Chapter VII: Preface (7)

We see it in the great things of history. Witness the inferior mentality but the burning ardor of a Peter the Hermit, moving all Europe to the most extraordinary war the world has seen. Consider Napoleon crossing the Alps--an achievement all men said was impossible. Impossible! That word is found only in the dictionary of superstition.

But your faith, young man, you who are about to go into the Pulpit, does not deal with little things. It is not interested even in the large affairs of statesmanship, as such. Yet it embraces all matters. It involves concerns more important than all history.

Limitless eternity is its field. Everlasting life is its subject. The Ancient of Days is its awful familiar. It has to do with the righteous conduct of individual men and women here on earth and of their eternal felicity in the world to come. The Ineffable One whose crucifixion has made the cross a symbol of all good and the emblem of our highest hope is its divine and inspiring author.

How noble the attitude of that intellect which is uplifted by a belief so glorious. No wonder that he who possesses this faith works miracles in human character more astounding than the dazzling wonders which science wrings from reluctant matter. No, not he who _possesses_ this faith, but him whom this _faith_ POSSESSES. The faith is the reality--you are but the instrument through which that faith works out the winning of the world. Look to your faith then, you who seek to save the souls of men.

For now as ever mankind awaits the magic voice of him whose faith in God the Father, in Christ His son and in the life eternal is strong as knowledge itself. Think of John Wesley, think of Ignatius Loyola, think of the inspired young man who this very year has lifted all Wales to spiritual heights as elevated as those to which Savonarola led beautiful and dissolute Florence, and the fire of whose revival promises to spread over the United Kingdom, purifying all it touches.

What said they of the Master? "For He spake as one having authority and the common people heard Him gladly." It was true of Him, too. And it has been true of each of those princes of faith who, during two thousand years, have followed the directions of their thorn-crowned Lord.

He declared to his disciples: "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

If you have not an undoubting belief, you may carve out your sentences as curiously as you will; deliver them with the voice of music, and yet be nothing but an entertainer. Speaking as one of the "men of the street," as one of the millions, I think that the best thing for you to attend to is this question of faith.

I have no respect for a lawyer who does not know certain fundamental definitions by heart; and I have less respect for the preacher who cannot repeat the eleventh chapter of Hebrews offhand.

_Get your faith into your blood_; the brain is the place for your reasonings and argumentations.

You say that you are a soldier of heaven, battling with the world--meaning that you represent righteousness as opposed to evil. That is your attitude--your conception of your mission. Very well, the secret of your strength has never been so well stated as in the words of the Apostle, "_This_ is the victory that _overcometh the world_, even our _faith_."

Four of the most extraordinary doers of God's work in the world were Luther, Loyola, Wesley, and Savonarola. Each of this company of practical and militant Christianity has life instruction for you. But in the art of preaching, as such, Savonarola has more than either of the others, although Wesley is nearly his equal, and, as an organizer, vastly his superior. He perfectly illustrates the miraculous power of conviction in mere oratory.

I would advise every young man who intends to enter the pulpit to read carefully the best life of this wonderful preacher, reformer, and statesman. And supplement your study of him and his methods by reading George Eliot's historical novel, "Romola."

The great Dominican was a Lombard, of harsh accent and strange face, come to live in the most cultured city in the world. Florence was then in the full flowering of literature and art; and in her overripe perfections the poison was distilling of greed and cruelty and lubricity and all loathsomeness.

Over this capital of learning, genius, and sin ruled "The Magnificent" Medici, sitting with easy power on his splendid throne and wielding his scepter with the accurate skill of a perfect craft and the strong decision of a fearless heart.

But you know the story. It was not an inviting field for a preacher who burned to utter the Word and at the same time hoped to enjoy the smiles and favors of the great. It was not an encouraging prospect for any one who wanted to restore the reign of righteousness, even though he were willing to pay the price of martyrdom.

But Savonarola accomplished all this and more; for he crowned the renaissance of letters and art with the renaissance of Christian morals and religion whose pure and beautiful influence reaches even unto our day.

And he did it by faith more than by all other things put together--a faith so rapt that, to our less passionate natures, it seems to have been the very insanity of fanaticism. But it did the work; and that is the thing after all.

His sermons do not seem to be more remarkable when you read them than those of many another pulpiteer, although they are full of thought. We are told, however, that his voice had in it a terrible earnestness, and his manner was so impassioned that he sometimes seemed to forget himself.

But all agree that the magic with which he wrought his wonders from the pulpit was the feeling that everybody had that Fra Girolamo _believed what he said_, _knew_ what he said, _meant_ what he said.

The immediate effect was astonishing--(the after effect still thrills the world). Mrs. Oliphant quotes Burlamacchi's description of Savonarola's influence over the people thus: "The people got up in the middle of the night to get places for the sermon. They came to the door of the cathedral waiting outside until it should be opened, making no account of the inconvenience, neither of the cold nor the wind nor the standing in winter with their feet on the marble."

I emphasize the point that this effect was not exclusively oratorical, nor merely magnetic. Chiefly it was what the world has always seen and always will see when it beholds a strong man in deadly earnest for a righteous cause.

We know that this is so because "The Magnificent" induced the most cultivated pulpiteer in all Italy to preach sermons in Florence so as to divert attention from Savonarola; and this master of the pulpit, whom Lorenzo won to his purpose, was better liked and more greatly admired by the people of Florence than any other orator.

His name was Fra Mariano, and it was admitted that he was a far better speaker than Savonarola. Yet he failed utterly, unaccountably. He had better elocution, a richer voice, more "magnetism," more attractive qualities every way than Savonarola, and as much learning; _but he did not have as much faith_.

I am dwelling upon this because I am quite sure that the people are more interested in acquiring faith than they are in all your oratoricals; and because, too, I am quite sure that it is the only certain method of your effectiveness.

Faith is infectious. James Whitcomb Riley, whose sweetness of character and upliftedness of soul equal his genius, gave me the best recipe for faith in God, Christ, and Immortality I have ever heard:

"Just believe," said he; "don't argue about it; don't question it; simply say, 'I believe.' Next day you will find yourself believing a little less feebly, and finally your faith will be absolute, certain, and established."

And why not--you of the schools who split hairs and dispute and come to nothing in the end, and whose knowledge, after all, as Savonarola so well said, comes to nothing--why not? For if you cannot _prove_ God and Christ and Immortality, it is very sure you cannot _disprove_ them; and it is safe--yes, and splendid--to believe in these three marvelous realities; or conceptions, if you like that word better.

The doctrine of _noblesse oblige_ was one of the most beautiful of human conventions. It was based upon the proposition that a man being noble and the son of a nobleman could not do a mean thing--it was not good form.

But if a man gets it into his consciousness that he is the child, not of a nobleman, not of an earthly ruler, not of a great statesman, warrior, scientist, or financier, _but of the living God_ who presides over the universe, how large, how generous, how exalted, and how fine his attitude toward life and all his conduct needs must be.

Savonarola was not alone in the vast crowds he drew by the simple method he followed. He was not original in that method either. Do we not read that when "Philip went down to the city of Samaria and _preached Christ_ unto them, the people ... _gave heed_ unto those things which Philip spake."

Of course they gave heed, just as they did to Savonarola. Recall the expression of the old journalist at the beginning of this paper. He would never have been bored by Philip or by the Lombard priest.

Paul got the attention even of the _blasé_ Athenians, who would not listen to anybody or anything very long, "because he preached unto them of Jesus and the resurrection."

And you will remember the Master's experience at Capernaum: "And straightway many were gathered together, _insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door_: and he PREACHED THE WORD unto them."

That reads a good deal like the description of Savonarola's congregations, or of Wesley's, or of the young revivalist in Wales. No difficulty about _their_ audiences--or congregations, if you insist on being technical.

Of course, everybody understands that preaching and faith and all that is not everything that the young minister must do for his fellow man. "Faith without works is dead." Everybody who has read the Bible understands that.

But this paper is on "The Young Man and the Pulpit"--an attempt to give him an idea of how the people he is going to preach to look at this matter, how they regard him, and, above all else, what the people to whom his life work is devoted really need and really want above everything else in this world.

Don't preach woe, punishment, and all mournfulness to the people all the time. Where you find sin, go ahead and denounce it mercilessly; but do it crisply, cuttingly, not dully and innocuously. Speak to kill. Do not forget that the Master told the people of His day that they "were a generation of vipers."

But that was not the burden of His appeal. He knew that there were other things in the world and human nature besides sin. Mostly He spoke of "things lovely and of good report." Remember that His coming was announced as a bringing of "good tidings of great joy."

The Sermon on the Mount is the perfection of thought, feeling, and expression. Make it your example. You will recall that it begins: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." It is full of "blessed" and blessings, of consolations and encouragements and loving promises of beautiful certainties. "Ye are the light of the world," He said. The Sermon on the Mount radiates sense and kindness and prayer.

The One understood that most glorious truth of all truths--that there is some good in each of us, and that if that good only could be recognized and encouraged it would overcome the bad in us. You will remember the saying: "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."

So don't be an orator of melancholy. There is enough sadness in the world without your adding to it by either visage, conduct, or sermon. Besides, it is not what you are directed to do. The people would be very glad if you could say with Isaiah that

"The Lord hath anointed me to preach _good tidings_ unto the meek; ... he hath sent me _to proclaim liberty_ to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim _the acceptable year_ of the Lord ... to _comfort_ all that mourn ... to give unto them _beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness_."

That is the kind of talk that will cheer the people, and it is the kind of talk that will do the people good. There is nothing "blue" about that. And it is what the Book bids you tell the people. The people want it, too, and need it--they _need_ "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

Ah! yes, indeed, that is worth while. Your pews will never be empty if such be the fruit of your lips and the ripeness of your spirit. The people want to hear about something better than they know or have known.

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings."

Nobody likes a scold. Of course, when it is necessary to scold, go ahead and scold. But don't make scolding a practise. Your congregation will not stand being abused; they will not stand it unless they actually need it, and then they will stand it. Unconsciously they will know that the stripes you lay upon them are medicine after all, and for their healing.

But ordinarily everybody has such a hard time that they would like to hear about "a good time coming." Ordinarily everybody is so tired that they would like to hear something like this: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."

The religion which you preach owes its vitality to the glorious hopefulness of it. The people want to know that if they do well here joy awaits them hereafter, and here, too, if possible. They want to hear about the "Father's house" that has "many mansions," and about Him who has "gone to prepare a place" for them.

They demand happiness in some form, if only in talk. If they do not get it in the assurances of religion, who can blame them if they say: "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." For sure enough they _do_ die to-morrow, so far as their world goes.

If you do not believe that religion means happiness, quit the pulpit and raise potatoes. Potatoes feed the body at least. But unfaithful words or speech of needless despair feed nothing at all. It is "east wind." Put beauty, hope, joy, into your preaching, therefore. Make your listeners thrill with gladness that they are Christians. Even the men of the world have wisdom enough to make things profane as attractive as possible.

Note, for example, that most successful books are hopeful books that tell of the beautiful things of human life and character. Especially is this true of novels, the most widely read of all books of transient modern literature. The hero always wins--virtue always triumphs. There are remarkable exceptions no doubt--but they are exceptions. Now and then there are remarkable novels which scourge with the whips of the Furies, as indeed most of Savonarola's sermons flagellated.

With all your faith and the fervor of it, be full of thought. Merely to believe burningly is not enough. Nobody will listen to you declaim the confession and then declaim it over and over again and nothing more. Even pious monotony palls. Bread is the staff of life; and yet too much bread eaten at one time will kill. Food, taken in excess, becomes poison.

I have emphasized the necessity for faith because it will always be the very soul of your influence over your audience. It is the power behind your ideas. Faith is the dynamics of truth. But do not forget that you have got to _have_ ideas. You have got to _have_ truth.

In every word you utter you must be a teacher.

After all, teaching is the only oratory. Luke says of the Master that "he _taught_ the people." In reporting the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew says that "he opened his mouth and _taught_ them." Time and again I have heard hard-headed business men and sturdy farmers say of a particularly instructive sermon: "I like to hear that preacher; I always _learn_ something from him."

And let your discourse be full of "sweet reasonableness." Peter tells you "to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that is within you," although Peter himself seldom gave a reason for anything.

You cannot do this without study. "After you have shot off a gun you have got to load it before you can shoot it off again," said a wise old preacher who retained the hold of his youth upon his congregations. Never cease to renew yourself from every possible source of thought and knowledge.

Books, society, solitude, the woods, the crowded streets--all things in this varied universe have in them replenishings for your mind. Don't become burnt powder. Keep young. That is your problem and life's. For mind and soul that is no hard problem, after all.

Don't repeat your sermons if you can help it. That is hard advice, I know; but to repeat your sermons is a phase of arrested development and a method of bringing it about. It is unfortunate for you that things are so ordered that you must preach a new sermon every Sunday.

The Saviour did not do it, nor did any of his personal followers. They taught when "the spirit moved them." I think none of the great preachers ever spoke with machine-like periodicity--certainly Savonarola did not. He preached only when occasion demanded it.

But that is neither here nor there. Preaching every Sunday is our custom and therefore preach every Sunday you must. I repeat that it is hard on you, and we sympathize with you; but, as a practical matter, it is all the more reason why you should ceaselessly fertilize your intellect. Your audience will pity you, but they are not going to listen to any twice-told tales, pity or no pity.

The practise of having short sermons helps you out. I beseech you, as you wish to hold your hearers, observe this practise. Please remember that this is America and everybody is in a hurry. They ought not to be, but they are. Make thirty minutes the limit of your time. Twenty minutes is long enough.

It was a very good sermon Paul preached on Mars Hill before the most critical and cultured audience in the world. And still, allowing for all deliberation of delivery and for portions of his speech which are not reported, it could not have taken him longer than fifteen minutes.

Even the Master, when expounding the whole of the Christian religion in the Sermon on the Mount, could not have occupied more than half or three-quarters of an hour; yet he was covering a multitude of subjects, whereas Paul covered but one. Indeed, the Saviour also made it a practise to speak upon only one subject at a time.

The same is true of all great orators except, of course, political stump speakers, who necessarily must cover all the "issues." The political speaker is sorry enough that this is true--but there is no help for it; "the questions of the day" must all be answered. But you, Mr. Preacher, need not be so encyclopedic; and you ought to be illuminating and uplifting on _one_ subject in half an hour--and no longer. That light is brightest which is condensed.

The Christian religion is a livable creed, is it not? It is a day-by-day religion; a here-and-now religion. True, it comprehends eternity, and its perfect flower is immortal life and peace. But that is for the hereafter. This side of the grave, Christianity is a code of conduct. So, peculiarly human subjects for your sermons are endless--subjects of present interest.

Think of the intimate and personal subjects of Christ's teachings. He spoke of prayer and the fulfilment of the law, of master and servant and of practical charity, of marriage, divorce, and the relation of children to parents; of manners, serenity, and battlings; of working and food and prophecy; of trade and usury, of sin and righteousness, of repentance and salvation. Yet by means of all this he made noble the daily living of our earthly lives and gloriously triumphant the ending of them.

Speak helpfully therefore. Remember that the great problem with each of us is how to live day by day; and that is no easy task, say what you will. This human talking with human beings is not only consistent with the preaching of your religion--it _is_ the preaching of your religion. Christ came to save sinners, but how? By faith? Yes. By repentance? Yes. By these and by many other things; _but by conduct also_.

I do not think the ordinary layman cares to hear you preach about some new thing. The common man prefers to hear the old truths retold. Indeed, there can be nothing new in morals. "Our task," said a clear-headed minister, "is to state the old truths in terms of the present day." That is admirably put. In science progress means change; in morals progress means stability. No man can be said to have uttered the final word in science; but the Master uttered the final word in morals.

Many people greatly debate whether the minister of the Gospel should "mix up in politics." There is a protest against ministers using their pulpits to express views on our civic and National life.

I have no sympathy with such views. Of course the preaching of his holy religion is the minister's high calling; of course the spiritual life practically applied should receive his exclusive attention. But does not that include righteousness in the affairs of our popular government? Does it not involve uprightness in public life?

It seems to me that the Master took a considerable part in public affairs. Did he not even scourge the money-changers from the Temple? And John Knox, Wesley, and other great teachers of the Word profoundly influenced the political life and movements of their time. Savonarola, to whom I have so often referred, was a skilled politician, though of so high a grade that he may be justly called a statesman.

Upon this subject the views of the ordinary laymen of the country are these: Whenever a civic _evil_ is to be eliminated it is not only appropriate, but it is the office of the minister to help eliminate it. Whenever the cause of light is struggling with the powers of darkness the place of the Christian minister is in the ranks.

But as a general proposition he can do most good by merely preaching individual righteousness day after day without definitely interfering with things political. For there is always the danger that if he takes part in many political agitations he will become so monotonous that all his power for good will be dissipated.

But after all is said and done the millions want from the modern pulpit the fruitful teaching of the Christian religion. They want the fundamentals. They want decision and certainty. Their minds are to be convinced, yes, but even more their hearts.

This is the task that awaits you, young man, who, from that spiritual tribune called the Pulpit, are soon to speak to us who sit beneath you that Word which is for "the healing of the nations." How exalted beyond understanding is this high place to which you are going. What a hearing you will have if only you will utter words of power and light. Believe me, the world with eagerness awaits your message. But be sure it _is_ a message in very truth--no, not _a_ message but THE message.

VIII

GREAT THINGS YET TO BE DONE

Some four years ago a young man of uncommon ability, but lacking the imagination of hope, said to me that it seemed to him as if everything great had already been done.

"Great battles," said he, "have been fought; there will be no more wars of magnitude. The great principles of the law have all been announced and applied to every conceivable form of human rights and controversy. For example, in our own country there will be no more new and great constitutional arguments. Everything, from now on, will be only an application of what has already been said and decided.

"In invention, there may be some improvements on old and present devices, but there will be no more Edisons, no more Marconis. In medicine, we are about at the top of the mountain. In literature, the creative and fundamental things have all been done. There will be no more Shakespeares, no Miltons, no Dantes, no Goethes. Even Hugo is dead. From now on books will be mere second-hand talk.

"In statesmanship, nothing is left except that common housekeeping which we call administering government. In diplomacy, the same old lies will continue to be told, and so on."

This young man's profoundly melancholy view of life is that which I have found crushing the _élan_ out of many young men; and particularly college students. In their hearts they feel that progress is finished, so far as individual effort _by them_ is concerned. They feel that _for them_ there is nothing but to eat, sleep, laugh, grieve and go to their graves. They feel that _for them_ there is no such thing as leaving behind them a monument of their own constructive effort. Talk to most young men in college or school, and you will find this feeling, like a pathetic minor chord, running through their highest and most daring boasts.

Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy negativeness of life? However it happens, the truth is that too few young men come out of our great universities with the greater part of the boldness of youth left in them. Somehow or other those fine, and, if you will, absurd enthusiasms which nobody but young men and geniuses are blessed with, have been educated out of the graduate. How many seniors in our historic American universities would not have sneered John Bunyan out of existence, or have told the young and unripe Bonaparte how presumptuous he was to think of fighting the trained generals of Europe?

"Yes," says a certain type of young man, "all the great things have been done. Nothing is left for me but the commonplaces." This is not true.

The great things have not all been done; scarcely have they been commenced. "There is more before us than there is behind us," said my old forest "guide," wise with the wisdom of the woods and their thoughtful silences. And the purpose of this paper is to point out the infinite number of practical possibilities immediately at hand; to awaken each young man who reads these words to some one of the million voices which from all the fields of human endeavor is calling him; and so, by showing him things to do, make him a doer of things, if he will.

Let us take the law--that entrancing subject which exercises such an empire over the minds of most young men. Our own constitutional law is only a part of that universal body of jurisprudence with which all real lawyers must deal. Very well; we have only begun the discussion and settlement of our great constitutional questions. Marshall and Hamilton, it is true, when they formulated the doctrine of implied powers, seemed to unlock the door of all constitutional difficulties, leaving nothing for future lawyers and jurists to do but to find their way through the channels and passages thus opened.

But it was only one great field to which they laid down the bars. Others equally large--yes, larger--lie beyond it. It is generally admitted now by all thorough students of the Constitution that there is such a thing as constitutional progress--constitutional development. The Constitution does and will grow as the American people grow.

Half a dozen questions are now in the public mind that measure, in importance, up to the level of Marshall's elementary decisions. Beyond these is still the application of institutional law to the interpretation of the Constitution. There is no book so much needed in the present, or that will be so much needed in the future, as a great work on our institutional law--such a work as the world sees once in a century.

Consider this one phase of jurisprudence for only a moment, young man, just to see what a world of thought it opens to the mind. Institutional law is older, deeper, and even more vital than constitutional law. Our Constitution is one of the concrete manifestations of our institutions; our statutes are another; the decisions of our courts are another; our habits, methods, and customs as a people and a race are still another.

Our institutional law is like the atmosphere--impalpable, imperceptible, but all-pervading, and the source of life itself. Most leading decisions of our courts of last resort, involving great constitutional questions, refer to the spirit of our institutions as interpreting our Constitution. It is our institutional law which, flowing like our blood through the written Constitution, gives that instrument vitality and power of development.

Institutional law existed before the Constitution. Our institutions had their beginnings well-nigh with the beginning of time. They have developed through the ages. Magna Charta only marked a period in their growth; the assertion of the rights of the Commons marked another; our Revolution marked another; the adoption of our Constitution marked another still.

I have no respect for constitutional learning which deals alone with the written words of the Constitution, or even with the intention of its framers, and ignores the sources and spirit of that great instrument. The Constitution did not give us free institutions; free institutions gave us our Constitution. All our progress toward liberty and popular government, made since the adoption of the Constitution, has been the spirit of our institutions working out its sure results, through the Constitution when possible, modifying it when necessary.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence a denunciation of slavery, and called it an "execrable commerce." It was stricken out at the request of Georgia and South Carolina, and years afterward slavery was recognized in our Constitution.

But slavery was opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and while legalized by our Constitution and defended by armies as brave as ever marched to battle, constitutional slavery went down before institutional liberty; and Appomattox was the capitulation of the word of death in our Constitution to the spirit of life in our institutions. Every amendment of our Constitution marks the progress of our institutions.

The Constitution contemplated and provided for the election of Presidents by electors, who should select the best man to preside over the Republic, irrespective of the people's choice. That was the intention of the fathers. But in that they did not correctly interpret the spirit and tendency of our institutions, which is toward getting the Government as close to the people as possible.

And so, in spite of the Constitution, in spite of the intention of the fathers, in spite of the fact that this plan was pursued for several elections, the spirit of our institutions prevailed over our Constitution, and no presidential elector now dare cast his ballot against the candidate for whom the people instruct him to vote.

Even outside of the doctrine of implied powers by which our written Constitution has been made to meet many of the emergencies of our history, there are important things in our National life that have all the force of organic law which are unprovided for by the Constitution. For example, the Constitution does not say that a congressman must live in the district which he represents. So far as constitutional law is concerned, he might live anywhere. But no matter--our institutional law settles that. The theory of local self-government requires the representative of a locality to live in that locality.

Wherever our Constitution has been weak and insufficient in its apparent expressed powers, the spirit of our institutions has given it life. Read Marshall's opinions; read most of our great constitutional decisions; read the whole history of American constitutional progress, if you would know the beneficent influence of our institutions on our Constitution.

Thus we see that our institutions are the preservers of our Constitution. The doctrine of implied powers, which has saved the country and the Constitution too, has been made possible only by reading our Constitution by the light of our institutions, as Hamilton and Marshall did.

And so our security is not in the written word of the Constitution alone; it is there, of course, but it is in our institutions also which are the spirit of the Constitution, which illumine and emphasize the meaning of that noble instrument. England has no written constitution; certain other countries have had and have now ideal written constitutions.

And yet England has steady and continuous liberty and law, while those others, even with written constitutions, frequently have had bureaucracy and military absolutism. They had the _forms_ of liberty and popular government in these written constitutions, but they did not have free institutions, which alone make formal constitutions living and vital things.

England, without a written constitution, is almost as free a government as ours. Law reigns supreme. The poorest gatherer of rags has equal rights before the bar of justice with belted earl or millionaire, and those equal rights are impartially enforced. Neither wealth nor title are favored more than poverty or humble rank in the courts of England; and even royalty appears as witness, the same as his meanest subject.

The Government itself is subject to the will of the people; and no ministry remains in power in face of an adverse majority, or forces into law an act of which the people disapprove. The English Parliament goes to the people as often as the Government, in any of its proposed measures, fails of a majority. The suffrage is constantly enlarging, and the rights of labor are almost as carefully guarded by the laws of England as by ours.

England's treatment of Ireland has been harsh, severe, unjust; and yet even there the spirit of a larger liberty in the interest of the Irish tenant, approaching state socialism, compels the landlord to sell his land whether he wants to or not, at a price fixed by others than himself, and enables the tenant to buy the land by the payment of his rent. Tolerance, justice, and individual liberty are daily developing throughout the British Empire, instead of diminishing.

And yet England has no written constitution. But she has institutions, free institutions, institutions similar to those we have here in America. It is the free institutions of England that preserve and increase the liberty of Englishmen, and diminish and destroy the authority of the monarch, who is now only the personification of the nation, the emblem of the Empire.

It is England's free institutions that, in Egypt, in Hongkong, in Ceylon, in the Malay states, in India, have given the people of those dark places some of the fruits of liberty to eat for the first time in all the strange history of the oppressed and wasted Orient. And it is our free institutions, as well as our Constitution, that in America make kings impossible, and have, for a hundred years, wrought for a larger liberty and a more popular government.

And it is the spirit of our institutions, as well as our Constitution, that will prevent the abuse of power by American authority in Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, or any other spot blessed by the protection of our flag. It is our free institutions, working now by one method and now by another, after the fashion of our practical race, that are establishing order, equal laws, free speech, unpurchasable justice, and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" throughout our ocean possessions.

It is our institutional law, therefore, of which men should inquire who would know the meaning and the life of our constitutional law. We have heard from lawyer and orator of "the Constitution," "the letter of the Constitution," etc.; we have listened for "our institutions," and in vain. And yet, is it not written that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life"?

Is it not written that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"? I respect not the expounders of constitutional law who have not learned the history of our institutions, of which the Constitution is the richest fruit, until that history is a part of their being.

I respect not that constitutional charlatanism that fastens its eye on the printed page alone, disdains our institutions as interpreting it, and refuses to consider the sources of that Constitution--the development of our present form of government for a century and a half from the old crown charters; the English struggle for the rights of man, regulated by equal laws which preceded that; the spirit of Dutch independence, Dutch federation, and Dutch institutions working upon that, and still back to the counsels of our Teuton fathers in the German forests in the dim light of a far distant time.

If a people adopt a written instrument, you must understand that _people_ and their _institutions_ before you understand the writing. You cannot separate a people and their history from a written constitution which is only a part of that history. The same words by one people may have a different meaning used by another people. Any writing can only be an index to the institutions of a people.

A people's _institutions_ are the soul of the written and unwritten law. You must understand the French people, their history, and their institutions, before you can understand their written constitution. You must understand the American people, our history, and our institutions, before you can understand our Constitution.

I have thus enlarged upon our institutional law to give young men a hint of its possibilities. Before this century closes, the greatest law book in all the literature of jurisprudence will be produced upon the subject of our institutional law. The materials are as plentiful as the history of our race, the demand as insistent as our daily life.

Great law books all written! Nonsense. As yet we have had only the turgid descriptions of the toilsome and halting progress of justice through the ages--that is all we have had, compared with the noble volume that will be written, giving mankind the high, clear, and simple thinking of a greater Blackstone and a wiser Kent. It may be that this generation will produce this immortal judicial author; it may be that you, young man, are he. At least one thing is sure--the work is there waiting for the workman.

But if you do not feel equipped for this monumental effort, there are other phases of the law more imminent, if not so comprehensive, in each of which there is opportunity and demand for original work.

For example, it is clear to all that the laws of marriage and divorce must be made rational and uniform throughout the Nation; that the laws respecting corporations are inappropriate, inadequate, and unjust, both to corporations and to the public--that they do not measure up to the present complex conditions; that the laws respecting commercial paper need to be systematized.

It is absurd, too, that a farmer living on one side of an imaginary state line which separates his farm and the state in which it is located from that of his neighbor living on the other side of the imaginary line in another state, should have to deal with his neighbor as if he were a foreigner in a foreign land and under foreign laws.

Again, the multiplication of decisions on all subjects has reached a point where practise by precedent, to be exhaustive and thorough, has become practically impossible; and so the problem that confronted the Roman emperors, and terminated in the Pandects of Justinian, is now demanding immediate solution at the hands of American legislators, lawyers, and jurists.

So, you see, my ambitious young friend, that by no means all has been done in the law, and that what has been done is so bulky, unorganized, and confused, that even to reduce, rationalize, and systematize it is the greatest task of all. The trouble will therefore be with yourself, and not with conditions, if you remain an underling in this great profession.

Take literature--take imaginative literature. More can be said on its possibilities than on those of the law--and I enlarged upon the unexplored fields of the law merely to outline the immensity of the great things yet to be done in the law's domain. Is it not plain that the great novel of modern society is yet to be written? The contest between human nature and the complex machinery of our industrial system, and the mastery of human nature over the latter, present a theme such as Homer, or Vergil, or Dante never had.

The world awaits this genius! If you are not he, but talented in that direction, there are a thousand phases of American life that are of permanent historic value, which are rapidly passing away forever, and need to be perpetuated by literature and art.

In poetry, the master singer of modern days has not yet appeared. There have been faint signs of him, a suggestion of him, an indistinct prophecy of him, in nearly all of the world's singers for a hundred years. Some day he will come. It may be soon, and then he will sound that note which shall again thrill the hearts and again turn heavenward the eyes of men all round the world.

The point I am making is that the great things in poetry have not all been done. On the contrary, it is the same old cry the world has heard since Homer. Until Shakespeare wrote, it appeared, to those who had no vision, that the immortal things in literature had all been done. But these immortal things and things not immortal, things permanent and things temporary, were only food and material for Shakespeare.

Literature, then, has only been furnishing the materials--the timber--for the structure that is yet to be built. But the timber is noble in dimension, and they must be giants who use it. If you are a giant, your task awaits you.

"It is nonsense to talk of any great war in which this country will ever be engaged," said a wise and experienced public man to me one day, in discussing our future. "There is no place in the world for distinguished service by an American soldier. He can wear his uniform; he can study his tactics; he can be a warrior of the ball-room; but, after all, he is only a kind of policeman."

This conversation occurred some years ago. The fallacy of this conservative (shall we not say short-sighted, for sometimes they are mistaken for one another) man's conclusion has been revealed by recent events. And these events are only an index of similar possibilities. Not that we want war; not that it is desirable; not that it should not be avoided, if possible; but that the movement of the pawns by Events on the great chess-board of the world and history may force us to war, no matter how unwillingly.

It may be that in the ultimate outcome, to use a double superlative, "a parliament of man and federation of the world" will be established which shall divide and distribute commerce as railroads are now said to agree on division of business and equality of rates.

But before such a noble condition arises there will surely be vast and destructive conflicts, unless the temper, nature, and attitude of men and nations change; and, if they do occur, no one but a fanatic of reaction imagines for one instant that we shall be able to keep out of them.

So that not all the battles have been fought, not all the strategy thought out. And if you are a soldier and mean business, you need not despair of the possibility of winning one of the highest of honors given man to win--the honor of fighting for your country and of dying for your flag.

The Russo-Japanese War has demonstrated that military science is as much more complex and difficult to-day than during our Civil War, as it was then more complicated than in the time of battle-ax and lance. The recent conflict in Asia shows that it is as important to get wounded men cured and back on the firing line as it is to punish the other side. A nation that would now enter into armed conflict without a general staff or some similar body of men would be hurling its soldiers, however brave, to certain death.

And yet Von Moltke, Germany's greatest captain, originated the modern general staff; and the United States, with all of our American progressiveness, had no general staff at all until Secretary Root prevailed upon Congress to provide one. These general staffs plan, during the long years of peace, every possible conflict. They map out with absolute accuracy every imaginable field of operations in the country of every possible enemy; they equip the general in the field with information on all subjects, perfect to the smallest detail.

Japan's general staff has been preparing day and night for the present war for every month of every year of an entire decade. Oyama's victories were ripening in the brain of this modern Attila for ten long years. Von Moltke had thought out the conquest of France years before fate blew the trumpet that set the tremendous enginery of his plans in motion. Yes, but these men kept thinking, thinking.

Nobody heard _them_ saying that all great wars had been fought. Perhaps they did not know whether all wars had been fought or not; but they knew this: That if any future wars were to be fought, those wars would be bigger than any conflict that had gone before, and that their armies would have to be handled with greater precision, and their tactics would have to be more daring than even those of Napoleon, or Hannibal, or Cæsar.

Very well, the Franco-Prussian War did come. The Russo-Japanese War did come. And when the time for these dread duels between peoples arrived, those men were in the saddle. Battles whose red desperation have made the world's historic combats look small, have within a year taught all men that the art of war requires as much original thinking as it did when the Corsican overwhelmed the muddled military minds of Europe, weakened and palsied by the belief that nothing more was to be learned in warfare.

Manchuria's awful lesson teaches you, young man, that the profession of arms, dreadful as it is honorable, holds out to you all the possibilities by which every great captain of history made his name immortal.

"I think the statesmanship of Joseph Chamberlain is the most comprehensive and instructive since that of Bismarck," said a passenger on an ocean steamer to an Englishman of considerable distinction in the world of letters.

"I fail to see the statesmanship," said the latter; "will you kindly point it out?"

"Why," said the admirer of Chamberlain, "the British Empire needed unifying; it needed to be bound together by ties of sentiment, by all those means which consolidate a nation. Its connections were too loose. Chamberlain has, by the Boer War, begun its unification. Canadians have fallen on the same field with England's soldiers.

"Australians have poured out their blood as a common sacrifice for England's flag. The empire has been knit together by a common heroism, a common sacrifice, a common glory, and a common cause. It should not be hard to induce all portions of the empire to unite on a great scheme of parliamentary representation. I call that great statesmanship."

"Yes, indeed it is," said the English litterateur, "but Joseph Chamberlain never had such a thought."

The point of the conversation is that, whether Mr. Chamberlain had this thought or not, the _materials for the thought existed_. The conditions for this really constructive statesmanship were there. They awaited the hand of the master. Conditions of equal magnitude exist in half-a-dozen places in the world. Russian development of Siberia and seizure of Manchuria are one.

It had for several years appeared to me that Manchuria was the point about which the international politics of the world would swirl for the next quarter of a century. So certain did this seem, that I hastened to this great future battle-field in the year 1901; and while the diplomats of all the nations, including our own, scoffed at the possibilities of war between Russia and Japan, the certainty of that mighty contest could be read in the very stars that shone above Manchuria, in the very Japanese barracks, on every Japanese drill-ground.

Settlement of this tremendous dispute will call for larger statesmanship than the world has seen for half a century. The movements of all the powers at the present crisis, and, indeed, their entire Oriental policy, are of the most solemn concern to the Republic not only for the immediate moment, but even more for the future.

This is especially true of Japan; for, with cheap labor, rare aptitude for manufacture, and propinquity of position, the Island Empire now becomes the most formidable competitor for the trade of China.

And China is the only--or at least the richest--unexploited market where American factories and farms can, in the future, dispose of their accumulating surplus. England almost monopolized China's coast markets until, recently, Germany began rapidly to overhaul her. But Japan will, in the near future, distance both. American interests in the Far East are vital even now; and they are only in their beginning. We cannot longer be indifferent to any statesmanship that involves the commercial development of Asia. Solution of the great problems which the Russo-Japanese war has stated, and the resultant steps thereafter taken, are of keenest interest, and may be of most serious import, to the American people.

It is very possible, as I pointed out in "The Russian Advance," that Japan will attempt the reorganization of China. Indeed, that development is quite probable. That is certainly Japan's plan and ideal. Any one of a half dozen courses may be adopted. And, I repeat it, any one of them may present the gravest of situations to American statesmanship. As I write it is quite sure that Russia is beaten on the field. Think now, young man, of the immensity of the statesmanship required right now, _which five years ago everybody would have declared impossible and absurd_.

Especially will Japanese dominance of the Orient, military and commercial, upon which Japan is determined, bring us Americans face to face with a new set of conditions, requiring the highest order of careful thought, the clearest, firmest announcement of national policy. Do not fear, young man, lest all of this be over before the time has come for you to play your part on the stage of human affairs. The new problems which the whole Orient will propose to the entire world, and particularly to America, will last for a century at least.

Indeed, it is probable that our relations with the East will become and remain one of the leading subjects of American statesmanship as long as the Republic endures. For that matter, you may go further, and say that the great human question of modern times is the meeting face to face of Oriental and Occidental ideals, of the white and yellow theory of life and morals, and the gradual destruction of one by the other, or their mutual modification and adjustment.

But we are getting into deep waters now. That is the point I am making. They show that, dive you ever so deep, young man, present-day statesmanship has depths which not even the plummet of imagination has yet been able to sound. And can we doubt that to-morrow's national and world problems will be deeper still?

There are three or four great international questions for this Republic to solve on this Western hemisphere, the working out of any one of which means immortality for the statesman who does it.

Of course, the great industrial and sociological questions are the profoundest of all. The world has been at work on these since men arranged themselves into organized society. But the incredibly swift evolution of modern business itself seems to be hastening the time when some satisfactory solution of these master problems must at least be begun.