 tually. They absorb and put forth state- 
 ments about faith, and hope, and love, 
 without ever learning to be really faithful, 
 or hopeful, or loving. Or, they are religious 
 emotionally. Their feelings are touched by 
 religious imagery. They are melted and 
 fused by the simple, universal devotional 
 chords. But when the organ peal has died 
 away, when the rhythmic litany has spent 
 its last beat, they snap back into prosaic 
 sordidness without a trace of the divine 
 brooding which stirred them. If you meet 
 them in the classroom, the laboratory, on 
 the athletic field, or by the fireside, there 
 is no sign of those deeper currents which 
 for the moment seemed the real movement 
 of their lives. It was not so with Mr. Tho- 
 burn. He had no religious side. He did 
 not have beliefs or religious emotions which 
 he exercised and cultivated. He was a child
 
 In Memoriam. 237 
 
 of God. His life was of one piece. Its 
 quality was never different, whatever the 
 occasion or situation. 
 
 Some men have the gift of tongues. 
 They have a trick of phrasing. We look 
 to them for something impassioned; and 
 in ecclesiastical harness they are brilliant 
 preachers, powerful in prayer, eloquent in 
 testimony. Theirs is the mighty power of 
 swaying human emotions; and yet, what 
 a dangerous gift : for behind it there may 
 be only simulation ! He had no such gift. 
 Yet his was a rare power of expression. 
 What he said came straight out of a deep 
 personal experience. Everything had grown 
 in his own garden; and because in his own 
 garden, you knew the flower, you felt the 
 homey fragrance. His experience touched 
 yours in its highest reaches. He phrased 
 o\it of his own life and aspiration what was 
 active or latent in your life and aspiration. 
 For years, on almost every Sunday, he has 
 spoken the prayer that opens our morning 
 service. How simply and truly he spoke 
 it ! It was formal, as all public prayer must 
 be, but it was never made up. It rang true 
 with his own life tones. It reached out for 
 us all and took hold of the hidden springs 
 of life; it touched the heights. And how
 
 238 In Memoriam. 
 
 in all the little meetings the morning- 
 Chapel of the old dispensation, the Chris- 
 tian Association of his old, stronger days, 
 the Vesper Service he spoke the sure 
 word, something searching, something 
 illuminating, something heartsome ! 
 
 The twenty-three sermons he preached in 
 this Chapel were all pre-eminently Stanford 
 sermons. That is, they met the need, and 
 traversed the thought, and touched the life 
 that was developing and ceaselessly flowing 
 here in our little community. He under- 
 stood it so well, he believed in it so thor- 
 oughly. He revealed us to ourselves. He 
 brought us to our inheritance. He showed 
 us the infinite relations. Who that heard 
 will forget his sermon on "Prayer." Only 
 a few weeks ago I said to him that he ought 
 to repeat it every year. But it had met the 
 need of a particular occasion, and had not 
 been written down. The words could not be 
 recalled, but the fragrance remains. And 
 his sermon on "The Way," with something 
 of the deep, fearless, majestic assurance 
 of the great redwood trees under which 
 it was written down in those August days 
 of 1897! And there will always be some- 
 thing unspeakably precious in his last pub- 
 lic message, the deep, tender expression, at
 
 In Memoriam. 239 
 
 Vespers, of the meaning and triumphing 
 faith of that terrible, newest experience 
 in his own life when the waters had gone 
 over his soul. 
 
 He spoke once or twice of a volume of 
 Stanford sermons, a composite of the most 
 helpful things that had been said in our 
 Chapel by various men. But for the first 
 volume of Stanford sermons surely this 
 only is appropriate: such of his own dis- 
 courses as by good fortune were committed 
 to manuscript. 
 
 Religion was to him not intellectual formu- 
 lation of any kind. He did not go about 
 hewing down barriers which shielded any 
 other human soul ; but for himself he 
 leaped them all. And he was always dis- 
 covering to themselves the religious in men. 
 He worked with many who, having put away 
 the apparatus of religious expression, had 
 assumed that they had thereby put aside 
 their religion. He refused all arbitrary dis- 
 tinctions. He insisted on counting true men 
 where they belonged, and sharing to them the 
 heritage of the Kingdom of God. And so he 
 was optimistic, hopeful of the religious life 
 here among us ; and the deepening church 
 and home feeling in our Sunday services, 
 which he labored so wisely to set growing,
 
 240 In Memoriam. 
 
 was to him a happy omen of the future 
 activities and associations which should 
 strengthen and hearten the lives of unnum- 
 bered generations of students. 
 
 The University was also Mr. Thoburn's 
 opportunity. The paths of scholarship 
 opened gratefully to him, and he entered with 
 keen zest upon the fresh ways of original 
 research. Alas, that his zeal so soon outran 
 his strength, and he must pay for his enthu- 
 siasm in the familiar way ! He never tried 
 to reach sp far again, but his work had 
 clearly opened, and for this there had been 
 the long preparation of a life lived out in 
 sincerity and in truth. His own growth was 
 stimulated, and every year we saw his grasp 
 become surer and his horizon wider. How 
 hopefully, even exultingly, his thought leaped 
 to meet the new expansion stirring every- 
 where in our Stanford air, whose first fruits 
 are the great new buildings already nearing 
 completion or planned for the immediate 
 future ! The University made him a part 
 of itself because it could not help it. The 
 University needed not particularly his 
 scholarship, not particularly the filling of 
 any gaps in its schedule of courses: it needed 
 his manhood, his life-giving quality, his 
 inspiration, his life. It gave his chair differ-
 
 In Memoriam. 241 
 
 ing names: he used to smile at their variety. 
 But there was never any doubt as to the use 
 to be made of him. 
 
 And does he cease to be at the Univer- 
 sity? Is this the end? The time must 
 come when not a student shall know his 
 name. Perhaps some day he will be recalled 
 by none, student or faculty. But the Uni- 
 versity can never forget his presence. It 
 will never be the same as if he had not lived 
 and worked. Good that is good enough to 
 work in human lives is never ' interred with 
 the bones.' 
 
 He lived near to God, and iu death he 
 could not be very far from Him. It cannot 
 shake our faith that we shall see his face no 
 more. That he felt, and knew, and cher- 
 ished the immortal in life is our highest 
 assurance of his immortality. And though 
 we shall see his face no more, there is some- 
 thing that remains. He touched our indi- 
 vidual lives. We shall never be quite the 
 same again. We shall have a clearer ideal ; 
 we shall have a steadier purpose; we shall 
 face life with greater courage. 
 
 The work he did here, the work he left 
 undone, this he would not have chosen that 
 we remember. Hallam Tennyson tells of 
 his father's last visit to Frederick Tennvson,
 
 242 In Memoriam. 
 
 in the Isle of Wight. "When the brothers 
 bade ' good-bye ' they thought that they 
 would not in this life see each other again: 
 ' Good-night, true brother, here, good-morrow 
 there.'" So he would have parted with us, 
 and so he would wish to be remembered: 
 just in the spirit of comradeship, and in the 
 bonds of good-fellowship. A brave fare- 
 well, and facing the future !
 
 NOT by his simple eloquence he won, 
 Straightforward as the story of a child; 
 Not by his doctrines, pure and undefiled, 
 Drawn from the teachings of his Father's 
 
 Son ; 
 
 Not by his deep devotion to the truth 
 Fearless he faced it, piercing every cloud, 
 He spurned the trammels by the Church 
 
 allowed 
 He homage drew from child, age, manhood, 
 
 youth. 
 
 But this : that never word or act of sham 
 Was his; he could have taught us : "As I am, 
 Be all of you;" his eloquence he lived; 
 The truth he sought and found, and loved, he 
 
 lived ; 
 
 Between his doctrines and himself no strife : 
 He lived them. And men loved him for his 
 
 life. 
 
 JOSEPH HUTCHINSON. 
 January 15, 1899.
 
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