Chapter XII: The War Against War 201 (2)

The habit of “rushing” men for membership has become inexpressibly silly. The heads of weak men are turned by the social attentions thrust upon them and the stronger men are frequently repelled by this overdone eagerness. One would suppose the various chapters would be ashamed to exhibit such anxiety to have men join as would seem to indicate a sense of their own weakness. Let the fraternities make themselves worth joining and a sufficient number of promising candidates to fill all the lists will be forthcoming! Let any student make himself worth having and the door will be open into a desirable house whenever he is ready to enter it.

It would be well if each student made his fraternity experience preparatory to the larger social status into which he will enter as a mature man--a status where the narrow exclusiveness of the snob finds the door shut in its face by men of sense. If he has really gained a genuinely social spirit, he will be better able to take his place in the business world as one ready to aid in building it upon the basis of honor, integrity and mutual consideration. If he has rightly learned the lessons of fraternity life he ought to be a better citizen, ready to work in harmony with men who are bent upon making the State an organized expression of wise and just principles. He ought to be fitted to be a better churchman, making that institution a worthy expression of the organized spirit of reverence toward God, of fellowship with men, and of helpfulness for all good causes. And he will best attain all these high aims if, in the supreme relationship of his life, his own soul is knit with that “friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” The Master of men came to found a fraternal kingdom of which there shall be no end, and in that kingdom every man of fraternal spirit should have standing.

IV

THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE MAN

The leading notes in the religious life of a student will naturally be intellectual and ethical. The mind is feeling its way out among the immensities which have come into view as childhood is left behind. It is seeking to know things as they are, learning how to bear itself in thought toward the natural and the supernatural, the earthly and the heavenly, the present and the future. It is no longer content with a child’s faith received on the word of another; it has not yet found the repose of tried and mature conviction. It is in process of shaping its beliefs about God, about the world, about the Bible, about prayer, about a future life. The college man is taken out-of-doors intellectually where the walls are all down, and his religious life, like the other sections of his nature, will naturally show signs of restlessness. “The religion of youth is commonly a religion of rationalism--the intellectual life is just starting on its long journey in all the exhilaration and freshness of the morning.”

The ethical note in the college man’s religion will also be clear and strong. Young people in sound health are commonly rigorous and even merciless in their moral judgments. They are oftentimes unduly critical touching the shortcomings of others. They are confused as to many of the moral sanctions and uncertain as to what distinctions are essential and what are merely conventional. They have a desire to know what is right and why it is right, and they wish to discover the motive and stimulus which will render them strong in doing the right. The best results are always attained by taking into account lines of interest already established, rather than by cutting squarely across the grain, and the most effective approach to the heart of the student can be made by observing these two leading notes in his religious life.

I am confirmed in this view by this bit of personal experience. For six years I lectured every Monday during the second semester at Stanford University, giving courses on “The Ethics of Christ,” a study in the four Gospels, on “The Life and Literature of the Early Hebrews,” a study in the Old Testament, on “Social Ethics,” a study of moral values in the various relationships of modern life. These courses were offered as any courses would be. A full syllabus was used and much collateral reading suggested; a monthly written quiz and a final examination were held; credit was given for work done as in any other department. The courses were popular though the requirements brought a sufficient number of failures each year to keep the thought of a day of judgment before the mind of the class. There was evident throughout a strong, healthy interest in the intellectual problems of faith, in the interpretation of scripture, in the ethical questions discussed, and in the intelligent application of moral principles to modern life. The sight of those young faces and the reading of the papers offered have helped to confirm me in the view that the two characteristic qualities of the college man’s religion are those already indicated.

The expression of that religious interest will take many forms. It will utter itself in rational worship. The clear-headed student will not continue to do things which seem to him meaningless or useless. There are church services in which he will refuse to participate, but sincere, reverent, and rational worship will commend itself to him as a suitable expression of that deeper something growing within his heart. The upward look, the outward reach of a higher aspiration, the need of a hand-clasp which is not of earth, all these appeal to him! Let the music, the lessons, the prayers, and the atmosphere of the church be made a true, good, and beautiful expression of intelligent worship and the thoughtful student will rejoice in the aid it gives him in working out his problems.

The words of Thomas Carlyle addressed to the students in the University of Edinburgh are in point: “No nation that did not contemplate this wonderful universe with an awe-stricken and reverential feeling that there is an omnipotent, all-wise, and all-virtuous Being superintending all men and all the interests in it--no such nation has ever done much nor has any man who has forgotten God.” In much blunter fashion the Bible says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” The word “hell” can be spelled with four letters, but to spell that for which it stands, the moral failure, the personal disappointment, the pain, and the distress of spiritual defeat, the bitter regret and remorse over years wasted by turning away from the Highest, would require all the letters of the alphabet and the sum total of human experience. In order to do justly and to love mercy, we need to stand humbly before God as the one entitled to our supreme and final allegiance. Where all this is made plain in a provision for worship which is rational, beautiful, and helpful, the college man will find in it a natural expression for his religious life.

The religious interest will also express itself in the study of religious truth. Courses in ethics, and in philosophy where it relates to life and is not all clouds and mist; courses in the Hebrew and other sacred literatures; courses in the history of religion and in comparative religion, may all be made genuinely spiritual exercises. The students are aided by such work in knowing that truth which sets mind and heart free from whatever hinders growth and usefulness.

Still more directly, the courses of Bible study offered through the Christian associations in our universities become wholesome expressions of religious interest. The history and literature of the Hebrews, the life of Christ, the story of the early Church, studied with the system, the thoroughness, and the fearlessness found in other lines of investigation, afford a genuine ministry to the spiritual life. Many students who lose their Christian faith in the colleges suffer this loss because the mind has gone ahead in science, in philosophy, and in history, but has lagged back in religion. It has been belated in the childish conceptions gained in early life. Such students sometimes throw away their Christian faith and habits, and then wonder that the rest of us are so stupid and credulous. As a matter of fact they have simply failed to make the advance and readjustment which serious and growing minds habitually make on their way from childhood to maturity. The thorough study of religious truth, then, as an aid to a rational restatement of one’s personal faith, becomes another worthy expression of religious life and a useful source of culture for the spiritual nature.

The religious life of the student will also utter itself in a personal quest for righteousness. No life ever comes to have that which the world really trusts and values until it can say in its whole purpose, “I do these certain things not because they are easy or common or funny or politic; I do them because they are right.” If religion is to enter into its own in any educational institution it will be necessary to have a great deal more downright honesty in college life than there is in many institutions of learning at this time. The sneer that “in college and in the custom house” it is all right to lie and to cheat if one can do it without being caught, has had much to justify it. The student who asks to be excused from a college engagement because he is too sick to work, but who will go to a ball and dance every number on the program, or to a football game and yell until his throat is raw, is simply a liar! The student who copies from another’s examination paper and signs his name to it as though it were his own, is a cheat and a forger. The man who steals spoons from some hotel or restaurant in the town for his fraternity table is not funny; he is simply a thief and an outlaw! The student who spends on vice or dissipation, money furnished by his father for term bills, entering them up in his financial statement as “sundries” or what not, is a whelp and a cad, no matter how good looking he is or how well his dress suit fits him! Dirt is dirt no matter how we may adorn it with lace; a lie is a lie, and theft is theft, no matter how they are smoothed over with fine words! There ought to be in all college life rigid, unsympathetic honesty, like that of the bank or the counting-room. The perpetual effort after personal righteousness should stand as an abiding expression of the religious life.

The genuinely religious spirit will show itself in mutual helpfulness. The Christian service rendered by students can best be rendered in terms of student life. The readiness to lend a hand to some fellow working his way through; the thoughtfulness and unselfishness shown to a student who is sick; the organized usefulness of the Christian Associations in meeting first-year students and aiding them in those strange first days on the campus; the ability to exert steadily a wholesome influence on the side of what is right and wise, without self-consciousness or ostentation--all these are forms of Christian helpfulness natural and appropriate to student life.

During an epidemic of typhoid fever at Stanford University some years ago the students stood together and insisted that every patient unable to provide himself with a trained nurse should have, through their cooperation, the best care which medical science could afford. They gladly gave up the senior dance and other social entertainments and receptions, in order to devote the money to this unselfish purpose. They raised in various ways among themselves more than five thousand dollars for this practical form of helpfulness. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This was the original test of Christian discipleship proposed by Christ himself, and none better has been found.

The nurture of the college man’s religion will come mainly in two ways: first, through fellowship with a larger group of Christian people. “Gather two or three together in my name,” Christ said, “and there am I in the midst.” He thus indicated the social character of the religion he taught and suggested the help to be found in wholesome fellowship. The actual experience of mankind has strongly endorsed his claim.

The best fellowship will naturally be found in some one of the churches of the community. The student will find there friends as well as worship and instruction; he may find also his place in some concrete activity for the progress of the kingdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say in explanation of his habit of church attendance, “There is a little plant within me called reverence which needs watering at least once a week.” He might also have added that it needed the warm southern exposure of meeting in spiritual fellowship those who were similarly bent on noble living, and that it found wholesome expression through some useful participation in the activities of a parish church.

Each student needs the church even more than the church needs him. He will learn by its aid to more wisely and more conscientiously use the opportunities which Sunday offers. The day of the Lord ought to be a day of turning aside to see the bushes that burn with divine fire. The habit of Sunday study is a mistake, physically, mentally, and morally. The pioneers who crossed the plains in ’49, driving six days in the week and resting one, reached California ahead of those who drove straight along day in and day out, week in and week out; and the cattle of the men who observed the method of a regularly recurring rest day, arrived in better condition. The one who said, “Labor six days and do all thy work,” holding the seventh apart for rest and spiritual opportunity, knew something about the muscles and the nerves as well as about the souls of men. Sunday held apart from the ordinary grind of college life and used as a time of privilege for the higher nature to have its undisputed chance to grow, becomes a useful factor in normal development.

The religious life of the student will be deepened and strengthened most of all through personal fellowship with Jesus Christ. To know him who stands revealed in brief on the pages of the four gospels and revealed at large in the splendid history into which he has built himself during the last nineteen hundred years, is to gain the utmost help for character-building that the world has thus far found.

We know Jesus Christ, not only by the study of his life and teachings, but by sharing in his purpose for the race and by participation in his spirit. It is this that enables us to see life whole, and to put ourselves in the way of gaining a fuller measure of that life complete. Through our fellowship with him we come to the point where we see life in its deeper, hidden attitudes, as well as on its surface; we see its upper, unseen relations as well as those upon its own level; we see its ultimate future, beyond the event we call death, as well as the pressing claims of the immediate present. We see life whole through Christ and by our personal fellowship with him we are increasingly enabled to possess that rounded life for ourselves.

There is one supreme reason why every college man should be a Christian--the final Christianity is not yet here. It is waiting for the contribution of thought, of spiritual experience and of useful activity, which the generation to which you belong is in a position to make. Jesus had, and still has, many things to say, which the world even yet is not able to bear. It is for each man, by personal consecration and individual effort, to so weave his activities into the unfinished story of the world’s redemption as to aid in bringing about the true attitude toward those unseen things which are eternal.

College men are eager to make personal experiment of other unseen forces. They love to lay bare hidden secrets by the use of the Roentgen ray; they rejoice in sending and receiving messages by wireless telegraphy; they cluster around an experiment which displays the mysterious attributes of that strange substance called radium; they show themselves eager to witness the wonders of liquid air. They should be no less eager to know by genuine personal experience the efficacy of prayer, the power of faith, the joy of spiritual renewal through divine grace. They should be no less eager to send and receive those messages which come and go between God and man, when the heavens are open and the angels are ascending and descending upon the sons of men. You have, each one of you, a clear responsibility and obligation in this matter. Gain for yourself an intelligent faith; show to the world one more consistent Christian life; render to his cause your own personal quota of competent service, and in doing this you will not only be spiritually enriched yourself, you will aid in bringing in that greater Christianity which is yet to be.

V

THE CHOICE OF A LIFE-WORK

The man who said, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down,” was laying bricks. But the bricks went into a wall, and the wall surrounded the capital city of his country as its main defense, and the city was Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Hebrew people! The moral history of that people has woven itself into the story of the world’s redemption, as has no other history on earth. Its writings furnish us the best book we have: its Messiah, born in Bethlehem of Judea, has become the world’s Saviour; and the high claim that “Salvation is of the Jews,” is well sustained by the facts. Simple deeds are sometimes far-reaching in their divine significance. Laying bricks in a wall which protected the city out of which came the world’s Messiah, was surely a splendid occupation. The man was well within the facts, when he cried to those who tried to interrupt him, “I am doing a great work, I cannot come down.”

I quote these words as indicating the sense of vocation, the honest pride in his work, the personal appreciation of its wider meanings, the safeguard it affords against unworthy ideals, the means of culture it opens for moral character, which ought to be found in every one’s attitude toward his life-work. Alas for you, if you cannot all say, by and by, what the bricklayer said!

Some college men unfortunately allow themselves to be driven into this or that occupation by force of circumstances. They forget that college training ought to fit us to oppose circumstances if need be and resolutely work out some splendid purpose in the teeth of opposition.

Some college men drift into anything that offers--they must do something to earn their bread and they catch the nearest way. This puts them on a level with the hungry dog looking for a bone and facing in whatever direction he smells meat. Such men are opportunists all their lives, taking whatever offers, even though on the face of it a temporary makeshift, trusting that when one job is finished another may turn up. They are like so many fleas, jumping from job to job, wherever they see a chance for a good bite. They fail to exercise that power of choice and determination which ought to prevail in the selection of that which is to claim six-sevenths of one’s time and interest during all his working years.

There is spiritual value in any legitimate calling, and this satisfying return is open and possible to every college man bent on doing square work. “To every man his work”; _his_ by personal fitness; _his_ by the sense of fulfilling a divine purpose in selecting it; _his_ in the feeling that it belongs to him! Some men are called of God to the Christian ministry and others are no less called of God to teach or to heal or to build. God’s calls announce themselves in a variety of ways. The shining vision that came to Paul on the Damascus road or the mighty spiritual impulse which visited the heart of President Finney of Oberlin as he struggled in the woods alone, are forms of the divine call, but there are other forms equally valid. The call of the world’s need for some special work and your own consciousness of power to render that service will bring you a genuine sense of vocation as you gird yourself for it. There are many intimations as to the place one should take and hold, which may have all the compelling force of a vision from on high.

But to speak more closely of the matter in hand, let me name some of the considerations which must enter into the choice of a life-work. I can only speak in the most general way, addressing as I do young men of varying abilities and temperaments. If one should discuss the value or attractiveness of any particular vocation, the personal element and the question of individual fitness would instantly come in. Some general considerations however may prove suggestive.

It is best not to make one’s decision too early or too rigidly. The average young man is not sufficiently acquainted either with himself or with the vocations to make his final decision during his last year in high school, or during his first year in college. One of the chief values of college training is that it discovers the man to himself. You have scarcely a bowing acquaintance with yourself when you only know yourself as a freshman--wait and meet this same fellow within, as a sophomore, as a junior, as a senior. There are unsuspected capabilities in him which training and experience will bring out.

Wait also until you learn more about the vocations themselves. In making choice of a wife it is well to become acquainted with a number of young ladies before you settle down to an exclusive intimacy with one. There are other girls who can look sweet and say pleasant things too; it is not wise to fall so completely in love with the first dainty bit of white muslin you see as to exclude other delightful associations. The law has its attractions, so has medicine, so has the ministry, so has the work of education, or the business career, or the work of an architect, a chemist, or a forester. It is wise not to conclude too early in life that the attractions of this particular vocation shut out all the rest from consideration. Look yourself over and look the field over with great care at least a hundred times before making a final choice. It will be a sorry thing if you start out to unlock the door of your future with the wrong key.

Consider the whole man in your choice. It is not simply what you carry home in your pocket, as a result of your day’s work and of all the days of work, but what you carry away in mind and heart as well; what you carry away in the gratitude and appreciation of your fellow men; what you gain in the beneficent influence you may exert upon the community through your calling. Ten thousand a year is a splendid return from the investment of one’s personal ability, but there are other returns which may be added to the figures named in your contract in such a way as to make the money consideration seem the small end of it. And there are other returns which may make it seem as if the man who received the ten thousand a year had worked all his life for meager pay. Many a saloon-keeper has made ten times as much money out of his calling as the college professor or the clergyman makes out of his, but when the books are opened, other books as well as the cash book, the comparative values of the vocations will stand revealed.

The young man may be doing some honest and useful work, but without the sense of joy or pride in it. In such event it fails to render him back a full return. The culture of one’s own best life must come with his ordinary work or else the man is sacrificed to the profession. We are not here to be effective machines for grinding out sermons or briefs, operations or lectures, bargains or manufactured products: we are here to be men, strong, fine, aspiring, and useful men. The whole man therefore must be considered, his body, his brain, his heart, and his soul, as well as his purse when you make selection of his life-work. What you make out of your vocation is an important question, but what it makes out of you is tenfold more important!

Make up your mind that in the long run your work will be estimated by its genuine utility. Success comes not by luck, but by law. The apparent exceptions, like four-leaf clovers, are not sufficiently numerous to disturb the principle. It is three-leaf clover that feeds the cows and fills the haymows. It is ordinary industry, fidelity, persistence, and efficiency that bring the largest measure of abiding success. Your work will be estimated by its utility in satisfying human need.

This principle well understood, thoroughly believed, and constantly acted upon, will be of untold value to you. Canfield says to the young men at Columbia, “Measure your daily work by the efficiency and completeness with which it meets the needs of your fellow men.” You must measure it thus, for that is the way the world will estimate it. You will not be able to live by your wits; you must live by your work and your worth. Therefore, in making selection, consider carefully the usefulness of the work you choose, for men are like medicines, when they show themselves useful, they will be used.

The idea that success comes by luck or pull, or chance, is a fool’s idea. Some such instances occur, but they are not even so common as four-leaf clover--the man who starts out in life depending upon them is more foolish than the farmer who would rely upon four-leaf clover for his hay crop. And you will find as you come to live with him on close terms that the world is a very sagacious old fellow in his estimate of values. He has wonderful ability in discerning the real thing and in putting away shoddy. You cannot sell him gold bricks straight along--if now and then one is palmed off on the unwary, still they never become a staple quoted in the market reports. Good clay bricks in the long run are more profitable. Your work will be estimated, and estimated accurately, by its utility in satisfying genuine human need. The intelligent observance of this principle in making your selection will introduce that spirit of service which ennobles the whole effort.

May your choice of vocation be so wise and right that you will be content to have it dominate all minor matters in your life! Horace Bushnell used to speak to Yale men about “the expulsive power of a new affection.” The love for a pure woman making all impurity hateful and disgusting; the love for some man of integrity making all lying and dishonesty seem foul and mean; the love for God making all wrong-doing repulsive! So there comes into the life, by the right choice of vocation, a supreme interest and delight in one’s work, which drives out all the low, cheap, mean things that would hinder it. “I am doing a great work,” the man cries; “I am content to be absorbed in it and it is morally impossible for me to come down to the trivial or the base.”

The famous Vienna surgeon, Dr. Lorenz, at a banquet during his visit to this country, drank nothing but water. The man who sat next him at table, knowing the love which so many Germans have for wine and beer, asked the doctor if he were a teetotaler. The reply was: “I do not know that I could be called that; I am not in any sense a temperance agitator. But I am a surgeon and must keep my brain clear, my nerves steady, my muscles tense.” Here spoke the voice of science on one of its higher levels as to the effect of stimulants! Here spoke also the voice of one who finds splendid moral culture in his devotion to his life-work. “I am doing a great work, known on two continents and beyond,” he seemed to say; “therefore I cannot, for the sake of an abnormal sensation, come down to tickle my stomach, or tamper with my nerves or drug my brain by the use of stimulants.”

Make such a selection of your life-work as will enable you to regard it as the main expression of your spiritual life. Every man, no matter what the special form of his employment may be, can so relate himself to it and so strive to relate it and the results which flow from it, to the life of the community as to make his ordinary work the main utterance of his deeper nature. There will be the expression of his spirituality in worship, in directly religious activity, in other forms of effort, but the main expression should lie in that useful work which claims six-sevenths of his time and strength.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” the Master said in the model prayer. It ought to be the daily utterance of every serious man’s life. Utter it with your lips alone and your body will starve to death! Utter it with hands and brain alone, and your soul will famish! But utter it with your entire nature, hands, brain, heart, and soul, addressing themselves to God, to the resources God has placed at your call, and to the need of the community for the service you can render, and then your prayer will bring the bread which feeds the total nature up to its full strength! Industry, intelligence and moral purpose, cooperating with the divine bounty and with the needs of men, will work out the highest type of character and make one’s daily employment sacramental in its influence upon his own heart and upon the lives of others.

I have not spoken of the claims of the various vocations, but let me utter one last word, as strong as I can make it, for the Christian ministry. There are splendid rewards and honors to be won today at the bar, in medicine, in the work of education, in commerce, in manufacture, in engineering. Into all these callings strong and useful men are going in such numbers that there is no cry of need coming back. It is not so in the ministry. There is in every branch of the Church and in all the states of the Union, a loud and a sore cry for young men of sound health, good sense, trained intelligence, social sympathy, and genuine character, to enter the ministry and furnish the moral and spiritual leadership the country craves. Like the man of Macedonia the modern pulpit stands up and cries, “Come over into Macedonia, and help us.”

If I can read my Church history aright there never was a time when the opportunities and the rewards of the ministry were so great. A man will earn less money in the ministry than the same degree of ability would command in other fields of labor, though congregations, especially in cities, were never so generous with their pastors as now. What he carries away in his purse, however, is only one of many rewards the vocation brings. In the Church today there is liberty of thought; in some branch of it every man desiring to aid his fellows in doing justly, in loving mercy and in walking humbly with God, can find a hearty welcome and a place to work. There is a wide-spread hunger on the part of the people for a competent and helpful interpretation of this literature in the Bible. There is a call for men who can intelligently and effectively apply Christian principles to modern conditions and problems. There is an abiding demand for men who can bring the eternal verities of the Spirit before their congregations with power, and offer strength, cheer, courage, and comfort to those who come up weary and heavy-laden out of the work of the week.

And in return for this highest form of service any one can hope to render to his fellows, there is a mighty tide of appreciation and gratitude waiting to flow in upon the heart of the man who has been doing genuine, helpful service as a minister of Jesus Christ. The field is wide, the rewards are rich and perpetual, the opportunities are like wide-open and effectual doors, but the strong, wise, devoted laborers are all too few! You cannot anywhere on earth invest your life with more satisfaction to yourself, with a greater sense of serviceableness to your brother men, with a warmer sense of God’s own approving favor, than in the ministry of the modern Church.

In selecting your life-work, you wish to consider the whole man, to estimate possible success by the utility of the service rendered, to have a vocation to which all minor interests shall bow in glad obedience, and to make it the supreme expression of your spiritual life! Does any work on earth so meet these requirements as does the Christian ministry? In your individual case, if the call of God, the recognized needs of the world, and the sense of spiritual obligation should bear you into that vocation, you would forever thank him that among all the good things in life he had given you the best! You would gladly put away all the allurements which might defeat your spiritual effectiveness! You would say, to all beholders, by sincere and whole-hearted devotion to your calling, “I am doing a great work; I cannot come down.”

VI

MORAL VENTURES

The old saw, “Nothing venture, nothing have,” is true in mining; the miner who is unwilling to risk his money on a hole in the ground without knowing what may lie at the other end of it never grows rich. It is true in farming, for the man who is not willing to throw his seed wheat away on an uncertainty will never reap a harvest. It is true in business, for if no man had been willing to invest a dollar until he had something as sure as a government bond, we would not have reached first base yet in our commercial development. It is true in all the finer forms of outdoor sport. The plaintive cry goes up now and then from certain quarters against the idea of having any element of risk or danger in college athletics--such people had better stick to ping-pong or croquet, leaving the other games to those of us who still have a sprinkling of red corpuscles in our veins. Nothing venture, nothing have!

The same principle holds on the higher levels of moral life, for in all the more heroic forms of duty there is an element of risk. There are those who hold that right is nothing more than expediency and that wrong is simply a bad blunder. They can make quite a showing on paper. “Honesty is the best policy” in the long run, but it is a great deal more than that. Genuine honesty, financial, physical, intellectual, moral, the sort of honesty that adds two and two and gets four every time with never a fraction more nor less, is something more than good policy. It reaches down and takes hold of things fundamental in a way that mere policy never does, never can. And the fact stands that the saints and the seers, the heroes and the martyrs, the poets and the singers who have furnished inspiration and leadership, who have kindled the fire of moral passion in other breasts because it burned hot in their own, have been men to whom right was more than good policy. The moral leaders have been men who were ready to take risks in doing certain things because they believed those things to be right.

There is a certain short story which brings this point out in telling fashion. There was a king who lived “somewhere east of Suez, where there ain’t no Ten Commandments and the best is like the worst.” He was the fortunate possessor of a big stick and he wielded it with striking success. To celebrate one of his notable victories he caused to be made a huge, gold-plated image ninety feet high and eighteen feet broad. He set it up out on the campus and called upon the people of his realm to bow down and worship it. He coupled that invitation with the stimulating announcement that if any man refused he would be cast into a furnace of fire.

Now with that alternative in plain sight, the popular, the politic, the expedient thing was to get down and worship the image, or at least to go through the form. “In Rome you must do as the Romans do”--so the moral jelly-fish who have never reached the vertebrate level are ever saying. With a golden image ninety feet high and eighteen feet broad, with the king leading off in the worship and all his captains and counselors, his rulers and his governors backing him up, what could any ordinary man do but conform!

But there in that same country east of Suez there were three young fellows who knew about the Ten Commandments. They had learned them “by heart” as we say, which means much more than the mere ability to reel them off the tongue as one might repeat the multiplication table. It was a matter of principle with them not to worship images of any sort. When the multitude flopped down on its knees before the Thing that was ninety feet high the three young men stood erect.

Their defiant action was promptly reported to the king, and with all the fury of an oriental despot he caused them to be brought before him and again threatened with the fiery furnace. Then there came from the lips of uncalculating youth those ringing words of moral defiance which cause the heart of every man under forty to leap, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace! We believe that he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king! _But if not_”--there is the nub of the statement and there I want to rest my whole weight in this address--“but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, we will not serve thy gods!” No matter what might come, they stood ready to take the risk of obedience to the highest they saw.

The men who are really putting the world ahead in its business methods and in its civic affairs, in the quality of the ideals which dominate the work of education and in the standards which obtain in society at large, are not men who are always making shrewd calculations as to what will be most expedient. These royal leaders of the race sitting upon their respective thrones of spiritual usefulness endeavor to shape means to ends. They indulge in no sort of bluster or heroics. They seek as far as may be to avoid open disaster. They say frankly, “We believe that this course of action will bring us out all right, vindicating itself here and now, _but if not_,”--even though personal loss, popular opposition and apparent defeat seem to be the immediate result--“we will stand for the right as we see the right.” These men ready to take risks in doing their duty in the face of heavy odds, ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest ideals in sight, are the only men who are really worth while.

Yonder on the coast at a life-saving station a group of determined men see a wreck off shore. They know all about the peril of the sea; it has been their major study for years. They quietly put on their storm clothes and their helmets, equipping themselves with all those appliances which experience has indicated as having value. They push their life-boat through the angry surf and are off. “We hope to bring those imperiled passengers and sailors safe to land and to get back ourselves,” they say; “but, if not, we go just the same. It is our duty.”

Here in the crowded city a fireman climbs up the longest ladder available on the side of a burning building. Through a window on the fourth floor he catches a glimpse of the body of a woman who has been overcome by heat and smoke. He has been thoroughly trained by years of stern experience with city fires. He knows that the floor of that room may drop at any moment, that, if he ventures in, he, too, may be overcome by heat and smoke; that if he leaves his ladder for one moment it may mean certain death. In the face of everything he climbs right in to rescue the woman. “I hope to get out all right,” he says; “but if not, here goes just the same. It’s my duty.”

Now the world will never be saved from its sin and shame until the rest of us who wear no uniforms of any kind are ready for that same sort of moral venture in the realms of business and politics, in educational and in social life. Here and there are small groups of men entering actively into the political life of the city, the state, the nation, ready to know machine politicians from the inside rather than from the outside, willing to get down and be muddied with their mud, in order that better men and better methods may prevail. Here and there are small groups of men who know that some of the methods in the world of business are fatal to that larger prosperity in which all classes may equitably share and fatal to the human values at stake. They are not sitting on the bleachers idly criticizing the players--they are in the game, but intent upon playing it according to finer rules and nobler methods. They are standing oftentimes at great cost to themselves for ideals which were not born in the counting-room, which do not receive their most accurate appraisement from the entries in the cash-book. These groups of idealists are not large as yet, but they are significant--they are the hope of the nation. They are the saving remnant in our modern Israel.

Only as men are ready to lash themselves like Ulysses of old to those enduring principles of righteousness and honor which stand erect like masts and sail on, no matter what alluring sirens of temporary expediency sing along the course, shall we make moral headway or at last make port.

You have read the history of those brave Dutchmen at the siege of Leyden. They were besieged by the powerful army of Spain. They were fighting for the safety of their city, for the freedom of the Netherlands, and for those principles of civil and religious liberty which they held dear. Unable to carry the place by assault the Spaniards undertook to starve the Dutchmen out. The Spanish commander demanded the surrender of the place coupled with the threat that if his demand were refused he would starve them all to death, men, women, and children.

The sturdy Hollanders sent back this reply--“Tell the Spanish commander we will eat our left arms first and fight on with the right.” But as the siege went on some of the less heroic souls finally suggested to the governor that the food supply was very low and that it might be well to make some compromise. “Never,” he cried; “eat me first, but do not surrender.” They held on until finally in their desperation a few of them stole out at night and opened the dikes to let in the Atlantic Ocean. It might mean death to them, but it would also mean death to their enemies. In the confusion which ensued when the enemy’s camp was flooded, the Dutchmen had their opportunity--they rushed forth and from apparent defeat wrested a splendid victory. The great victories by land or by sea, in the stirring times of war or in the slower, harder battles of peace, are won by men who stand ready for that sort of moral venture.

The people of any state have the right--they have paid for it in honest money--to look to the university not only for mental insight and efficiency, but for moral energy and spiritual passion. If the university is worthy to bear that high name it ought to be a place where moral idealism can breathe and grow as upon its native heath. This is thoroughly understood by all those who know the full meaning of “higher education.”

If any of you have come up to this place of privilege merely with the idea of being trained so that you can more successfully compete with your fellows in feathering your own nests, making them thick and warm and soft as untrained men might be unable to do, you would better go home. If your associates knew that fact they would be ashamed of you. The members of the faculty, as soon as they discover that spirit in you, are ashamed of you. The people of the state would be ashamed of you did they know that you were here using the privileges they have provided in that mood. You are here to be made ready and competent to take more steadily and more largely the risks which public service involves.

Hundreds of people, many of them good and respectable people too, confess themselves unable to stand up against the spirit of self-indulgence, the worship of luxury, the fierce pursuit of things material which are today dwarfing the souls of men in countless homes. All the more honor to those university men and women who stand out and bear witness to their firm confidence in the beauty of simplicity, in the value of sincerity of soul, in the vital importance of directing the ultimate aspirations to things spiritual!

Hundreds of men in commercial and political life are hanging out the flag of distress. “We are caught in a system,” they say. “We cannot help ourselves. We must play the game in the same ruthless way our competitors are playing it.” All the more honor to those men who are ready to face defeat if need be, that they may stand clearly for unflinching integrity, for genuine consideration for the higher interests involved in industry, and for all those sacred ideals which ought to shine in the secular sky every day in the week as well as through the stained glass windows on the first day.

In the face of the insistent demand for moral leadership it would be a downright shame if the university men should be found skulking in the rear, choosing the lower because it is the easier and in their weak attempts at moral advance following the line of least resistance. The persistent refusal of the call to high and responsible service becomes in these exacting days the act of a scoundrel. It is for every college man to stand ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest in sight and to share in the honor of the ultimate victory.

VII

THE LAW OF RETURNS

It was a well-seasoned parson who once remarked that he made it a point never to speak in public without taking a text. It mattered not whether it was an after-dinner speech, a Fourth of July oration or a sermon, he always took a text, that he might be sure, as he said, to “give the people something worth remembering.”

In imitation of his pious example I will take a text. You will find my text in the book of Numbers, the first chapter and the second verse. It reads like this--“Two and two make four.” That particular statement does not happen to be in the Bible, but it is as true as anything which is found there, and it will serve as a basis for what I wish to say regarding the law of returns.

Two and two make four. Never by any sort of bad luck or ill chance only three and a half; never by any amount of pulling or stretching or coaxing four and a half, but always and everywhere just four and no more! It is a definite, absolute statement of fact. It always has been so and it always will be so. No one can imagine a world where two and two will not make four.

If a man deposits two dollars in the bank today and two tomorrow, he can draw out four the third day. In forty years from that time he can still draw out exactly four dollars and whatever interest upon his original deposit the bank may allow. Life is like that. With what measure we mete, it is measured back to us again. We get out of life what we put in, by a law as definite and as unyielding as the statement about two and two. There are no Santa Clauses lurking in the shadow--each individual takes out of the big stocking what has been previously put in, not by magic, but by solid and verifiable effort.

Once for all dismiss the idea that success in life is the result of luck or pull or any such artificial thing. There was a man in San Francisco who once picked up a five dollar gold piece in the street-car. He was a poor man and it was a great find for him. He thenceforth spent a large part of his time studying the floor of the street-car, peering in and out among the feet of the passengers, to find another gold piece. He never found another one, but the time wasted, if it had been given to thought and effort touching his own trade, would have earned for him many an extra gold piece. Now and then something may occur which men call “luck,” but it offers nothing reliable by which one may safely shape his course.

Young men and maidens look for four-leaf clovers on the lawn. They are commonly intent upon something else besides the clover as they creep about on their hands and knees--something sweeter and more satisfying than clover, and they find this too. Occasionally they do find a four-leaf clover, but the clover which makes the lawn green, feeds the cows, supplies the bees with honey and fills the haymow, is three-leaf clover--the ordinary, every-day sort of clover. The farmer, the dairyman, and the bee all know that the reliable and satisfying returns in life come not by some happy chance, but in those common and usual events which are according to law.

When the blood is warm, the heart beating high and fast, the nerves eager to yield their thrills, young people see visions and dream dreams. It ought to be so. The girl who does not have her day-dreams is no girl at all. The boy who does not see ahead of him shapes and forms of activity, achievement, advance, higher and more commanding than the Sierra, if not quite so solid, does not deserve to be young. The loftier, the richer, the rosier these day-dreams, the better!

But those visions will have to be worked out and realized, in so far as they come to have a definite, ascertainable value, in a world of plain, hard fact. The girl will marry a man with feet and hands like the rest of us; and the home she has, the place she makes for herself in society, the record of useful service she writes opposite her name, will be determined according to law. And the place in the world’s life which the boy carves out for himself as he climbs toward maturity, the size of it, the location of it, the comfort of it, will be the inevitable reaction from wise and useful effort. The law of returns is as sure as the statement about two and two making four.