WHITAKER 
 Why callest thou me good? 
 
 
 
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 iR&lirrt HJhtlakrr
 
 Author of 
 
 "My Country and Other I'crsc." "The Gospel 
 at Work in Modern Life," "The Wicked- 
 ness of Doing Xothing," "One 
 Woman's ITorth," etc. 
 
 PUm.ISIIKD HY TIIF. 
 
 PROGRESSIVE PRESS PURLISMIXG COMPANY 
 
 LOS GATOS, CALIFORNIA. 
 
 DECEMBER, 1913.
 
 BY WAY OF EXPLANATION. 
 
 The following chapters were published as a serial 
 in The San Francisco Bulletin, in September. 1913, 
 under the title, "The Confessions of a Clergyman." 
 The title given here is that chosen by the author 
 himself. The Bulletin had published previously "The 
 Confessions of Abraham Ruef," "My Life in Prison," 
 by Donald Lowrie ; "The Story of Alice Smith" and 
 "The Healing of Sam Leake." 
 
 Because many have asked for these chapters in more 
 connected form they are given here- The text is sub- 
 stantially the same as that which appeared in The 
 Bulletin.
 
 Vrt
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE SHRIVING OF THE Own. 
 
 / All my life I have been counted good. 
 
 1 was reckoned a good boy at home. My credits were al- 
 ways high for good conduct in school. I had to an unusual de- 
 gree the moral confidence of my bench-mates during my four 
 years of factory life. During the first two decades of my life in 
 the ministry I held positions of high responsibility, with never a 
 breath of accusation against me. During the last decade although 
 my opinions have been feared and disliked exceedingly by many 
 whom I formerly counted friends my bitterest enemies in their 
 serious moods have granted me moral standing as high as I could 
 ask. Those who through theological reasoning think that I am 
 a lost soul still continue to call me good. 
 
 I am stating the matter thus frankly neither because I pro- 
 ]x)se to contradict the common verdict, nor because I have any 
 >ense of glorying in it. This is not to be the confession of a 
 double life. Xor is it the complacent affirmation of a respectable 
 life. 1 am trying to make clear first of all just What my own 
 experience has been that I may speak out of that experience the 
 most heart-searching convictions to which I have come. I have 
 a confession to make which I think the world needs just as 
 much as it needs the "Prison Life" of Donald Lowrie, the story 
 of "Alice Smith," or the record of "The Healing of 'Sam' 
 Leake." Mine is a more difficult story to tell than theirs. It will 
 jxissibly find less sympathy in respectable circles generally than 
 their dealing with moral struggle on the plane on which they 
 have lived. One may object to the uncovering of sores in pub- 
 lic, even for purposes of healing. Rut there is the advantage of 
 distinctness when the sores can be seen, and there is a certain 
 satisfaction in merely comparing sores with sores, or congratu- 
 lating yourself that your own body is free from that sort of 
 thing. Revelations of disease of every kind appeal to something 
 i*i MS ill. Call it the morbid if you will, though that is a shallow 
 term. It is to me like the fearful fascination which I felt as a 
 l<oy the first time I hiked over the cliffs at Niagara. Over the 
 edge of the horrible in others we .look into the abysses of the 
 lssible in ourselves. There is the fascination, and the danger 
 of it. 
 
 I 'lit we do not need to examine diseases so much as we 
 need to examine health. If doctors studied health more there
 
 2. 
 
 would be less disease to study. We do not need to analyze crime 
 as much as we need to scrutinize goodness. If goodness were 
 real crime would soon be a vanishing quantity. The trouble 
 with ministers is not that they do not understand sin; it is that 
 they do not understand virtue. He whom most of our ministers 
 claim as Master was not concerned with the crimes of Mis day : 
 He was concerned over the goodness of His day. Jesus did not 
 attack the vice of His time. He attacked the virtue of His time. 
 At no point is the common misunderstanding of Him more pro- 
 found today. 
 
 I did not say that doctors needed to admire health more, 
 though what I said will be so understood by many at the first 
 reading. .They admire health too much now, that is such health 
 as we have. If they were not so soon satisfied with a superficial 
 physical well-being most diseases would be defeated before they 
 were ever manifested. Neither would I be understood as stand- 
 ing for a minute for that easy moral complacency which is con- 
 tent to approve ordinarily nice and decent living and ignore the 
 doings of the disreputable, except in a coercive, legal way. It is 
 exactly this attitude which I fear and detest. Mere admiration 
 of goodness is the last mood in the world that we need. What 
 I do mean to say is that more than a better understanding of 
 crime, however' important that may be, we need a better under- 
 standing of what we commonly call morality, and that if we were 
 sound in our thinking about morality there would soon be little 
 need to think about crime. It is because we have not gotten 
 hold of what goodness is that we are trying so hard to under- 
 stand what evil is. And though there may be large benefit in 
 this, both the world and the church are going at the thing from 
 the wrong end. 
 
 The church has always made too much of sin, though in a 
 different way from that in which the misnamed "muck-rakers" 
 of our time have undertaken to save the world. The muck- 
 rakers have dealt with social, the church has dealt more with 
 individual sin. The muck-rakers have handled wrong-doing in 
 the present, and in the concrete ; the church has handled evil in 
 its origin, and in its "nature more. But both have emphasized 
 and do emphasize rather the negative than the affirmative side 
 of life, and both have failed in the main to see that the real 
 trouble is not with the badness, but with the goodness of men. 
 Tesus saw this and said it, and therefore the "good" people of 
 . His day put him to death. 
 
 And it is at this very point of judging badness, as T am 
 going to, show, that the chief demerit of our goodness appears. 
 The deepest test of virtue is its opinion of vice, or perhaps it
 
 3. 
 
 were better to say that the severest test of the virtuous is theif 
 attitude toward the vicious. Generally speaking, it is more 
 vicious than vice itself. It is here that the largest justification 
 of our muck-rakers appears. All men who show what a human 
 thing sin is .help to humanize the attitude of goodness toward it. 
 They help the good more than they help the bad. And this is 
 the heart of my contention, whether you approve it or not. All 
 that I want just now is that you shall try to understand it. The 
 first great moral need of the world is to help the good, not to 
 help the bad. The story of "Alice Smith" was not chiefly valu- 
 able for the hope that it put into the hearts of the underworld. 
 It was chiefly valuable for the humanizing ministry which it 
 wrought in some hearts here and there in the upperworld. I 
 am glad if it spoke with saving power to some publicans, but I 
 rejoice more that it actually punctured the moral epidermis of 
 some Pharisees. And the pity of it is not that some of the 
 underworld mocked it and would not understand it. The 
 greater pity by far is that so many of the good hardened the 
 crust of their goodness lest it should find their hearts also and 
 bring them to see their proprieties and their pieties for the piti- 
 ful things which they are. 
 
 Therefore is it important that since a woman and a man 
 have both made confession of their badness someone should 
 make confession now for the good. And I repeat that it is 
 harder to confess the good than it is to confess the bad? It is 
 harder to find a confessor.- Shall we confess to the bad? And 
 if we confess to the good will they not feel that we are attack" 
 ing them under guise of shriving ourselves? Resides, what 
 tangible thing is there to confess? Original sin. of course. 
 But the day for mourning that except in the way of theological 
 make-believe is gone. Our every day misadventures of temper 
 and word? Such confession is only superficially satisfying. Yet 
 few of us see any deeper. WhittHer was one of the rare souls 
 who understood. You remember that in that fine "swan-song" 
 of his "At Last," he says significantly: 
 
 "Suffice it if mv good and ill unreckoned, 
 And BOTH FORGIVEN by Thy abounding grace." 
 I have always thought that one of the deepest words which 
 \Yhitticr ever wrote. Only lately have I come to see how deep 
 it is. And I am but feeling my way in this confession to that 
 which I know needs to be said so that many more shall think 
 it out for themselves, and understand. I owe the keener appre- 
 ciation of this truth which has been growing ii|)on me for years 
 to my recent reading of the story of "Alice Smith" and "The 
 Healing of 'Sam' Leake." and the thinking which I have done
 
 4. 
 
 with respect to them both. I am goingi to try to be as frank as 
 they were, though in a different direction. Like them also I 
 have found a way out which I am trying to follow with what 
 strength I can. I shall try not to dogmatize about it, and not 
 to preach overmuch. And if sometimes my language sounds 
 extravagant I am nevertheless writing in all seriousness, and 
 never more so than when I use paradox and hyperbole to 
 awaken if possible the understanding and conscience of the 
 most difficult class in the community to save the good.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 MINISTERS AND MEN. 
 
 My father used to tell the story of a man in England 
 who prayed after this fashion, to the scandal of some of the 
 staid religious people of his time : "O Lord, bless the bad ; 
 Thou hast blessed the good in making them good ; no v, there- 
 fore, bless those who have need of it ; bless the bad.'' 
 
 There may have been some satire in the prayer, as there 
 plainly was in the famous retort of Jesus to the Pharisee, "I 
 am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'' 
 Perhaps the man of English story thought to get under the 
 self-complacent comfortableness of the good folks around him 
 by reminding them of the fortune which was already theirs and 
 thus to shame them out of their smug self-absorption. 
 
 It is plain enough that Jesus thought the hardest people in 
 the world to^ get to understand themselves were those who are 
 reckoned good. On them he used the back-stroke of satire 
 and the forward lashing of out-and-out anathema, and to a 
 large extent used them both in vain. He turned to the sinners 
 because the sinners are the most hopeful class in the world. 
 
 One remark which father made years ago Imrt me consid- 
 erably at the time. I was already pledged to the ministry, and 
 with his entire approval and consent. He himself was a loyal 
 church member for more than fifty years, and a deacon for a 
 good portion of that time. Although a "Non-Conformist," to 
 use the English term, he had always that high sense of rever- 
 ence for the church and all its appointments which had been 
 deeply grained in him as a child in the Anglican communion. 
 Moreover, his i>ersonal relations with clergymen of every creed 
 were of the most cordial type. Our home during my boyhood 
 days was ever open to the minister, and the best that we had 
 to give was never lacking when the minister sat at our Ixiard. 
 And if my father admired a good book much, he was even 
 quicker to discern and to appreciate a good sermon. 
 
 Yet this he said, and in no moment of aggravation, nor in 
 any cynical mood. The quietness and deliberateness of the ut- 
 terance was what gave it for 1 me its sharpest sting. 
 
 "If I were looking for the highest type of character." he 
 remarked thoughtfully one day, "I would not look to the min- 
 istry for it." 
 
 Now I know ministers today very much better than my
 
 6. 
 
 father ever knew them : that is, I know them in a far more in- 
 timate way. They have been my personal and professional as- 
 sociates for thirty years. I have had more or less direct per- 
 sonal knowledge of many hundreds of them, East, West, North 
 and South, on the home field and the foreign field, and of 
 nearly every communion under the sun. When I hear other 
 people talk of ministers in the glib fashion in which they often 
 do today, I sometimes wonder how many of them they have 
 actually known. 
 
 I have not found ministers very different from other men, 
 lawyers or doctors, commercial men or farmers, university pro- 
 fessors or convicts. Indeed, I have found all men very much 
 alike. If I were looking for the highest type of character I 
 would not look for it exclusively or emphatically in any par- 
 ticular place or profession. I have found as fine exhibitions of 
 moral quality in the penitentiary as I have found anywhere, 
 and as poor exhibits in the church and the university. This is 
 not saying that the average of character is as high in prison 
 as it is in pew and pulpit, or in the professor's chair. It is but 
 admitting what a very varied experience and observation of 
 men has taught me : that character is not a monopoly of men 
 of any creed or condition. And the finest flowers of charac- 
 ter are sometimes found in the most unlikely places. 
 
 I do not agree even with the ordinary impression that 
 women are naturally better than men. Their circumstances 
 are often morally more fortunate, especially as regards the re- 
 straining influence of public opinion, but they are not essen- 
 tially either better or worse than men. If I were looking for 
 the highest type of character I would not have regard to sex. 
 Conventional goodness, negative moral abstinence, may be 
 more common with women than with men. But the conven- 
 tional verdict as to their superior virtue is either a part of the 
 effervescence of flattery which overflows all ordinary talk 
 about women in respectable circles, or else it is an expression 
 of the common confounding of morality and propriety, the 
 general failure to recognize what goodness really is. Real 
 strength of character is as rare among women as it is among 
 men. 
 
 It is rare in the ministry ; not rarer, however, I think, than 
 in any other profession. I have found a great deal of fine, 
 thoroughly human quality among ministers. No class suffers 
 more today from caricature than do the clergy. The average 
 minister of fiction is quite fictitious. The ordinary soapbox 
 orator who berates the preacher knows less of the preacher 
 than the preacher knows about him. There is only one class
 
 7. 
 
 of people who know /ministers better than they know them- 
 selves, and thej- are ministers' wives. And too often the 
 minister's wile is as p athetically pious in her perspective as he. 
 
 The largest lack of the ministry on the moral side is the 
 human quality. There is much of it among themselves. Mo 
 men are more wholesomely entertaining when quite by them- 
 selves than are ministers. Their conversation, with tne very 
 rarest exceptions, is clean. Their interchange of personal 
 pleasantries, save for a very occasional "grouch" among them, 
 is kind. They indulge very little in the diction of the dollar, 
 and in either woman like chatter about clothes or the man-of- 
 the street's braying about bargains. They have more admin- 
 istrative ability witnin the lines of their training and experience 
 than have most of their fellows who think them lacking in busi- 
 ness sense. I have "known a few ministers who have turned 
 from the church to commercial life, and an astonishingly large 
 number of them have succeeded to an extraordinary degree. 
 
 "If 1 had a son who was a fool I would make a parson of 
 him," said an English boor to the Rev. Sidney Smith. 
 
 "Evidently your father did not think so/' was the famous 
 wit's quick and crushing reply. 
 
 And I am very sure that no one thinks so of the ministry, 
 who knows ministers for the kind of men they actually are. 
 
 The most serious fault of ministers is their religiousness. 
 I did not say their religion. The genuine among them, and 
 most of them at least mean to be genuine, have a saving amount 
 of real religion, which crops out more in some of them when 
 they are swapping stories than it does when they are preach- 
 ing sermons. The humanness of ministers is nowhere so evi- 
 dent as in their humor. It is when they are serious, or think 
 they are. that many of them are most unreal, and most lacking 
 in profoundly human feeling. 
 
 This story was told me years ago, by some sanctimonious 
 sinner of the cloth whose name I am very glad to have forgot- 
 ten. 
 
 A minister had preached a very searching Sunday evening 
 sermon. One man was deeply touched, and almost persuaded 
 He followed the minister out of doors, and on the way home, 
 half in mind to speak to him. As he lingered behind diffidently, 
 he heard the minister telling some funny story, and laughing, 
 and was so disgusted that he turned away, and presumably was 
 lost. 
 
 Now that kind of story will appeal to a grxid many min- 
 isters yet, as it did to me in a sort of condemnatory war once 
 on a time. Yet it comes nearer to 'telling what is the matter
 
 8. 
 
 with the churches than whole volumes of essays on the sub- 
 ject, when it is taken in just the opposite way from that in 
 which it is intended to be taken. 
 
 The trouble with ministers is not that they are quite natural- 
 ly and unaffectedly human after preaching; the trouble is that 
 they are not more so while they are preaching. Piosity is the 
 prime sin of the pulpit, and of all our religious life. Abso- 
 lutely the rottenest men that I have known in the ministry 
 have been men of the ultra pious type. If ministers could be 
 as genuine in the pulpit as most of them are out of it there 
 would be vastly less of religiousness and vastly more of reli- 
 gion in the world. They are never really of such little use 
 to bad men as when they are trying hardest themselves to 
 seem good. 
 
 More humanness. not just more humor, is what the min- 
 istry needs. Don't print that more humane-ness, Mr. Com- 
 positor, for that isn't what I mean. Most of our humane- 
 ness has the camphor smell of charity about it. No ; more 
 human-ness, that is it. 
 
 Great, big, whole-souled, human Phillips Brooks rode all 
 (hy with a New Hampshire stage driver, on the outside of 
 the stage. The conversation was not "religious" and P>rooks 
 did not give any hint that he was a clergyman. When the 
 ride was done the stage driver gave P> rooks a most hearty 
 handshake, and said. "I'm darned glad to have had you along 
 with me today. Tt seems good to have a chance to talk with 
 a 'man. I hain't had nothing but women and preachers all 
 summer." 
 
 I suspect that story was made up, but there is no doubt 
 that P>rooks was human, both when he preached and after- 
 war 1. He was one of the very rare good men. either in or out 
 of the ministrv, whose goodness is not in danger of becom- 
 ing like Peter's most religious mood, a "stumbling-block and 
 an offense."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE MISSIONARY MOOD. 
 
 After four years of student ''supplying'' all up an 1 down 
 New England, during which time I preached in all ..u Xe\\ 
 England States except Connecticut, I began my won; in the 
 regular ministry, immediately following my ordinatit..i. as a 
 missionary in old Mexico. 
 
 I have wondered often of late years how much there was 
 of real human interest in the motives which took m to the 
 mission field. Was it an effort to reach the acme of human 
 goodness at a hound? Was it the good opinion of my fel- 
 lows in the faith which I sought? Was it real concern ot 
 any tangible sort for the Mexicans with whom I proposed to 
 make my home and my ministry? Is missionary goodness a 
 exception to the general want of the human quality among 
 the good? 
 
 Of this I am quite certain : That my motives were not 
 mercenary. The salary for myself and wife was $1000 a year. 
 This was equal at that time to about $1300 (pesos) in Mexican 
 money. We paid $20 a month for missionary headquarters. 
 We were forced to keep servants, although the cost of such 
 service was shamefully small. There was. of course, consid- 
 erable company to entertain, and, as the representatives of our 
 church among a foreign and not wholly friendly people we were 
 under the necessity of presenting a respectable appearance. Our 
 stay there lasted but a year, and it was with me on account of 
 the alkali in the water, and the elevation at which we lived, an 
 almost continual battle with sickness, from which 1 barelv es- 
 caped with my life. We did not run behind that year, but we 
 did not save anything, and, we lived, as I have always lived, 
 the simple life. 
 
 From my own experience and a considerable observation 
 among misionaries I am quite sure that as a class they are 
 neither overpaid nor covetous of commercial reward. They 
 are waited UJXMI more than ministers and ministers' families at 
 home, because their work takes them into regions generally 
 where the "white man's burden" usually includes a good-sized 
 retinue of servants, and where all kinds of lalx>r service is 
 cheap. They are more regularly paid than multitudes of the 
 poorer paid ministry at home, for the ethics of the churches in 
 respect to keeping faith in a financial way with those who
 
 10. 
 
 preach the gospel to them are notoriously bad. Many of our 
 home churches are positively indecent when it comes to paying 
 the preacher. 
 
 This thing actuallv happened in California, and not so very 
 far away from San Francisco. A minister of unimpeachable 
 character, and good intellectual ability, was serving a "home 
 mission" church. He had a wife and five children to support. 
 His salary was $800 a year. The salary was paid in the most 
 irregular fashion. His own contribution to the collection box 
 was twenty-five cents a Sunday, which was always paid. One 
 Sunday evening the church treasurer handed him this amount, 
 the total receipts of the day, and without a word of apology 
 but with a whimsical smile, remarked, "Well. Brother Blank, 
 you are sure of this amount anyway." And this was a decid- 
 edly orthodox church. Of course, it was an extreme case, but 
 I have known others in all essential particulars just as bad. 
 
 The missionary does not have to meet quite this sort of 
 thing, which is one reason, I venture to say. why seme of them 
 prefer the foreign field. But as a class they make less of 
 money than the ministry at home, and that's much less 
 than many people suppose. Half our criticism of good 
 people falls flat because it does not go deep enough. The sup- 
 posed coveteousness of the clergy is generallv imaginary, be- 
 cause no one but a fool would go into the ministry for salary. 
 There are exceptions, of course, because there are fool* in the 
 ministry as there are everywhere else. 
 
 The largest cost of missionary service to the man who 
 undertakes it i<* th" isolation of it. Xn one can understand just 
 what that is who has not experienced it. 
 
 I came across an old Mexican photograph the other dnv. 
 It was a picture of two young men, one of them my "native 
 assistant" in my early days in Mexico. He was a keen and ap- 
 parently kind fellow, for whom I confess a good deal of affec- 
 tion to this day, although he played me false. Under cover of 
 my unacciuaintance with the language and the city he lived 
 a double life, to the scandal' or the amusement of the natives, 
 according to their point of view. I found him out and re- 
 ported him, as I .was compelled to do, to headquarters in Mex- 
 ico City, where he was immediately recalled. I did not keep 
 the letter which our superintendent wrote me. but T well re- 
 member certain words which he wrote. He had been there a 
 considerable number of veqrs. This was what he said : 
 
 "If ever an honest Mexican is found they ought to blaze 
 his name in letters of light on the sides of Popocatapetl." 
 
 This superintendent was a forceful, energetic, outspoken
 
 11. 
 
 man. He was at that time, to all appearances, a thorough- go- 
 ing Protestant. I remember he uid to me in his own home 
 when I visited him in Mexico City some months afterward: 
 "Whitaker, I have been a' missionary in India among th? 
 heathen, and I tell you I would rather try to tell the gospel i-j 
 the heathen than to these people." 
 
 Five years ago I read with more than ordinary surprise 
 that this superintendent had just been received into the Rjiuan 
 Catholic Church in Mexico City. 
 
 The explanations offeree! \vcrc imnv. anrl rrt all com- 
 plimentary to him. Irritation at missionary management was 
 one of them. Another and deeper was desire for seme decisive 
 authority and surcease from uncertainties. l>oth in respect t> 
 dogma and to deed. Another was his intimacy with men of a 
 Wrongly influential type. Perhaps all of these things had some- 
 what to do with it. When I wrote to him he wrote me a great 
 heart message in reply, lie had not bettered himself in a ma- 
 terial way by the change. 
 
 I think myself it was because he was a little ni;>rc human 
 than most missionaries that his creed gave way. He had live 1 
 among the people so long that he hid to be one of them. He 
 was heart hungry to identifv himself with his fellows. I am 
 not justifying his change. The creed of Cath l ; cism does not 
 appeal to me. I am simply trying to understand him an 1 
 interpret him. And whether you think of his course as weak 
 or strong. I wish you might think of it with in? f^r a moment 
 quite apart from the theology or ccclcsiasticism of th thing 
 which he did. He would have 1 ecu a more respectable ma:i. 
 I suppose, if he had n- t changed. Consistency in cut ward 
 demeanor is a kind of Kohinoor with respectable people. It 
 is vulgar to be vaccilating. you know. I Hit think < f him. if 
 you can. as swept on tides of the human i"t<> a j^rcat sen*e 
 of sympathy and surrender of fellowship with his kind. He 
 wanted to be more than a mission-in 1 , be wanted to be just a 
 man among his fellow men. And if thev. the great bulking 
 human mas* around him. had been Buddhists, lie might have 
 been a Buddhist, too. 
 
 There are a lot of <x>d people who will think (his shock- 
 ingly superficial, not because it is. but because g >odncs-> i" >r 
 them is so bound up with certain sets of accepted ideas. S me 
 of them go as missionaries primarily because thev think their 
 set of ideas is better than the other man's set of ideas. It is a 
 fearful thin<j to fall awav from their set of idea*. The man 
 who does this < a pervert. It is a Messed thing to accent their 
 set of ideas. The man who does this is a convert. Whether
 
 12. 
 
 he is human or not they have not thought, because the human 
 for them is not something to be sought after, it is something 
 to be feared 
 
 Even the heartache of the missionary's isolation only makes 
 them long the more for the family-bound fellowship of their 
 own intellectual breed. They can not be comfortable outside 
 of their own conventions. 
 
 Looking back now I know that I learned more from my 
 servants in Mexico than I learned from anybody else, or than 
 anybody else learned from me. I paid them, man and wife. $0 
 a month half of this as w r ages, half of it for their keep. 
 That was higher than the average wage, which was $5 a 
 month for man and wife, with a few frijoles (beans) and tor- 
 tillas (corn cakes) on which to live. 
 
 It hurt my conscience a little even then. But I felt then, 
 as most missionaries feel, and most respectable people every- 
 where, for that matter, how beautiful is patronage. I hate 
 the thing now. This is the fundamental immorality of all our 
 missionary endeavor, whether we define missions in terms of 
 religion or terms of business. Mission work is simply one 
 form of "doing good," and "doing good" is the devil's up-to- 
 date away of keeping people from the one thing needful, which 
 is just doing right. 
 
 I came out of Mexico almost as ignorant as I went in- 
 Of course I had picked up some bric-a-brac of conversational 
 conveniences and lecture equipment with which to entertain 
 respectable people here and make them feel more fortunate 
 and respectable. F>ut all that I brought out of Mexico of any 
 great value was what Marcelino and Juanita taught me God 
 rest their spirits ! In my conceit I did not know they had 
 taught me anything. But the seed of their service was in me. 
 
 He was an ignorant peon, she of the same common class. 
 They had been "converted" before* I knew them to the same 
 shallow and respectable gospel which I held. But because they 
 were so much the same and because they were unwittingly even 
 more human, they planted the seeds in me of a democracy of 
 which they themselves had never dreamed. I was to them the 
 missionary, the superior, the almoner of the goodness of God, 
 "to whom God in His infinite wisdom had entrusted" not the 
 coal and other treasures of the earth, as Mr. Baer put it once 
 on a time in the antediluvian ages of our social consciousness, 
 but the far mightier treasures of competence, of culture and 
 of character as we are still putting it in respectable circles 
 everywhere whenever we talk of the missionary spirit and 
 plume ourselves on our pretty ways of doing good.
 
 13. 
 
 They accepted us at our own estimate and never thought 
 of disputing it. But unwittingly they disturbed that estimate 
 in me. Whether they are living or dead today I know not. I 
 only know that they helped me more than all the men of my 
 own station whom I met in Mexico, and more than all the mis- 
 sionaries whom I have known, to realize what a dangerous 
 denial of fundamental democracy lies under the surface of 
 every missionary mood.
 
 ,. . : . CHAPTER iv. :; rr , ' rr .. 
 
 SLUM \YORK IN SEATTLE. 
 
 Seattle, when I reached that city about the 1st of Septem- 
 ber. 1888, xvas claiming loudly a population of forty thousand. 
 1 had almost written it forty thousand souls, but the town cared 
 very little whether they were souls or not. Tacoma estimated 
 the population of Seattle at the same time as not to xcee;l 
 thirty thousand, and claimed to have as many residents of her 
 own. The two towns were running neck and neck for the 
 primacy on Puget Sound. 
 
 My invitation to Seattle was for three months. Afterward 
 I accepted a call to the regular pastorate for a year, so that 
 my stay there altogether was fifteen months. 
 
 One of the incidents of my ministry there was the com- 
 ing of D. L. Moody for union evangelistic meetings in the big 
 Armory building. 
 
 I remember but one of Moody 's sermons, though I ad- 
 mired then* all at the time. This was his well known discourse 
 f.n the text, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." I heard him preach it years afterward in California, 
 with very little change. It was evidently a message which he 
 felt very much. 
 
 Moody was more human than most ministers, but his 
 humanness showed itself sometimes in severe ways. 
 
 I was among the workers in his "inquiry meeting" otre 
 ni^ht ; ndeed, every night that he was there, I think. This 
 particular evening I had just finished talking and praying with 
 a man upon whom the sermon of the hour before had made a 
 serious and wholesome impression. 
 
 As I straightened up and looked around Mr. Moody saw 
 me. He beckoned to me with his finger, as one accustomed 
 to "ive orders, and on my approach he said in his brusque 
 fashion, indicating two young women with whom he had been 
 engaged in conversation : 
 
 "Here, talk to these girls ; they'd just as lief go to hell as 
 not." 
 
 The girls giggled as the great evangelist turned away. 
 They had been flattered by the personal attention of the fa- 
 in on man, but they had no real interest in anything I had, 
 to sav,
 
 is. 
 
 There is another girl figure which lingers with' me among 
 my memories of Seattle. I write of her with some hesitation, 
 for I never spoke to her. and she was the first of her kind I 
 had ever fairly seen. But the remembrance of the evangelist's 
 emphasis upon the law of retribution, and the recollection of 
 that hit cf brusqueness with which he handed over to me the 
 tv.o ligfit-headed yr.ung women in that meeting of a quarter 
 century ago brings back to me with a kind of heart-sickening 
 vividness the intimacy, and even homelikeness. of the other 
 scene. 
 
 It was after the great fire of the 6th of June. 1889. I had 
 seen the city all but wiped out in a few hours. I had seen it 
 l.ihli a'jain almost before the ashes were cold. And as pas- 
 tor of one of the most prominent churches in the citv I had 
 ventured at length, on the solicitation of some of my members, 
 to make a personal investigation of the slums which had 
 c;ro\v!: up under cover of the swift "and superficial rebuilding 
 of certain sections of the town, and had taken liberties which 
 they had never dared to take before the fire had burned away 
 the barriers of decency and order. 
 
 I can see the thinis now almost as vividly as T saw it 
 then.. The segregated district filled nil the sorlet-lighted al-ev- 
 wav in the rear of the saloons which lined thickly one of the 
 main thoroughfares of South Seattle. The buildings used hv 
 the women were but flimsy "cribs." their doors flaring wide 
 open to the night. The men shambled with a slouching curi- 
 osity, and a general air of moral sloveliness, up and down the 
 narrow passageway. The women there is no need to men- 
 tion them. One of them only fixed her features in my mind. 
 She stood ''n he r f1rv>rwnv. parleying w'th a ynmg man. I saw 
 the door close behind him, saw the flash of her arm as she 
 drew down the telltale curtain, saw the hard look in her face 
 and the sharp triumph with which she gloated over the sordid 
 success she had won. 
 
 1 fers was a stronger face than the face of either girl whom 
 Mr. Moody turned over to me. There was character there, 
 though character fearfully out of ioint. And I was more help- 
 less bv far to help her than Mr. Moody had been with the two 
 young girls. 
 
 When f turned away T felt as thoiv/h I had seen my sis- 
 ter walk into an open cesspool, and for fear of soiling myself 
 ! had not been able to so much as throw her a rope. 
 
 I threw a rope in my congregation next Sunday, but it 
 was a whip of small cords, They winced a little at the plain-
 
 16. 
 
 ness of my speech, although most of my lashing was aimed 
 over their shoulders at the city officials. 
 
 Afterward I talked with the Chief of Police, or it may 
 have been before. 1 do not remember his name. I remember 
 only his expression. He Jiad the look of an old doctor who is 
 sure that tlit ~ase is hopeless, but is equally certain that the 
 young doctor will have to find it out for himself. 
 
 1 have seen something of police graft, and the stupidities 
 of prison officials, but I do not think these are the most seri- 
 ous difficulties we have to meet in correcting our criminal pro- 
 cedure. The deficiencies of our best jailers are more disturb- 
 ing in a way than the deficiencies of our worst; they are so 
 much harder to get at. 
 
 It isn't the men who know how to make money out of 
 criminals who are most discouraging. It is the personally kind 
 and incorruptible fellows who haven't the least idea how to go 
 to work to make men. 
 
 Nor were those men in my church whom I thought most 
 discouraging at the time the men who were really so. Those 
 who helped me most kept me blind a little longer than those 
 whose help was refused. If they had all refused I would have 
 waked up a good deal sooner than I did. 
 
 Instead of this some of them helped me into a kind of serv- 
 ice which tended to satisfy me at the time. 
 
 These were real estate men in the main I suppose be- 
 cause that was the one business in Seattle just then which gave 
 largest opportunity to the aggressive and adventurous spirit 
 who got hold of a vacant lot and put a tent upon it, and started 
 a kind of midnight mission right down among the saloons. 
 There I went and preached between Sundays, and tried my first 
 tussle with wickedness in the raw. 
 
 Just how many people we helped I do not know. We 
 thought we were doing good, the more so that we felt a kind 
 of tonic reaction upon ourselves. Yet there are no people who 
 need to be on their guard against their own goodness more than 
 the people who work in the slums. It is such an easy way of 
 "slurring your words" in a moral way. 
 
 One of our chief helpers, for example, was a man who 
 had been selling peanuts and cheap confections the morning of 
 the great fire. Before he went to sleep that night he had lost 
 all that he had, and more. The next morning he borrowed 
 $10. called on one of the chief business men of the town, rented 
 a prominent corner where the ashes were still warm, and with- 
 out disturbing the ashes himself, had sublet the place inside of 
 twenty-four hours, so that he had a clear gain of $100 a 
 month.
 
 To him this was a special manifestation of the grace of 
 God. And he sang about Jesus, and talked about Jesus, with 
 the more gusto every time he doubled the deal. If some of us 
 thought of such transactions less in terms of special providence, 
 and preferred to talk of them as simply good business, we were 
 as innocent as he of the actual moral values involved. We 
 rebuked the gamblers with never a thought that our own rent 
 money was taken out of the winning of other men's toil, and 
 we did not suspect that it was this kind of playing with prop- 
 erty which had made .the rent rate of the neighboring snacks 
 so high that no one but a woman of the town could afford to 
 pay the price. 
 
 We were swabbing the slums with one hand and kicking 
 open the sluiceways of immorality with both feet. And while 
 we were on our knees crying 1 aloud over some half-sober pen- 
 itent, "Oh, Lord, help us to save this poor soul," we were creat- 
 ing" conditions for our own material comfort which would 
 damn a dozen for every man saved. 
 
 I am not so sure that the frivolous girls of whom Mr. 
 Moody spoke so sharply were more foolish than ourselves. They 
 were shallow, but so were we. They were not so willing to go 
 to hell as he impatiently indicated ; they were only slow about 
 deciding to follow his way out. 
 
 We talked about Jesus, and sang about Jesus, and had a 
 good time in the persuasion that we were really doing a good 
 deal for Jesus. Hut if the Man of Xazarcth had actually wan- 
 dered into that tent, and had put into blunt Northfield English 
 the sort of thing that He taught in Galilee some centuries since, 
 we might have done worse than the girls who giggled at a 
 theology which they did not understand. We might have 
 pulled down the red curtain of our shame against him. with 
 the tawdry fineries and all the pathetic price of our surrender 
 to "the world and the flesh inside.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE QUEST FOR THE REAL QUESTION. 
 
 \\hilc I \vas acting- as student supply for Xcw England 
 pulpits here and there, before 1 1*:gan my regular ministry, 1 
 had n:ct a young lawyer who was yet in the early stages of his 
 professional career, lie was already an -avowed cynic, and a 
 little proud of the fact, I think. His conversation was cour- 
 teous, albeit somewhat condescending. 
 
 In an impersonal way, he made it clear that he had no 
 faith in general in ministers, church members, creeds or re- 
 ligion. 
 
 "A lawyer sees too much of the seamy side -:i life to have 
 much confidence in anybody," was the substance of his testi- 
 mony. f , ; 
 
 I made some allowance for his youth then, although he 
 was (Her Hi an mvself. T would make a good deal more allow- 
 ance for the sophomoric stage of his experience now. Most 
 'nics are sophomores who have petrified. Men who rcnllv 
 grow r up grow into a broader charitv toward their fellows as tl 1 ^ 
 years increase, and not into less believing moods. Cynicism is 
 callovvness chilled before it has had a chance to flow into nor- 
 mal channels of human sympathy. 
 
 But there are serious men who are not cynical who, never- 
 theless, feel that lawv^^ and doctors, and business men gener- 
 ally, through a more intimate contact with men, and especially 
 the frailties and foibles of the every-dav side of life, have a bct- 
 '- chance to see things soberly than does the minister. wh^> : - 
 supposed to deal with men and women in their more exalted 
 and less normal moods. 
 
 "Ministers don't know men, and therefore they judge un- 
 rcallv," is the way many would put it if they stated it in a few 
 words. 
 
 This impression is heightened by the freedom of many 
 ministers from the ''small vices" which are common to men. 
 
 One ^f the famous resorts of North Lancashire, in Eng- 
 hnd, i^ CronVshaw's. at Burnley. My father used to stop 
 ihere for refreshments when he was a cotton manufacturer, 
 about the time I was born. One of the men he met there was 
 lohn Lord, of whom I have heard him speak so often that I 
 had the feeling of knowing him, though I was but six years
 
 19- 
 
 old when we came away. Two years ago, when I visited Eng- 
 land after an absence of forty-two years, I dropped in at Cronk- 
 shaw's with my nephew, a Burnley business man. Whom 
 should we meet there but Mr. William Lord, son of John Lord, 
 and "agent" of the Liberal party for that section of Lancashire. 
 Politics are handled there more on lines of first-class business 
 than here. 
 
 William Lord was cordiality itself. I had declined with 
 smiling good nature liquors and tobacco, and the everlasting 
 English tea, and Mr. Lord, with some wonder apparent in his 
 face, offered me coffee. When I confessed that 1 had never 
 taken a cup of coffee in my life, his surprise broke into speech. 
 With broad good nature, and not the least touch of that easy 
 superciliousness with which we too often mark the dogmatism 
 of our tastes, he inquired quietly: 
 
 "What do you confess when you say your prayer;-:'' 
 
 Now I have told lx>th these stories for the sake < making 
 clearer yet the point of view from which I am making this study 
 of a minister's life. If any have come to the reading of tlic>e 
 articles with the notion that 1 was going to give them the 
 "seamy side" of churches and ministers and religious \\orkj 
 they must have discovered already that I have nothing of the 
 sort in mind. That is altogether too easy a task, and there is 
 already quite too much of common appetite for it. 
 
 The idea that ministers do not know the side of life which 
 makes for pessimism and for cynicism is a mistake. I have as- 
 sociated much with both doctors and lawyers, atid I do not be- 
 lieve that either class knows more of human imperfection an : 
 inconsistency than do faithful priests and ministers. And it , 
 a very superficial judgment of life, although it will do for a 
 I>ersonal pleasantry, that because a man has none of the 
 vices he has therefore nothing in particular to confess. 
 struggle for a real man is a good deal more than broiling away 
 flies. 
 
 My purpose here is neither to confess my tr.vn peccadilloes, 
 nor the peccadilloes of other preachers. It is not to uncover 
 the inside mechanics of the ministry, nor to bare the confidential 
 conferences of the churches. I am not going to regale my 
 readers with j record of the scandals which I have knov.n. I 
 could do it, of course. When I was alxuit to become missio- 
 nary superintendent for Northern and Central California, one 
 of my fellow-ministers, who had traveled much among the 
 churches, said to me very earnestly: 
 
 "Don't take the jx>sition, Whitaker. If you have to get 
 on the inside of all the troubles in the churches it will .spoil
 
 20. 
 
 all the religion you have." 
 
 People who talk to preachers about the hypocrisies in the 
 churches too often forget that the preachers know more about 
 that sort of thing already than an outsider can possibly know. 
 Their faith has had to overcome such knowledge in order to 
 live. 
 
 It is looking this in the face which accounts for the queer 
 twists which a great many ministers get in their theology. That 
 is why so many of them believe that the world is coming to an 
 end soon, because the only way they can keep their optimism 
 is through some program of starting all over again. That ac- 
 counts for most of the devil-doctrine so far as it still survives 
 among us moderns; only so can some good people account for 
 the vast perversity of the human race. It is because they see 
 the seamy side of life so plainly that the majority of evangel- 
 ical believers still hold that the natural man is absolutely lost, 
 and that those who are saved are saved by the unmerited grace 
 of God. 
 
 The churches do not pose as storage houses of perfection. 
 They admit the badness in human nature, admit it not too little 
 but too much. 
 
 I did not lose my religion by going among the churches, 
 although I saw a lot that was morally unsightly. I have long 
 since gotten past all this cheap talk about hypocrisies, either in 
 or out of the churches. Hypocrisy means something -more to 
 me now than the conscious and outward inconsistencies of men. 
 
 The most dangerous hypocrisy is not humbugging others; 
 it is humbugging yourself. 
 
 It is not playing a part consciously; it is playing it uncoil 
 sciously. 
 
 It is not falling over your faults; it is falling over your 
 virtues. 
 
 If I do not make you understand that I have written these 
 articles for you in vain. 
 
 That is why I have admitted frankly the average goodness 
 of the ministry. That is why I have recognized out of my own 
 experience the high motives which usually actuate the mission- 
 ary. That is why I have already touched upon the honest en- 
 thusiasm of the slum worker. And it is why in every case I 
 have hinted, although I have only hinted yet, at the insuffi- 
 ciency of this goodness in relation to them all minister, mis- 
 sionary, slum worker. Insufficiency is not a strong enough 
 word. The most serious fault of our goodness' is not that there 
 is merely an insufficiency of it. It is rather that our light itself 
 so often becomes a darkness which leads us astray.
 
 You can do something with the boy in school who knows 
 he is backward, whose blunders are the butt of his mates an 1 
 the burden of his memories. It is the boy who is the admired 
 of all, and who Jhinks himself that he has arrived, who is the 
 real problem. 
 
 "Seest tliou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more 
 hope of a fool than of him." 
 
 It is not the obvious low living in the churches which is 
 their most serious impediment : it is their unconsciousness of 
 the low quality of their high living. It was not the sinners 
 who turned me from conventional orthodoxy; it was the saints. 
 
 I Setter people than myself, by far, with whom I have been 
 on terms of the utmost intimacy, were unwittingly my 
 teachers in bringing me to the most radical conclusions to which 
 I have come as to the essential moral oneness of all men, and 
 the menace of most of what we call morality to the actual moral 
 health of the world. 
 
 As long as I associated with ignorant people I thought 
 school and college meant the perfection of knowledge. It was 
 the intimacy of my contact with school and college in after 
 years which showed me that there is nothing quite so ignorant 
 as our wisdom, after all. 
 
 In the next two or three papers I am going to show the 
 actual goodness of the church at work. These arc genuine pic- 
 tures, taken from actual life experiences, and they are shown 
 with genuine appreciation for just what they are. I shall follow 
 them with the story of my contact with evil, through the city 
 officials, through my work as chaplain in the Oregon peniten- 
 tiary, and through similar service, all of a volunteer character 
 and without official appointment or pay. in the Oregon St'iti* 
 Asvlum for the Insane and the Oregon Legislature. And then 
 I shall tell how through my California experience I came to siv 
 the past more clearly, and to judge the present as I judge it 
 today.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SPIRITUAL HIGH LIGHTS. 
 
 It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the second Thanks- 
 giving which I had spent in Seattle. The morning service was 
 done, and the evening sermon was prepared. I intended to 
 speak that night along lines of every-day living on the story of 
 the "Good Samaritan," and in particular on the words with 
 which Jesus concluded that immortal illustration of practical 
 neighborliness. "Go thou and do likewise." 
 
 My wife and I went down to the young people's meeting, 
 as we commonly did on Sunday evenings. The room was filled, 
 the singing was enthusiastic, the testimonies were good. This 
 was in the earl)' days of the Christian Endeavor movement, 
 when the work 'was, from the devotional point of view, at its 
 best. 
 
 All through my ministry I have kept the habit of regular 
 study. A minister is his own boss. There is no boss for whom 
 it is more difficult to work than for yourself, unless you hold 
 yourself very firmly in hand. Perhaps my factory experience 
 made me more jealous of holding myself to regular hours in 
 the ministry, or possibly I owe it even more to the iteration of 
 its importance, and the reiteration of it, by one of the professors 
 in the theological seminary. However that may be, I have held 
 my hours pretty regularly, and my sermons have seldom known 
 Saturday night preparation. Usually by Saturday morning they 
 have been readv for the last touches of Sundav finishing. Inci- 
 dentally I ought to say that, since my first dozen sermons were 
 preached, I have never taken a note into the pulpit, but have 
 trusted to the preparation of logical thought and arrangement 
 and the verbal inspiration of the hour. 
 
 I had my sermon comfortably ready that night before I 
 entered the Christian Endeavor meeting, even to the last mental 
 reviewing of it an hour or two before. The meeting was hard- 
 Iv under way before I felt a deep dissatisfaction with it. One of 
 the songs was a favorite of other days, less used in the churches 
 now, "Almost Persuaded." The singing was hardly under way 
 when I felt a strong impression to preach upon the text at the 
 basis of the song, taking it, of course, in its old-time accepted 
 reading, which is almost certainly an incorrect rendering of 
 Paul. I refused the suggestion instantly. My pride of intellect- 
 ual procedure in those early days of my ministry was such that 
 I had little use for "mere impressions."
 
 23. 
 
 "I have made careful and reasonable preparation for what 
 I am going to say tonight," I argued with myself, "and I am 
 not going to run after any momentary impulses." 
 
 Nevertheless the impression persisted and prevailed. An 
 outline of thought unrolled itself before me as si>ontaneoiisly 
 as the text had come to me, and in spite of the interruptions of at- 
 tention consequent upon the course of the meeting, with its many 
 human elements, I found myself in the pulpit a little later with 
 my previously prepared sermon impossible to me, and with 
 this message so to the front of my thinking and feeling that I 
 could not refuse it. I preached as I had been impressed to 
 preach, with freedom and power. 
 
 Before the service was done, a second impulse came crowd- 
 ing into my mind, to be resisted and to conquer as before. This 
 time the impulse was to hold an "inquiry meeting" in the rear 
 room as soon as the benediction was said. Such after-meetings 
 were not common with me then, nor with that church. The 
 rear room was not convenient. Those who stayed would have 
 to pass the pulpit, and go up certain steps, instead of doing the 
 much easier and more natural thing, which would be to follow 
 the crowd and go out. It seemed likely that none would stay 
 except those who were already fully persuaded of the things 
 which I preached. 
 
 But I followed the impulse again. The rear room was well 
 filled. 
 
 One man was there for whom the sermon and the after- 
 meeting marked a crisis that night. He had been there in the 
 morning, and it is possible that my knowledge of the fact, and 
 my sensibility to his situation and moods, had something to do 
 with both of the impulses which I have described. I am not 
 concerned to postulate any supernatural origin for them. 
 Neither am I anxious, as I might have been once on a time, to 
 explain them in what we call "purely natural" ways. The no- 
 tion that you can explain everything can be worked altogether 
 too hard. Supernaturalists are very superstitious indeed, only 
 a little less superstitious than materialists. I am just telling 
 you what happened, and how some of us felt about it that night. 
 Perhaps it will help you to understand why the goodness of the 
 churches satisfies some people who ought not to be so easily 
 satisfied. 
 
 The man was a drunkard. I had never seen him in the 
 gutter, and I do not know that he had ever been there. But he 
 was an alcoholic, to use a more exact and scientific term than 
 drunkard, which, I take it, means very much the same thing. 
 He was poor, his family were poor, and his grit was gone the
 
 24. 
 
 way of the bottle. 
 
 His wife was a member of the church, a dev< ut patient 
 woman. She had wanted me to meet him. lit was shy of 
 preachers. I had shaken hands with him, but had avoided any 
 religious talk. I had no special reason to think he would be 
 there that night. 
 
 He was not only there, but he was "clothed and in his right 
 mind." He stood up in the after-meeting and took a decided 
 stand for the better life. I have not seen him or heard of him 
 these many years, but the last I knew of him he was a sober 
 and sincerely religious man. 
 
 Now these facts came out afterward. 
 
 My wife, a very matter-of-fact woman, not pious but 
 simply and naturally, devout, had been burdened for him men- 
 tally all afternoon. The impression of his need had been pe- 
 culiarly emphatic with her. Spiritual experiences were for her 
 very hard to talk about. She had a deep! reverent reticence 
 which piosity never has. She did not even mention her mood 
 to me. But inwardly she was much in prayer for the man all 
 the afternoon. 
 
 In my wife's Sunday School class was a young woman 
 whom I had seen born again. Her's was the only spiritual birth 
 which I ever actually saw. I am not attempting here to define 
 what the spiritual birth is. Let that go, and call it by any other 
 name which you please. This I know, she sat before me one 
 day, and I made the way of the divine life as plain to her as 
 I could. She was of the strong, vigorous type, big in body, 
 quick in mind, a really handsome woman in her best days, with 
 the promise of her mature strength and beauty already upon 
 her. She was, as Holland puts it, in Kathrina, no weakling. 
 "But a round woman, who with insight keen 
 Had measured well her womanhood." 
 
 I saw the hesitation linger in her eyes in spite of all my 
 explanations the absolute sincerity of her soul as she refused 
 to assent where her conviction was not clear. Then as I 
 paused, and we were silent together for a moment, I saw the 
 sudden illumination of understanding flash into her eyes. She 
 was another woman from that hour. 
 
 Now, she also, unknown to me, and unknown to my wife, 
 had been burdened all that day for this man. She had only a 
 casual acquaintance with the family, T am sure, and there were 
 no special natural attachments which drew her to them. Hut 
 while I was going over in review that afternoon the sermon 
 which I did not preach that night, and while my wife was in- 
 wardly invoking the guidance of the Spirit for the man's de-
 
 25. 
 
 liverance from the devil of drink and all the down-pull of the 
 meaner man, she also was praying, without any outward con- 
 tact with us, or knowledge of the fellowship of anybody with 
 her mood. 
 
 Her prayinrr was practical. As he rose to his feet after 
 
 the benediction in the main meeting, and hesitated whether to 
 
 go toward the rear room, his wife not daring to speak to him 
 
 lest she rouse a contrary mood, this young girl had stepped to 
 
 his side and in the simplest fashion possible asked htm to stay 
 
 a little longer and attend the other meeting as well. Her cordial 
 
 implicity turned his steps toward the room where he chose 
 
 Iccisively the man's part. 
 
 I have not told this story to impose any explanation of it 
 upon you. Take it as supernaturally or naturally as you please. 
 I have told the experience to help you understand the churches 
 at their best, and why it is that so many people are sat- 
 isfied with them. They ought not to be, as I am going to 
 try to show. Their best blinds them to a better. 1 believe. Rut 
 you cannot understand them if you will not enter into their 
 best and try to see it from their point of view. How can you 
 hc1) them to see that their good is hindering them if you will 
 not admit that it is good at all? You cannot even help a 
 child so. 
 
 "Ah. but that was fine, only I saw a finer behind it which 
 T 'MIT afraid yon are not going to bring out because your good 
 is jnt good enough to satisfy you as it is," said a music teacher 
 who hid just listened to the best work of his pupil. "You do 
 so vrll T am afr-^'r von will never do better." And there were 
 nlmost tears in his eyes. 
 
 x nd you who have only beratings for the churches, you 
 will never help them to the mightier music which thev ought 
 to produce till you are able to listen sympathetically and intelli- 
 gent Iv to the strongest and sweetest strains which they are sing- 
 in <r now. 
 

 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COMFORTABLE GOODNESS. 
 
 One cannot understand the churches, and the contentment 
 which many good people have in them, without taking into ac- 
 count such mystic experiences as that which I have just told. 
 One such experience is enough to hold many a man through 
 a hundred disagreeable dealings with the inconsistencies of his 
 fellows. There may be gaps in a man's creed which his think- 
 ing cannot bridge, but when it works miracles for him he will 
 stand for a lot of lapses between. It isn't faith in the miracles 
 of yesterday which keeps any of the churches going; it is the 
 fact that something of the seemingly miraculous anyway is 
 part of the experience of all of them today. 
 
 I could duplicate this relation with many another quite as 
 remarkable, as I presume every minister could. 
 
 When B. Fay Mills preached his first sermon at Salem 
 during my ministry there he spoke on the reported saying of 
 Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, "Roll ye away the stone." There 
 was no discussion of miracles in it, and it was, like most of his 
 preaching, quite unimpassioned in form. But I knew of one 
 miracle which came out of it. 
 
 Two women had been enemies for years, so that they had 
 not spoken,, although thev moved of necessity more or less in 
 the same social circles. The one whom I knew best was one of 
 the proudest women whom I have ever known, of social promi- 
 nence, and not of ordinarily devout mood. No one said a word 
 to her in a religious way that afternoon, and no one had the 
 slightest suspicion of what it was in her heart to do. Yet 
 after a brief, bitter struggle with her own heart, she did the 
 apparently impossible thing, incredible to those who knew her 
 best. She put her pride under her feet and walked deliberately 
 over to the other woman's house, which was some distance 
 away, and went in and asked to be forgiven, though she would 
 have been killed rather than do it the (lay before. 
 
 I laid mv hand on a young man's shoulder one night in 
 that same series of meetings and said simply, "I wish you were 
 a Christian." That was absolutely all that T said. I have called 
 him a young man, but he was thirty-five, I suppose, and he had 
 not been a church-going man at all. He came into the church 
 afterward, only a few days later, and confessed that the touch 
 of my hand and that one friendly wish had revolutionized his 
 way of looking at life.
 
 27. 
 
 But I will not dwell upon these things because there is an- 
 other side to the attractiveness of ordinary church life, and the 
 contentment of many with respectable goodness or religious- 
 ness, w T hich needs to be taken into account. It is not miracles 
 which keep most people in the churches who continue there, or 
 the appearance of miracles, if you like that way of putting it 
 better. It is rather the comfortableness, the home-i-ness, to 
 use a word which isn't in the dictionary and ought to be one 
 might almost say the "coziness" of the fellowship which one 
 finds there. 
 
 There is a comfortableness in being respectable, and in the 
 associations of respectable people, which keeps many a man 
 from daring the discomfort of being a better man. 
 
 I did not want to go to Salem. There were two reasons 
 for this, the first that I wanted much more to go to California 
 when I turned away from Puget Sound. The second reason 
 was that at the time the Salem church did not have a good rep- 
 utation for unity. There had been some sharp divisions of 
 counsel between the young people and the older people about 
 keeping the previous pastor. 
 
 "Don't go," said one of my ministerial friends to me when 
 Salem was mentioned. "I wouldn't touch that church with a 
 forty- foot pole." 
 
 What the world says about the churches is nothing to 
 what ministers sometimes say among themselves. 
 
 Nevertheless I went, under circumstances which if detailed 
 here would seem to some more miraculous, and to others more 
 absurdly mystical in that interpretation of them, than any story 
 which I have yet told. A call that was unanimous, where 
 unanimity had seemed out of the question a litt/e while before; 
 an acceptance that was written and never sent, but replaced 
 before |>osting by a refusal ; a snowstorm that lengthened the 
 announcement of "twenty minutes for refreshments" at Ash- 
 land, when we were almost over the line into California, into 
 an actual stay of thirteen days at that point, and a very reluct- 
 ant return over the road which was washed awav immediately 
 behind us ; a flood that turned all central Oregon into an inland 
 sea: days of indecision in which we were marooned between 
 Salem and Portland, ending in another visit to Salem, another 
 call, and an acceptance this time which T felt no desire to with- 
 draw, these are the bare outlines of an experience that gave me 
 sympathetic understanding of how some jx-ople can lie quite 
 persuaded of the doctrine of special providence. T hardly think 
 that the floods which mado the first weeks of 18')0 so memor- 
 able in Oregon that old settlers compared conditions with the
 
 historic high waters of 1861 were actually provided to keep me 
 out of California, or to insure my settlement in the "Webfoot 
 State" for awhile, although that was one of the minor by-pro- 
 ducts of those atmospherically strenuous days. But there is no 
 doubt that the sense of a providential leading pervading all the 
 phenomena of life is strong in the churches and among many 
 good people outside of the churches, and has something to do 
 with their contentment with things as they are, and their feel- 
 ing of being in good standing with God. 
 
 Altogether my ministry in Salem was the most broadly hu- 
 man ministry I have known. Never have I had a more united 
 church behind me than I had from first to last of my residence 
 there. Never have I known a more kindly or sincerely religious 
 people than there. I think of Salem yet with the warmth and 
 with something of the heartache with which one remembers a 
 family circle that has ceased to be. 
 
 If material matters had much to do with my going to Salem 
 they had also much to do with the prosperity of my pastorate 
 there. Some things which entered into my success were so or- 
 dinary, so insignificant in themselves, and, as some people would 
 say, so quite apart from the dignities of the ministry, that it is 
 hard to tell them so that others will understand how much more 
 they mean than the mere facts on the surface show. But I see 
 them now as I did not see them then in relation to the larger 
 failures of the religious life, and they mean more to me than 
 they did when I used them as instruments of success long ago. 
 
 One of the first calls that I made in Salem was on one of 
 my deacons, who was employed very long hours in a bakery. I 
 did not think much about the hours of his employment then. 
 What I noticed with an almost childish interest was that he 
 was making candy molasses peppermints and that the process 
 was so simple I was confident I could do it myself. I did. Either 
 from him, or someone else, about the same time, I learned how 
 to make "fondant'' that is. the foundation for cream candies 
 of many kinds. A little later, calling this time on another re- 
 ligious friend in Portland whose conditions of labor I might 
 have considered more, I obtained the secret of covering creams 
 with chocolate, and went home and worked that trick of the 
 confectioner's trade also. My wife and I were not expert con- 
 fectioners when all our home experimenting was done, and made 
 no pretense to be, but I am quite safe in saying, and it is no 
 mere pun either, that we made that parsonage while we were in 
 it the sweetest spot in town to a host of young people, and 
 sweetened religion for them at the same time. 
 
 The old house, with its moss-covered roof on which in the
 
 29. 
 
 springtime fell the seedling" cherries from two wide-spreading 
 trees, said to be of missionary-pioneer origin, was the most 
 picturesque home in which I have ever lived. The door from 
 the front porch opened directly into the living room. On the 
 opposite side of the room was a fireplace which "drew" per- 
 fectly. Oak logs were cheap in Salem then, and their smoke 
 ascended as a perpetual incense through all the long wet winter 
 months. I covered the fire almost as carefully as a Parsee priest 
 at night, and uncovered it at morning after the manner of the 
 fore-fathers in the days before sulphur matches were made. 4\nd 
 always in the evening it flared its welcome to all who opened 
 our outer door. 
 
 The old manse literally a moss-covered manse it was in 
 those days was more than our home ; it was the home of all 
 our people as well. The back door was hardly twenty feet from 
 the side door of the church which opened into the north wing 
 where our devotional meetings and social meetings were held, 
 and where our women folks cooked and served meals every now 
 and then that were famed all over town. 
 
 Was there a dish to borrow ? someone stepped across to 
 our kitchen door. Was there anything left over? It went the 
 way of the same convenient aperture. Did someone faint in 
 church, or turn sick? They were led or carried to the lounge 
 which' spread its inviting length beside the rear window. Every- 
 body came -and went there much as they pleased, sometime.-* 
 taking possession of the house in our absence and doing the 
 cooking or the candy-making in advance. Yet I do not remem- 
 ber that we ever felt this intimacy a burden to us then. A 
 nobler group of young people, and one more morally in earnest 
 within the limitations of their thought I have never known. 
 
 This is not primarily a personal narrative, and I am not 
 telling these particulars quite in a personal way. It is a study 
 of goodness as 1 have seen it in actual contact with churches and 
 respectable people, and as I have come to see it inwardly of 
 late years. The supreme appeal of the churches still is prob- 
 ably their mysticism, and with mysticism T have a good deal of 
 sympathy yet. Mysticism "has its limitations and its dangers, 
 but they are not more marked in my thinking, and I hold myself 
 free in my thinking, than are the limitations and the dangers of 
 materialism. Hut if the supreme appeal of the churches is mys- 
 ticism, the sense of the invisible and the immeasurable in human 
 life, the ordinary appeal of the churches which makes them per- 
 sistently attractive to many is on the social side. The minister 
 who can create most of the home atmosphere in his church and 
 can hold the largest number to the family feeling is the mini>-
 
 30. 
 
 ter of our day who commonly wins. 
 
 I did a good deal of hard pulpit work at Salem and was 
 reckoned a popular preacher there. \Ye had as f have indicated 
 strong spiritual experiences. But the fireplace and the open 
 kitchen door, the candy hook and the confabs before the rirc, the 
 chit-chat over English literature and the dabblings in German 
 and other studies with my young people who were out of school, 
 these were the things that made my ministry there so good to 
 us and to many more ; these were the things which made many 
 content to seek no farther for goodness than that which they had 
 found. They almost contented me. If t had seen no other side 
 of life at Salem I might have been quite satisfied with the snug 
 Phariseeism of it. It was some uncomfortable people on the 
 outside who made me uncomfortable, and led me the way that 
 showed me how dangerou a matter contentment itself may be.
 
 CHAPTER VIll. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF THE UNCOMFORTABLE. 
 
 The only time that I have evef suffered violence in my 
 ministry was during' my residence in Salem. I was more to 
 blame for it than the man who tried to do me harm. 
 
 There was no segregated district in Salem then, so far as 
 I know, but the red shame flaunted itself on some of the prin- 
 cipal thoroughfares. I could not pass from the parsonage 
 straight down Liberty street to the main thoroughfare, along 
 which the street cars went to Wil!::mette University and the 
 station, without seeing the symbols of Y.iis indecency on a house 
 front which belonged to one of the city* officials. Or. if the 
 symbols were withheld it was common knowledge that t'.ic moral 
 leprosy itself was there. 
 
 One Sunday night I said my say about it, in stinging words. 
 Knowing the ordinary imperviousness of the politicians to pul- 
 pit pronouncements, I went out of my way to make the whip- 
 lash of my word cut to the quick. I was young, and I did not 
 realize then the unfairness of personalities in the pulpit, where 
 the preacher has every advantage and the other man has no 
 chance to hit back. My remarks were especially in bad taste. 
 as I see it now, that I made the man's appearance the instru- 
 ment of my indignation against him for his social offenses. It 
 was this, as the event proved, which hurt. 
 
 A day or two afterward I had a polite note from him, ask 
 ing me to call at the store where he worked and talk the matte. 
 over with him. 
 
 I had no suspicion that any violence was intended, a-;l I 
 have my doubts now whether he had anything of the kh. 1 in 
 mind when he wrote. I would probably have gone in any case, 
 though I might have been more on my guard. 
 
 It was a general merchandise store and he received me in 
 the office. I le stated his complaint against me quietly, and we 
 talked about it and alxmt his ownership of the misused p'rop- 
 erty without any harsh words. He was sullenly evasive on his 
 part, and I did not feel then that I could budge in the direction 
 of softening what I had said. 
 
 AJ? we walked down the long store together suddenly he 
 sprang upon me and began to pummel my head with his fists. 
 I had no time to put myself in an attitude of defense, lloides 
 I had never been a fighter, except for the "rassling" squabbles 
 of my youth which were not of a very serious sort. 1 was
 
 32. 
 
 mightily interested in militarism as a boy, but pugilism never 
 appealed to me at all. 
 
 I suppose now that the object of my assailant was to get 
 even with me for what I had said about his face by spoiling the 
 looks of my own. He was not quite quick enough, however, 
 and, sudden as the assault was, I was able to fend off his blows 
 with my arms so that he landed only one or two hard knocks on 
 the top of my head, which did not even knock me down. One 
 fair-sized bump I remember he left as a souvenir of the melee 
 for a few days. Before he could do further damage the men in 
 the store seized him, and I passed out into the street. 
 
 Among my friends there was, of course, swift, hot talk of 
 violence in return. But the mob mood was not according to my 
 mind, and I promptly put a quietus on all such talk. The at- 
 tack injured the opposition more than it hurt my standing in the 
 town, and since I had made no attempt to strike back there were 
 some who were inclined to give me more credit for the forbear- 
 ance than I deserved. 
 
 If there was any merit on my part, it was that after the first 
 excitement of the experience was over I conscientiously put 
 away from my mind all resentment toward the man. I think 
 I was more to blame than he, so far as the attack is concerned, 
 as I have already indicated. But in the correcting of the evil I 
 think his method was even more stupid than mine. Violence of 
 words is bad enough as a curative measure, but bodily violence 
 is nearly always a fool's game. 
 
 A remark made by one of my best members, and best 
 friends, about that time did me a great deal more good than the 
 blows which I had received. The remark was made to someone 
 else, and was passed on to me. 
 
 "Well," he said, in his dry fashion, "I am surprised that a 
 man who has as much sense as Brother Whitaker hasn't got 
 more." 
 
 It took some years for that remark to soak in. 
 
 Another Sunday evening in Salem I said some very plain 
 things about the illicit liquor selling in the drug stores in town. 
 One of the young men of my church, from one of the foremost 
 families, was the proprietor of one of the drug stores. He was 
 mad, mad clear through, when he heard, with additions I sup- 
 pose, what I had said. 
 
 Xow the humorous part of the matter was that until he 
 got mad about it I had no idea he was doing it. Of course 
 then I knew he was guilty. It is always easy to get mad when 
 you are wrong. And he was madder at himself, although he 
 would not admit it then, when I told him to his face that it was
 
 33. 
 
 his own anger which had given him away. 
 
 He fairly raged at me. I stood it with reasonable good 
 nature until he said: 
 
 "You don't know which side your bread is buttered on or 
 you'd take a different tack." 
 
 Then I flared up. 
 
 "Look here," I answered, calling him by his 'first name, ''I 
 want you to understand that I'm not preaching for bread and 
 butter, and I always keep enough money on hand to pay my 
 fare out of this town in either direction." 
 
 Then I turned on my heej and left the store. 
 
 It fs to his credit that when he had cooled off he was more 
 friendly with me than before, and always swore by me from 
 that time. Religion never got much hold on him. He was 
 human, very human as I learned afterward. Yet I found the 
 man in him, I think, and. finding the man in him, one of the 
 weakest of my members, helped me to find the man in my- 
 self. It is for this that I have written of him here, because 
 he also was one of my teachers in learning the new-old ethic 
 of Jesus. 
 
 Another evening in Salem, a Saturday evening, I think, I 
 went through the saloons. \Yord had come to- me that there was 
 almost unrestrained gambling going on. I took a young work- 
 ingman with me, donned a soft slouch hat which had been new 
 once on a time, and rather to my own surprise went through 
 thirteen saloons before T was recognized. If I had but known 
 it the fact itself was eloquent with witness to the remoteness of 
 the minister and the churches from the man of the street. 
 
 In the fourteenth salwn a man who was half drunk recog- 
 nized me. and welcomed me with maudlin cordiality, assuring 
 me that I was doing just the right thing, and that preachers 
 ought to do a good deal more of seeing the sights for them- 
 selves. I was not as much impressed with either his welcome 
 or his reasoning at the time as I was afterward. If the Man of 
 Nazareth had lived in Salem I suspect that every man alxntt 
 town would have known Him offhand. 
 
 The town marshal and I had a tilt over the matter in the 
 public prints. He was willing enough, so he said, to prosecute 
 the gamblers, if gambling was actually going on. if I or any- 
 Ixxly else would furnish the evidence. I have met that attitude 
 on the part of naH officials since, and a good deal nearer San 
 Francisco. I shall deal with it more at length in due time. 
 
 Just now I note three incidents merely to mark the course 
 of my contact with moral derelicts here and there in an individ- 
 ual way. I am going to tell of the larger contact with humanity
 
 34. 
 
 outside of the churches in the next few chapters, with the "de- 
 fective classes." and also with the "higher-ups," to use popular 
 terms. I want now just to mention one individual more who 
 ministered to some inner discomfort on my part, and helped 
 me to see Phariseeism in a less superficial way. 
 
 He was neither good nor bad as the labels are commonly 
 used. He sat in the church sometimes and listened to me with 
 good-natured tolerance and probably considerable appreciation % 
 of certain incidental human elements in my preaching. Liter- 
 ary likings drew us together and he was often at our fireside 
 of a winter night. He did some work for the Overland Month- 
 ly afterwards, was reporter later for a San Francisco daily or 
 two. held a responsible position in New York City in connection 
 with Pacific Coast promotion work, and is I think booming the 
 Panama Exposition now. At the time I met him, he was work- 
 ing in a hardware store in Salem. 
 
 \Yhen I think of the hardware store I think of some of 
 the "jobs" he told me of with a good-natured laugh. Some of 
 them had to do with church people, and the "rake-offs" which 
 they had drawn for the very nails which were used in the build- 
 ing of the churches.. He was not a cynic. He was too humor- 
 ously healthy for that sort of sentiment to prevail in him. He 
 made no effort to make a cynic of me. I could not make a 
 '"Christian" of him. P>ut we helped each other into a bigger and 
 more human feeling toward our fellows. I gave him a chance 
 to see how much of sincere goodness there was inside the 
 churches, lovable in spite of its posing and primping. He made 
 me see, with others such as those I have already mentioned, 
 how much there is of badness in the world, if I may put it that 
 way. which has a strangely human lovableness about it. I 
 showed him the gold under the glitter, he showed me the gold 
 under the stain and dirt. He learned that among the good it 
 wasn't all pretense on top. I was learning that among the bad, 
 the worldly, even the disreputable, there were veins of richest 
 quality underneath. P>oth together we were coming to see 
 slowly that the only goodness which is very much worth while, 
 the goodness that goes deeper than all the "righteousness of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees" is goodness of heart toward all our hu- 
 mankind.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PIETY AND PRISON WALLS. 
 
 I am puzzled now to say whether it was goodness of heart 
 toward the prisoners first of all, or a sense of professional ob- 
 ligation and opportunity, or sheer curiosity, which took me 
 first to the penitentiary. It may have been a mixture of all 
 these moods. 
 
 The Oregon penitentiary was the first which I had ever 
 seen in a familiar way ; indeed, the first of which I had ever 
 seen the inside. I have seen very few since. Prisons are as 
 painful to me as slums, and, in my opinion now as disgraceful 
 to the civilization which sustains them both. 
 
 There were no women in the Oregon penitentiary when 1 
 was at Salem. There were four hundred men. Many of them 
 were young men, some of them hardly more than boys. 1 think 
 the average age was ony about twenty-two or twenty-four. The 
 prisoners were employed, in the main, in the stove factory in 
 the east yard. 
 
 The administration was very liberal then. I suppose that 
 is the term to use. W. S. Downing, the superintendent, was 
 a kindly man, not at all of the sharp or professionally politi- 
 cal type. He did not look professional at all. You might 
 easily have taken him for an Oregon fanner, or for one of 
 the easy-going business men of the town with a store half full 
 of goods such as had been in vogue down in Maine half a 
 century before. He ran the institution in old-fashioned ways, 
 with less of severity than the old times knew, but with little 
 accounting with modern ideas. 
 
 1 had access to the penitentiary on almost my own terms. 
 I came and went with freedom, sitting out in the back yard 
 with the life-termers and talking with them as freely as I 
 might have done by own fireside. The going in and the coming 
 out was always with careful regard, of course, to the safe- 
 keeping of the prisoners, and I did not venture often into the 
 shops, and never without the presence of guards, as there were 
 men sufficiently desperate among those thus employed to have 
 made either a living buttress or a bloody carcase of my Inxly 
 with equal unconcern. But among the old fellows, of whom 
 less strenuous tasks were required and who sat sometimes aiul 
 swapped stories in the shadow of the buildings. I felt all the 
 freedom and unconsciousness which their dingy suits of striped 
 gray cloth would permit.
 
 36. 
 
 The services which I held there on Siriday afternoons 
 were generally attended by a good delegation of my people. 
 Some of them went to sing and some only to sec or. at the 
 most, to hear how I would talk to the men. The t;> 11 folks 
 sat in the same room with the prisoners, but to one side, and 
 on the other side to my left was the organ and a few of the 
 best singers. In front of me sat as many of the men as cared 
 to come out of their cells. I suspect that the freedo i of the 
 hour had as much to do with their presence as any interest 
 in what I might say. Many would not come for sectarian 
 reasons, and some out of contempt for religion and ministers 
 in general. The ordinary audience was probably 125 to 150 
 men. The place where we met, which I have called a room, 
 was the open space between the tiers of cells in the center 
 of the building, from which the iron cages reached away north 
 and south, both upstairs and down. It was almost as diffi- 
 cult to speak there as I have found it since out of doors. 
 
 My preaching was not very gentle, I am afraid. I was 
 shy of "sentimentalism" toward the prisoners in those days, 
 and had been brought up on the old prayer-book adage con- 
 cerning the law and its officers as "a terror to evil-doers." 
 I was not unsympathetic, but I held conventional and gen- 
 erally accepted ideas about the criminal classes. Incidentally 
 1 may remark that at that time and for a considerable while 
 afterward I believed in capital punishment. 
 
 The first of the prisoners whom I came to know in a 
 personal way was a man who would have been hanged if he 
 had been a negro. His name was not Williams, but that will 
 do to identify him here. He was about forty-five or fifty years 
 of age and had been in the penitentiary in the neighborhood of 
 eight years when I met him, perhaps not quite as long. He 
 was a quiet, inoffensive sort of man, inclined to be religious. 
 I did not take his religious professions very sericvsly at the 
 beginning. If they had any influence uj>on me they rather 
 prejudiced me against him. I suspected that he was cultivat- 
 ing the preacher so as to get a pardon the sooner. The facts 
 in his case did not help him much in my mind. 
 
 On the road north of Salem there lived an old farmer 
 with a German name, whose wife was unfaithful to him. Her 
 paramour was a negro. This man Williams also fell under 
 the domination of the negro, who kept him drunk for weeks 
 at a time. One night the negro and Williams lay in the fence 
 corner when the old man was expected home and shot him 
 down in his wagon. Two guns were used, one of them a 
 gun which Williams had carried. Williams' claimed from first
 
 37. 
 
 to last that he had done no shooting himseu. He admitted 
 that he had been a weak, drunken fool, and that he had not 
 been sober for many days before the crime was done. The 
 negro had used him as a stool pigeon. At the fatal moment 
 the negro, after firing with his own gun, had grasped Wil- 
 liams' gun and used that to complete the job. 
 
 The negro was hanged, as there is no doubt he deserved 
 to be. Williams can not be said on the strength of his story, 
 even if it was true, to have deserved much better. The color 
 of his skin, and possibly some cash and influence at his com- 
 mand, saved his neck, and he was sent to the penitentiary for 
 life. The average life sentence in Oregon at that time was 
 actually about eleven years. Williams served nine. 
 
 I was very slow in taking his part, and was never very 
 active for him. Convinced at length by watching him critical- 
 ly myself for a year or two, and by the common testimony of 
 prison officials and outside parties who had known him much 
 longer and more intimately than I. and by the concessions of 
 even some among his fellow prisoners. I went to Governor 
 Pennoyer, with whom I had a measure of acquaintance and 
 influence, and got the pardon. 
 
 I could write much of the morning when I received it and 
 '.vent out to the prison with it in my pocket, and of the marvel- 
 ously quiet way in which the man heard the news of his re- 
 lease. He stopped in our home that night, had breakfast with 
 us the next morning, and I kept tab on him for a while, 
 though I have lost track of him long ago. Two things only 
 I wn-^t to emphasize in connection with his case. 
 
 To get the pardon he had to have a petition, or recom- 
 mendation, signed bv certain of the legal authorities who had 
 *ent him up. To obtain this he was compelled to raise $100. 
 which he did through some relatives almost as poor as him- 
 self. 1 mentioned the matter casually to the governor, who 
 was finite indignant about it. 
 
 "I'nless that money is pulled down I will not touch pen 
 to his pardon." said Pcnnoyer. 
 
 I knew him well enouirh to believe that he meant what 
 he said. Williams, when informed of the hitch with the (iov- 
 ernor. was depressed, but a few days later told me the $100 de- 
 txisit had been withdrawn. After he was out he confessed 
 confidentially that In- had had to pay the $100. though in a 
 mure indirect way. 
 
 Williams was turned loose with $5 and a cheap Miit of 
 clothes. He lived as long as I knew him a quiet, law-abid- 
 ing life. His was not a strong character, but he was a better
 
 38. 
 
 man at many points than a lot of the successful men whom 
 I have known more kindly, less mercenary and nat- 
 urally much less self-assertive and indifferent to the 
 rights of others- His punishment was not too severe,, but 
 it might have been more human and less mechanical while 
 he was in jail, and society might have recognized much 
 more rationally its own part in his crime and its in- 
 terest in giving him a larger chance to redeem his later years. 
 So far as the State was concerned his liberty was made de- 
 pendent upon personal influences and even commercial con- 
 siderations to a disgraceful degree, and when he was turned 
 out he was put forth with less purpose and provision than 
 a sensible farmer would show in the disposition of an old 
 horse. 
 
 My Sunday afternoon services 5n the Oregon peniten- 
 tiary were a good deal of a strain upon me in a physical way. 
 I carried at that time four and sometimes five services a day. 
 But the strain upon my feelings was much greater than the 
 direct physical exhaustion, and T was forced to ease up 'on 
 the work before I left Salem. The hardest part of the strain 
 was the extent to which intimate acquaintance with the law's 
 dealings with the men behind the bars outraged my sense of 
 all that was decent and right and just. 
 
 I kept no notes and I cannot reproduce particulars now 
 as I knew them then. I can only testify that, as in old Mex- 
 ico, the stupidities of the street stirred me to a continual storm 
 of inner protest, the stupidities of the Oregon courts stirred 
 me to an even greater degree because I felt that there was 
 less allowance to be made. I was mad inside whenever I spent 
 an hour or two at the penitentiary, utterly disgusted and de- 
 pressed both with the low moral levels of the prisoners and 
 more so with what I learned of society's selfish, sordid and 
 worse than stupid dealings with them. 
 
 Here, for instance, was a man sent up for three years 
 for stealing a salmon, while in the same prison and approx- 
 imately at the same time was another who had shot one of 
 his fellows down in Portland, had been two or three times 
 condemned to be hanged, and had at length escaped through 
 the adeptness of 'his attorneys, or for reasons even less ra- 
 tional, with a term of one year, which on good behavior was 
 reduced to ten months. 
 
 Here was a lad who, bullied into a state of reckless bit- 
 terness by a boy bigger than himself, after vainly warning 
 his tormenter, had, in a moment of passion on the way home.
 
 39. 
 
 from Sunday school, struck his older companion with his jack- 
 knife. The wound proved fatal, and the boy was there among 
 the life-termers, as -though society had no responsibility in 
 the matter beyond putting him out of the way. 
 
 The cleverest man in the penitentiary, a Harvard grad- 
 uate, had been condemned to be hanged, though he pleaded 
 self-defense. His request for a new trial had been denied, and 
 the court had adjourned for the season, beyond the day when 
 he was to be hanged. He got a small file surreptitiously, fixed 
 the doors of his cell so that the grand jury inspected it a few- 
 hours before he took French leave of it without suspicion that 
 anything was wrong, and mocked them and the law by provid- 
 ing the same newspaper which published the grand jury's re- 
 port with a simultaneous news item to the effect that he was 
 gone. He stayed out till the court reconvened, surrendered 
 himself then, secured another trial and got a life sentence, 
 which ended in pardon, of course. 
 
 Take them all in all. criminals are a stupid lot. but so- 
 ciety's dealing with them is only a little less stupid and crim- 
 inal. Our system of dealing with the slum product is as heart- 
 sickening as the slums themselves. And 'our first aid for the 
 criminally wounded who have fallen into open pits of passion, 
 or over stumbling stones of misplaced circumstances, is as 
 crude and barbaric as was the surgery of our forefathers. 
 The prisons are much more than laboratories of crime they 
 are glaring exhibits of the ignorance, apathy, the mercenary 
 contentment and the unconscious cruelties of the good.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SANE AND INSANE. 
 
 The State Asylum for the Insane at Salem was on the 
 same side of town as the penitentiary, about a mile north- 
 ward of the prison. The grounds were open here, were very 
 beautifully kepj, and the buildings made the appearance from 
 the road of a college or hospital or some sort of public home. 
 It was a hospital in name, and I think that conception of its 
 function was kept carefully to the front. Doctor Rowland, 
 who had charge of it, was a genial, almost motherly man. 
 
 Commonly. I alternated my Sunday afternoons at the 
 penitentiary with my Sunday afternoons at th/e , v asylum, al- 
 though on one or two rare occasions I preached at both places 
 besides my three appointments down town the same day. The 
 service at both places was purely voluntary on my part, and 
 I did not receive even my expenses when I went and came 
 to and from the penitentiary by the cars. I am glad to re- 
 member now that it was an unpaid service which I gave. 
 
 My first afternoon at the asylum was more uncomfort- 
 able than my first preaclrnr service in the neighboring prison. 
 The audience was about the same in size. The room was 
 better, a hall provided for entertainments and social affairs, 
 where dancing was commonly done the night before. Some 
 of them did not know the difference between my preaching 
 and the music for the dance. 
 
 "I like to hear you sing," said one of them to me, with 
 a grin which covered all his foolish face ; "it's bully !" 
 
 That was before the days of Roosevelt, too. 
 
 The most disconcerting man in my audience that first 
 Sunday was a man who was an adept at wriggling his scalp. 
 If T looked in his direction he kept the whole top of his head, 
 which was well covered with hair, going back and forth with 
 an effect that was quite uncanny. The movements of his 
 head were all on the outside ; there was nothing but an al- 
 most idotic paralysis underneath. 
 
 Occasionally a man got up and swore at me under the 
 impression that I was saying something in a personal way, 
 and was led out by the attendants, protesting as he went. 
 Generally speaking, the patients were remarkably well be- 
 haved. I had more trouble with deliberate inattention and
 
 41. 
 
 conscious discourtesy sometimes of a Sunday evening in town. 
 I learned to preach as easily before the audience at the asylum 
 as before my own people, used the same sermons, and came to 
 feel that whether my hearers were convicts, "crazies/' or the 
 conventional congregation, the human factor was the biggest 
 in them all. Despite their superficial differences they were 
 wonderfully alike. 
 
 The attendants usually sat by themselves at the rear of 
 the hall to my left. Some of them were women. They were 
 dressed more like outsiders than were the patients as a rule. 
 Had they been scattered through the audience kind dressed 
 the same I could not always have picked them out. And this 
 not because they looked less than normal, but because so many 
 of the patients made as good an appearance as the average 
 of men and women outside. 
 
 One young woman puzzled me a good deal the first time 
 she was there. She sat with the attendants and was as well 
 dressed as any of them. Only an excessive nervousness made 
 me suspect that she was a patient.- This suspicion was con- 
 firmed when the sermon was done. She recovered after a few 
 months. 
 
 Two of her sayings have stayed with me. Once when 
 I had closed the service she took my hand as I went out, 
 and without any effusiveness said, in her quick, nervous way, 
 "1 like to hear you preach. You talk to us as if we had some 
 sense, and we have, if we are crazy." 
 
 The whole philosophy of the changed attitude toward the 
 insane which has made hospitals of our former "mad-houses" 
 was in that saying. We are moving rationally toward the 
 treatment of the irrational. \Ve shall never move morally 
 toward the treatment of the immoral till we treat them as if 
 they had character in spite of their crimes. 
 
 Another time I was passing through 4he asylum with 
 some friends. Many of the patients who knew me came up 
 to speak with me as I passed through the wards. This young 
 woman greeted me cordially when we entered the ward where 
 she was. As she was ready to go she said to our guide, one 
 of the attendants: 
 
 "I wish you would tell the doctor I have need of him to at- 
 tend to two teeth." 
 
 "Your teeth?" queried the attendant, will a grin. 
 
 He was a rather common looking fellow and would have 
 taken for a patient much sooner than herself. 
 
 With utmost scorn she turned upon him : 
 
 'I wouldn't be very likely to be troubling the doctor about
 
 42. 
 
 other people's teeth," she said, and swept away from him with the 
 dignity of a queen. 
 
 There is a great deal of need yet of seeing to it, both in 
 the asylums and out of them, that the attendants shall*- equal 
 in character those upon whom they attend. 
 
 I sat in the superintendent's office one day with another 
 patient, a man of about 60 years. He was well known in 
 Oregon and had been associated with some of the big build- 
 ers of the State. He was a thinker, a philosopher, and be- 
 fore I had talked with him fifteen minutes I felt very imma- 
 ture' in his presence. Had I met him anywhere else I would 
 have been even more abashed. He recovered his normal mind 
 and was released a little later. 
 
 The thing that impressed me that day was the unaffected 
 dignity and consideration with which he was treated. He 
 was met on every hand, so far as I could see, as if he were 
 still a man. 
 
 There were doubtless abuses in the Oregon Hospital for 
 the Insane, but it was, on. the whole, the most rational society 
 which I have ever seen. The people were all comfortably 
 housed, all comfortably clothed, all comfortably fed. The 
 strong waited upon the weak, <and ministered to them. A 
 man, though crazy, was recognized as a man "for 'a that and 
 'a that.'' Men were not blamed for their misfortunes, though 
 many were undoubtedly to blame. Those who came there 
 through their own excesses were met with the same consid- 
 eration as those who had slipped a cog in their mental ma- 
 chinery by some accident of circumstance. There was as much 
 wickedness housed there as there was in the penitentiary, for 
 insanity is in the multitude of instances a by-product of sin. 
 But it was treated in a radically different way, from a radi- 
 cally different point of view. Blame reigned behind the dull 
 gray walls of the penitentiary. Brotherhood reigned in the 
 homelike hospital on .the other road. 
 
 I am not a Christian Scientist, although I have read Chris- 
 tian Science literature freely for twenty years. I have come, I 
 hope, to the Christian attitude toward it, which is one of sincere 
 rejoicing in all the good its followers do. Of this also I am 
 quite sure, that if their fundamental ideas, leaving philosophical 
 and religious forms aside for the moment, could more generally 
 prevail, there would be vastly less of insanity than there is. Even 
 as our institutions are. serener moods and more trustful atti- 
 tudes would save many from both mental and moral wreck. 
 
 But it is a pity that good people cannot be as good toward 
 their fellows who are reckoned sane as towards those who have
 
 43. 
 
 been made public wards by a commission on lunacy. God 
 knows there are abuses enough in our hospitals yet, but at least 
 they are not of public intention. Only last night a woman told 
 me of the death of her sister in one of the State institutions of 
 California through cold and want of sufficient food and the 
 neglect of her attendants. But even she did not maintain that 
 the people intended it so. There is one class, anyway, toward 
 whom good people mean to be good today, and those are the 
 people who have failed in the one point which most differen- 
 tiates the man and the beast. 
 
 While yet a student preacher one summer in Vermont, 
 they showed me at the poor farm a woman who had been insane 
 for forty years. They could not keep a garment upon her, ex- 
 cept a single, strong heavy serge. She could neither stand nor 
 talk. Never have I looked into such pathetic eyes as hers. She 
 knew less than the deer which smote me to the heart with his 
 dying glances in the California mountains. Her muteness, and 
 the straining of her soul against its long bondage to the flesh, 
 smote me more. 
 
 Yet she was treated with more of public concern than the 
 ordinary working woman of the State. The good were good to 
 her, as good as their ordinary absorption in their own affairs 
 would allow them to be. Had she been sane she would have 
 been less a sister than she was in her stolid, brutelike state . 
 
 Many of the patients at the asylum in Salem were perfectly 
 sane except on a single line. One of them, who worked alxnit 
 the farm, was so normal in most matters that I was told you 
 could talk with him for a week without suspecting that then- 
 was anything wrong with him. It was only when you talked 
 about Mexico that he was queer. Then he was voluble with 
 protests as to his rights there. He was a king, or priive. or 
 something of that sort with respect to Mexico. There are peo- 
 ple running newspapers now who are more dangerously out of 
 their heads whenever Mexico is named. 
 
 It was much the same with the attendants after all. Talk 
 with them on most lines and they were rational enough. It was 
 only when you tried to reason with them alxnit a sane social 
 order, as brotherly outside of the asylum as that which they 
 were supposed to administer inside the asylum, that they grew 
 uneasy and incoherent in their replies. And that which was true 
 of them was true of my people, the very best of them, down 
 town.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 PRAYING FOR THE POLITICIANS. 
 
 I did no lobbying in the Legislature at Salem, but I took my | 
 part with the other preachers of the town in praying for the I 
 politicians. 
 
 Like the preaching at the penitentiary and the asylum, the I 
 praying in the Legislature was entirely voluntary and unpaid, j 
 That was the redeeming feature of it, in my opinion both then I 
 and now. In general I think that paid chaplaincies cost the I 
 cause of religion more than any advantage which they bring to I 
 those who are supposed to be served by them can offset. Espe- 
 cially does it seem to me that praying for the legislators at S5 j 
 a prayer is a most questionable use of public money. 
 
 I am not sure that praying for them for nothing, in a pub- 
 lic way, is worth much more than it costs. Possibly the fault 
 was mine, but I found it exceedingly hard to talk with God in 
 that official way, and in the presence of many to whom my 
 prayers were a mere mumbling of words. There may have been 
 some who were sincerely on the side of such a service, and who 
 followed me as devoutly as they would have done in church. 
 If so, none of them said so. The general expression was one 
 of more or less polite suffrance of a conventional custom which 
 it was not good politics to ignore or obstruct. 
 
 The only cane which I have kept of several which have 
 come to me in one way and another during my ministry stands 
 close at hand now. I keep it as a curio, never having had any 
 occasion to use that sort of thing, either for support or for dis- 
 play. It was passed out to me through the postoffice window by 
 Fred Lockley, I think, afterwards prominent on the editorial 
 staff of the Pacific Monthly, and frequently in those days one 
 of our fireside group in the parsonage, although not of my con- 
 gregation. Lockley smiled ati my perplexity when I received it, 
 and would give no other information than that it was a token 
 of esteem to me from certain members of the Oregon Legisla- 
 ture, BECAUSE OF MY SHORT PRAYERS. 
 
 My prayers were short because I felt that the whole pro- 
 ceeding was more or less of a sham, and I have always been 
 inclined to cut shams short. I knew that the legislators were 
 there to do the business of the State, whether they did it or not. 
 For that purpose they were paid, and not to hear my prayers. 
 If they were men of sense and sound purpose they had no spe- 
 cial need of any such formalism, and if they were not the for-
 
 45. 
 
 malism was of no value to them and only made the mockery 
 of the whole situation a little worse. There is just as much rea- 
 son for opening a factory with prayer every morning as there 
 is for opening a legislature. If the service was paid for in either 
 case the money would, in the last analysis, come out of the 
 pockets of the common people. 
 
 The prayer was the first thing on the program each day. 
 The minister sat beside the speaker of the assembly, or the 
 president of the senate, by whom he was received with a cour- 
 teous hand-shake and the polite suavity with which politicians 
 delight to decorate the minister who is content to be a ritualistic 
 figure-head and let the politician have his way in practical af- 
 fairs. The spoilers of the public like to have ministers, and 
 women, attend to their millinery. Politics are likely to stain the 
 skirts of both of them, you know. 
 
 Although a little more inclined than the other ministers of 
 Salem to discuss public affairs in the pulpit I was practically 
 as innocuous as the rest of them, because equally ignorant with 
 my brethren of the cloth of economic law. I knew the ship of 
 state was a good deal of a failure in those days so far as the 
 interests of all the people were concerned. I was inclined to 
 blame the legislators then much more than T would blame them 
 now. I can see now that neither the men who were praying for 
 the Legislature, nor the men who were swearing at it. were 
 going at the matter in a very sensible way. There were goorl 
 men in that Legislature who were groping helplessly toward 
 better things. There were some who were quite content to be 
 the servitors of the special interests, and had the feeling that if 
 the people were fools they might as well have the feathers. I Jut 
 most of them were as ignorant as T was of the way out of the 
 wilderness, and because they were the chosen leaders of the 
 people, and were blind, they were ditching the public from year 
 to year worse than the criminals at the penitentiary or the crazies 
 at the asylum. Well-intentioned ignorance is often more danger- 
 ous than cvil-intentioned vice, and the wisdom that is not wise is 
 more mischievous than the follv that is plainly foolish. 
 
 Joseph Simon of Portland was the president of the senate. 
 An almost audible smile went around that Ixuly of legislators 
 when 1 prayed for him in particular one day. It was a short 
 prayer, not more than two sentences, and it was carefully word- 
 <*<l so as to express genuine Christian goodwill, and to be as far 
 removed as possible from any appearance of wlitical or per- 
 sonal suggestion. Possibly the spectacle of a Christian minister 
 praying publicly for a Jew had something to do with the humor 
 of the hour for a few of those there. I suspect, howcvre, that
 
 46. 
 
 it was the known political primacy of Simon at that time, and 
 his good standing with all those forces in the State which ought 
 to have been of bad standing with the people, that furnished the 
 facetiousness of the occasion to those who were on the inside 
 of public affairs. They were perfectly willing to have all the 
 preachers in the State praying for their leaders as long as the 
 profits of the leadership were not disturbed. 
 
 Years, afterwards I preached before a certain college on 
 the Pacific Coast which shall be nameless here. I dined with 
 the faculty after the service. One of them was from Portland. 
 I happened to mention Mr. Simon in connection with my ex- 
 periences in Oregon and referred with no asperity to his part 
 in the politics of Oregon at the time. The professor with whom 
 I was talking bristled instantly, and expressed for him the 
 highest personal regard. I could not question it, as ' my ac- 
 quaintance with Mr. Simon was of the most casual kind, and the 
 professor avowed^an intimate personal contact with him cover- 
 ing many years. T had no disposition to question it. By that 
 time T had learned that a little worse than a bad czar is a good 
 one. and every abuse in the world hides behind personal virtue 
 to much better advantage than when it is compelled to consent 
 in its champions to open vice. Let those who can understand 
 this parable understand it here : for others I shall repeat it in 
 mnny forms before I am done with this story of how I came to 
 understand it myself. 
 
 One of the Salem ministers who did not pray, in public 
 anyway, for the legislators was M. V. Rork. I doubt much 
 whether he prayed for them in private, except as he may have 
 included all sinners in his universal good will. When he talked 
 of them his words didn't 'have a very pious sound. 
 
 Rork was not a pastor in Salem then, although he had min- 
 istered, T think, to the Unitarian congregation there. He was 
 of orthodox training, and. if T mistake not. had known some 
 actual service in the orthodox ministry. At the time I was there 
 he was a free lance and regarded very much askance by all the 
 orthodox people. Most of them when they discussed him dis- 
 missed him as "erratic," which is a cheaper method of dispos- 
 ing of heretics, both religious and political, than the old-fash- 
 ioned way of burning them, the way of the "oldtime religion," 
 and state. I think some fagots could have been found for 
 Rork's burning, however, if it had been according to law. 
 
 Rork did a little burning on his own account in the way of 
 caustic speech. He was a brilliant fellow, whether he was erratic 
 or not. and if T had known my opj)ortunity better I would have 
 fellowshipped him much more intimately than I did. I knew
 
 47. 
 
 sane" men of Salem, of whom there were alto- 
 ..iy in those days. It was a few of the "fools" who 
 .ate. Rork was one of them. 
 
 ^on was already restless in the rural districts by reason 
 oeed-sowing of such men as Rork. Here and there were 
 
 ps of political fanatics who were the pioneers of the pro- 
 ^ssive philosophy which governs the State today. How Rork 
 and his fellow agitators lived I do not know. Rork interested 
 me a good deal, and amused me often. I had the attitude to- 
 ward him inside of the man who prides himself on being "rea- 
 sonably progressive," but on having sense enough to avoid all 
 extravagances. I could praise him against those who damned 
 him altogether, and, with a sense of virtue that was doubled 
 by my championship of him and my own "better-balanced pro- 
 gressiveness," I could criticize him complacently at the same 
 time. I have a choice assortment of friends of the same sort 
 today. 
 
 I have forgotten all the Oregon politicians except one or 
 two. Some of them got their names in "Who's Who." and 1 
 do not think that Rork's name has ever been there. Here and 
 there a magazine of national prominence has recognized the 
 fundamental work which he and a few of his fellows, some of 
 them men of greater reputation now, did for self-government 
 in the "Webfoot" State. "Web-foot" she may have been in 
 those days, and there are some sneering scorners of real dem- 
 ocracy who still would have it that she is a land of "quacks." 
 I know of no State which has made nobler progress toward 
 popular government and the recognition of the deeper meanings 
 of democracy than has Oregon in the last twenty years. I wish 
 I had helped more when I was there, and had dared more for 
 the sake of the democracy which was already dawning in a few 
 flaming eyes. But I was afraid of crimson colors then. Even 
 Governor Pennoyer was more erratic than prophetic to me. 
 
 1'ennoyer was a Democrat, and the State was inclined to 
 be Republican He was not even an orthodox Democrat in those 
 days. He was too progressive for his own party. I remember 
 one of his stories, of which he told me many, was to this effect : 
 
 An Indian lost in the woods, was met by some friendly 
 hunters who asked him solicitously, "Are you lost?" 
 
 "No, no," replied the Indian impatiently, "Indian not lost, 
 wigwam lost." 
 
 It was not the Democratic (xwernor of Oregon who was 
 lost in those days, accofding to his own opinion, it was the Dem- 
 ocratic party. And most men of forward sense would admit 
 today that Pennoyer was right.
 
 48. 
 
 He was a brilliant writer, and a capital story-teller. I liked 
 to talk with him, and more than half way belie vjd in hua. But 
 I was too "sensible" then to have sense enough to understand 
 him. The common people received him as a prophet, and they 
 had a measure of the prophet's reward, the measure being ac- 
 cording to the measure of their faith. He died before his day 
 had fully come. 
 
 The men who live largest in my memory of Oregon politics 
 today are the men who lived nearest to the people, who had 
 themselves the largest faith in plain human nature, and whom 
 neither the churches, nor the schools, nor the political parties 
 understood. They were both brainy men, and moral men, but 
 "they came unto their own, and their own received them not."
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS PRESS. 
 
 I was a bare-footed, bare-legged, bare headed boy on the 
 Towa prairies, dressed principally all the summer long in freck- 
 les and fresh-air, when 1 made my first acquaintance with a re- 
 ligions newspaper. 
 
 Our home was one of the most hospitable homes on the 
 prairies. My father could not turn even a tramp away. The re- 
 sult was.some very interesting experiences for us youngsters, to 
 whom a stranger was newspaper, drama, and social function all 
 in one. Some of the sayings of the strangers who tarried with 
 us ever night are household words in the family to this day. 
 
 The tramps came oftener than the preachers. I think they 
 interested me more in those days. They were more picturesque, 
 more intimate, more human. They didn't put their hands on my 
 bend and talk solemn talk to me in the presence of my elders. 
 Ministers were a decidedly awesome lot to me then. 
 
 There were compensations, however, even in the matter of 
 visiting ministers, the chief of which was sized up very well in 
 a little item that I read' the other day. At a certain home where 
 the visitinir minister was eating dinner he asked for a second 
 helping. Seeing the eyes of the small lx\v upon him, he re- 
 marked apologetically : 
 
 "I don't alwavs hive a dinner like this. Johnny." 
 
 To which the <vnll 1x>y promptly and illuminatingly replied : 
 
 " \Ye don't, either." 
 
 Despite a certain note in this story to which every small boy 
 will respond. I must confess that it was easier for me to get 
 enru r h to eat during our davs on the farm than it was for me 
 to get enough to read- When, therefore, one of the visiting 
 ministers persuaded my father to subscribe for a religious week- 
 ly he left a permanent memorial of his visit which meant vastly 
 more to me than any nassing improvement of our menu while 
 he was there. I rnncmber his name 1'cncdict to this day. and 
 the inner far which he took mv father's subscription the Xew 
 York Examiner was one of the formative forces of my youth. 
 
 The editor at that time, the Rev. Edward I.right. IX D.. was 
 an Englishman who had been long resident in this country, lie 
 was an editorial autocrat, whose pen was commonly keen and 
 not always kind, but he had something to say and he knew how 
 to siv it. His style was worth more to me than the substance 
 of what he said. His frequent tilts with the New York In Ic- 
 pen-Vnt over denominational affairs seem finite trivial t me 
 new. but the trenchant way in which he went at it ap|>ealed to
 
 50. 
 
 all the partisan and the militant in me then. The Examiner did 
 rne good. I am not sure but that it did me quite as much harm. 
 The Phariseeism of the religious press was more pronounced 
 thirty-five years ago than now. 
 
 Fifteen years after I made my first acquaintance with a 
 religious newspaper I began to write for one myself in a regular 
 editorial way. It was during my ministry in Salem, Oregon, 
 and the paper for which I wrote was born in the parsonage 
 where I lived- The Rev. J. C. Baker, one of my predecessors 
 in the pastorate there, was its founder and first editor. % The 
 paper had changed its name, and was published in Portland 
 when I began my work on the Pacific Coast. There was an- 
 other Baptist paper in San Francisco at the time, and yet an- 
 other of much more sectarian emphasis published at Dayton, 
 Wash., I think. They have all passed except the Portland paper, 
 and that is published in McMinnville now. 
 
 A new editor took charge of this paper about the time that 
 I went to Silem. He was an Oregon boy, of some size. His 
 weight was above 250 pounds; he stood over six feet tall, and 
 was one of the best proportioned men physically whom I have 
 ever seen. Once, going along the streets of Rochester, N .Y., 
 where he had studied years before, with his wife beside him, 
 they passed two street urchins engaged in some game. One of 
 them chanced to look up as he passed. 
 
 "Say, Bill, look there." he said, nudging his companion, 
 "won't that fellow be a help to his mother when he gets growed 
 up." 
 
 All in all, he has probably been the most helpful man to 
 his denominational alma mater that our church on the Pacific 
 Coast has produced- He made a good editor, although quite an 
 ordinary writer. He has had but one pastorate, and that a small 
 one, and is not a popular preacher. His strength is that of a 
 counsellor, and as such he ought to have sat in the councils of 
 the nation, or at least of the church universal, and not to have 
 wasted his mental and moral resources doing errands for de- 
 nominational devotees. One of the chief sins of sectarianism is 
 that it uses draft animals to drive go-carts, and dynamos of 
 unmeasured power to turn out toys. Both the nations and the 
 churches are wasting the world's wealth at tremendous rate in 
 keeping up standing armies which the world has outgrown. 
 
 I began to write editorials in October, 1891, and continued 
 until the summer of 1899. During this period of nearly eight 
 years I did not fail half a dozen times, I think, to turn out my 
 weekly stunt of a full page. Besides these unsigned editorials 
 I contributed a good many pages of general matter over my own
 
 51. 
 
 name. I gave up the work in 1899 both because the national 
 Baptist anniversaries were coming to San Francisco in May of 
 that year, and as missionary superintendent for Northern and 
 Central California and Nevada I was too much occupied with 
 preparations for that event, and for the deeper reason that I 
 recognized I could no longer write with the freedom with which 
 I had written before. I had dubbed the editorial page with this 
 title, "FROM OUR POINT OF VIEW." But I was drawing 
 away from much for which the paper stood, and had to stand 
 to keep peace with its constituency, and I did not want to em- 
 barrass those who were responsible for its circulation with ut- 
 terances which they could not easily either accept or refuse. 
 
 During the years that I wrote for the paper I neither asked 
 nor expected any financial return. The paper was not able to 
 pay. Its editor-in-chief, to whom I have referred, and who 
 was supposed to live by it, got only $500 or $600 a year out of 
 it. How he managed to live and raise a family on the meager 
 and uncertain returns which he thus secured no one but himself 
 and his thrifty wife knows. Those who starve to death for the 
 sake of sectarianism, whether in the pulpit or the editorial chair, 
 are not supposed to say much about it. There was a field editor 
 also who had $600 a year, and who. through toilsome years of 
 service which kept him continually traveling all over his im- 
 mense province, from San Diego to Seattle and east to the east- 
 ernmost edges of Montana, managed ' through labors really 
 worthy of an apostolic cause to force the circulation of the little 
 paper up to approximately 5000 subscribers. He was an Irish- 
 man, affable, lovable, capable, with the best traits of the race, 
 and as devoted to our sectarianism as any Catholic could have 
 been to his church. The sacrifices that go into the making of 
 religious newspapers would l>e tragic, if they were not so often 
 trivial in their results. Perhaps they are therefore more tragic, 
 rather than less. 
 
 What I have said will make manifest. I hope, that the inci- 
 dents which I am about to relate, and the judgments which I 
 pass on the religious press, are neither the careless comments 
 of ignorance, nor the indulgences of personal spite. There are 
 no men with whom I have worked toward whom I feel wanner 
 friendship to this rlay, or more of genuine personal regard, than 
 the men with whom I was so long and closely associated in 
 helping to make the paper which is now our only denominational 
 organ on the Pacific Coast. 
 
 This was one of the humorous, and also pathetic experi- 
 ences of those editorial days. 
 
 I wrote an editorial of some length, and of a good deal of
 
 52. 
 
 vigor, dealing frankly and fearlessly with patent medicines. The 
 editor must have heen very much rushed with other mat- 
 ters that week, or else his sense of humor was resting up, for 
 in the very same issue in which my editorial appeared there 
 appeared also in the center of the paper a full two-page 
 advertisement of "Pink Pills for Pale People." It was the most 
 conspicuous thing in the paper that week. 
 
 Someone who knew that I wrote the first page, a doctor, I 
 think, clipped out my editorials and sent them to me, with the 
 advertisement. I could only answer him with a good humored 
 statement to the effect that I was not running the advertising 
 pages. I might have said also that I was not dependent upon 
 the paper for my livelihood, and that the editor very probably 
 had no salary that week except what he got from advertising 
 pills whose proprietors dealt with him more generously and 
 justly than his subscribers. 
 
 I am not defending such advertising on the part of the 
 religious press, and I am glad that most of the denominational 
 newspapers are carrying little of it today- But they did not 
 lead public sentiment at this point ; they followed it, and in some 
 cases very reluctantly. I blamed them more for it then than I do 
 now, because now I see more clearly that it was primarily an 
 economic question. Only we ought to be frank 'enough to rec- 
 ognize the fact that religious people cannot be most freely and 
 effectively religious when the pay envelope is in the hands of 
 the enemy. 
 
 A more subtle illustration of the same fact came later. This 
 time my editorial had to do with a line of thought which is re- 
 lated closely to the whole purpose of these papers which I am 
 writing now. I was trying to show that an institution may be 
 thoroughly bad and yet the men who stand for it may be indi- 
 vidually good, at least in a personal way. I wrote substantially 
 as follows: "Slavery was an abomination, yet many of those 
 who justified that institution were sincerely religious people, 
 kind, honest, and lovable in a personal way. Likewise John D. 
 Rockefeller may be wholly sincere in his piety, yet this does by 
 no means justify the institution of which he is the head." T 
 have no copy of the editorial now, and it is possible that I used 
 the name also of the Standard Oil Company in a more definite 
 way than I have given the quotation above. P>ut this is, for all 
 practical purposes, the substance of what I said. 
 
 Two things happened. When the editorial appeared Rocke- 
 feller's name had somehow been changed to Rothschild. In that 
 case, the types themselves must have taken note of the fact that 
 Rockefeller is a Baptist, and an American Baptist, on whom
 
 53. 
 
 our American missionary societies were drawing heavily at the 
 lime, and that the Rothschilds are only Jews, and foreigners. 
 Besides, you see the point of the editorial was just as well pre- 
 served. 
 
 In spite of the thought fulness of the types there came to 
 me a letter from a very indignant subscriber. He was a South- 
 erner, resident in one of our chief California towns, and highly 
 honored there as a judge, and as an honorable citizen. Those 
 who knew him well tell me that he was personally a most ex- 
 cellent man- He wrote to tell me that he had stopped the paper, 
 as he could not have any such teaching in his family. He de- 
 nied seriously and earnestly that slavery was an abominition, 
 defended the institution devoutly, and. though I wrote him in 
 a kindly way, with mental recognition of the influence of his 
 earlier environments, he would make no concessions on his side, 
 and could not endure the idea that his denominational journal 
 might incline his boys to such ideas. 
 
 On the sectarian side, the religious papers are quite puerile. 
 The best of them are getting away from that sort of thing. Such 
 magazines as The Outlook, and such papers as The Congrega- 
 tionalist are quite free from religious partisanship, and set the 
 secular press a good example of intellectual dignity and open 
 miudedness. The majority of the papers on which most of the 
 more active members of the churches yet depend for direct re- 
 ligious guidance are still to a pitiful degree mere echoes of sec- 
 tarian emphasis. They cater almost invariably to the conser- 
 vatives, and not infrequently are the champions of the reac- 
 tionaries, for the reason that their liberal subscribers will tol- 
 erate that sort of thing with good-natured contempt, while the 
 reactionaries are quick to resent with open opposition any sign 
 of progressiveness in the papers which they support. Xo papers 
 are worse than the religious papers of the ordinary type, with 
 resj)ect to fawning upon the influential in their own circles. 
 They toady continually to the ministers of the big churches, and 
 the officials of the big denominational societies. They are 
 slower than the yellow journals knowingly to misrepresent fact*, 
 but they are quite as unreliable in their silences, and the coloring 
 which they give to facts. They are blind partisans to their own 
 cause and often most pharasaically unfair in dealing with the 
 other fellow. The yellow journals themselves arc doing more 
 for the cause of the common man today than is the religion* 
 press, with an honorable exception here and there. The reli- 
 gious papers generally understand labor alxnit as well as Xico- 
 demus understood Jesus. Socially, they are tremendously in 
 need of being born again.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 AN EVANGELISTIC CHURCH. 
 
 In July of 1893 I left Salem, very reluctantly, and accepted 
 an unsought invitation to Oakland, Cal. The call of California 
 to me was more than a matter of climate ; it was primarily the 
 promise of a larger opportunity in the larger town. 
 
 One incident in connection with our removal from Salem to 
 Oakland is worth mentioning, for the light it throws on our 
 present commercial methods. It cost us $19.75 to remove our 
 household goods from Salem to San Francisco, a distance of 
 750 miles. They were loaded on the boat at Salem, went up 
 the Willamette river, were transferred to the cars for the jour- 
 ney overland to the coast and then transferred to the boat again, 
 and finally landed in San Francisco instead of on the Oakland 
 side of the bay. It cost us an even $20 to get them carried 
 across the bay to our home in East Oakland, a distance of not 
 more than ten miles. A letter at the same proportionate rate 
 would have cost us two cents to send it from Salem to San 
 Francisco,, and a dollar and a half to send it across the bay. 
 
 My first pastorate in Oakland lasted four and a half years. 
 It marked the zenith of my ministry, so far as concerns those 
 conditions which are commonly counted success. I had a suf- 
 ficent salary, never large, but quite enough for our moderate 
 needs. My denominational standing was first class, and I was 
 in frequent demand for addresses at general religious gather- 
 ings. The newspapers paid very little attention to me, but al- 
 ways spoke of me approvingly when my name appeared. There 
 were continual additions to the membership of the church 230 
 in all of which nearly one-half joined us by direct confes- 
 sion of faith. We had the largest Sunday-school in East Oak- 
 land at the time, and my congregation often crowded the church 
 to an uncomfortable degree. There was unity among us, and a 
 tenderness of personal relations which makes it hard for me 
 now to speak as openly and impersonally as I should. 
 
 One of the little girls of my congregation, a precocious 
 child, was describing to me an aunt of hers who had just come 
 from Worcester, Mass-, and had not yet attended upon our 
 services. To 'the lively amazement of the family, she wound up 
 her praises of her pastor with this remark, said in her demurest 
 fashion : "And, auntie, he is such a godly man." Another lit- 
 tle girl, at a somewhat later period, was standing at the church 
 doors when I came out. Her father pointed to me and asked 
 her:
 
 "Who is that man, Irene ?" 
 
 To which, after a moment of hesitation, she answered: 
 
 "That's the man that goes wow wow." 
 
 I have often wondered of late years which of them de- 
 scribed most accurately my first pastorate in Oakland. There 
 is so much of what passes for spirituality which is little more 
 than a repitition of a single strain of sound. 
 
 My preaching was conservative then, though I made less of 
 theology than I did of the evangelistic appeal. This was the 
 secret of such success as we had. I preached "the pure gospel," 
 to use a current phrase which is as mischievously misleading 
 as most cant phrases are, and every Sunday evening after the 
 sermon I hald an inquiry meeting in more or less impromptu 
 form. 
 
 There is no point at which the churches which we call ortho- 
 dox are stronger, and weaker, than they are at the point of evan- 
 gelism. This it is, even more than their social activities and 
 their family atmosphere, which gives them their hold upon their 
 members. Most of these members have come into the churches 
 under the influence of evangelistic appeal, and the sound of that 
 sort df preaching is to them like the music of childhood which 
 stirs up memories of the tenderest emotional type. The results 
 of such preaching when it is successful are immediate and ob- 
 vious, and, despite the warning of Jesus that "the kingdom of 
 heaven comcth not with observation." most of us are impatient 
 of results which we cannot see. Evangelism at its l>est is at- 
 tended by transformations of character which are little short of 
 miraculous, and to most people the sun coming out from under 
 an eclipse is vastly more wonderful than the rising of the sun 
 every day. There are no people who seek after a sign more 
 assiduously than the Pharisees of all generations do. 
 
 "It's the cat that catches the mice that interests me." said a 
 minister in my hearing some years ago. He was young, vigor- 
 ous, resourceful, and especially eager for results- He has lx?cn 
 a very successful ecclesiastical cat, if his own figure is to l>e 
 allowed. 
 
 I was under the domination of the same idea in those 
 days. Orthodoxy appealed to me principally because it got re- 
 sults, a large hearing, an abundance of religious activity, and 
 a continuous supply of converts. -I was very slow to see that 
 spiritual forces cannot be autographed on cards of any kind, 
 and that the movements of ideas which work their slow trans- 
 formations of society are not tabulated on blacklxiards or in 
 denominational reports. 
 
 There were some things about my success even then, how-
 
 56. 
 
 ever, which disturbed me a good deal. One of the chief of 
 these was the popularity of my work, and all work of that type 
 with men toward whom I felt an instinctive and irrepressible 
 distrust. 
 
 They were good enough men in a personal way, too good 
 indeed, for their personal excellence blinded many, as it blinded 
 me at the time, to the mischief of the social methods and ideals 
 for which they stood. 
 
 One Sunday morning I preached a sermon against pay en- 
 tertainments in church. It accorded exactly with the feelings 
 of the pious part of my membership, such as were satisfied with 
 preaching and prayer-meetings and felt no need of getting to- 
 gether for just ordinary "good times." and the social converse 
 of the wellloaded board. There were others present who made 
 no objection to' what I said, chiefly because I said it and because 
 they were not quick m at argument, who, after all, liked to get 
 busy in the kitchen of the church, and enjoyed laughing with 
 one another across the tables more than they did analyzing them- 
 selves in a semi-public way before a devotional meeting. When 
 it came to every day living I am not sure now that the so-called 
 devout had any advtntage over those whom they privately re- 
 garded as less pious. On the whole, the more normal men and 
 women probably lived happier and more helpful lives. 
 
 There was present that morning a man who was not a 
 member of our church and who attended only once in awhile. 
 He was a man of large means, whose name was well known in 
 big business circles around the bay. Exceedingly simple in his 
 own personal tastes he was quite old-fashioned also in his ideas 
 of religion, having the conservatism of the south, from which he 
 came. 
 
 "T like to see a church have a little religion," he remarked 
 one time by way of explaining his disinclination to attend regu- 
 larly upon the more fashionable church to which his family be- 
 longed- He liked ''spiritual'' preaching, and evangelistic meth- 
 ods of work. 
 
 When the sermon was over that morning, he called to him 
 our church treasurer, and, with a smile, handed him a check for 
 $100. 
 
 "That's the kind of doctrine I like," he said. 
 
 Another time, on a Sunday evening, we were so crowded 
 that we had to use the lower benches from the Sunday-school 
 room on which the very little folks sat when it was their turn 
 to be taught. On one of these sat that evening a man whom T 
 instantly recognized as a large employer of labor, manager of 
 the most unscrupulous corporation in San Francisco at the 
 time. Our church treasurer, who was acting as usher also, of- 
 fered him another and a better seat, but, with the bland smile
 
 which was characteristic of him, he waived the offer aside and in- 
 dicated his pleasure in seeing the crowded condition of the church 
 for a straight evangelistic service by insisting upon sitting thus 
 commonly among the common folks. 
 
 It was the same evening, if I mistake not, for he came sev- 
 eral times, that he invited me to walk with him a far as the sta- 
 tion, where we waited together till he took the local train. His 
 conversation was quiet and deliberate, somewhat critical in a 
 smiling way of churches in general, but warmly commendatory 
 of the evangelistic methods which we were following. In a ten- 
 tative way he suggested that San Francisco offered a larger 
 field, and gave me to understand that if I would leave my Oak- 
 land pastorate and take hold of mission work in San 1-Yincisco 
 he would do what he could to see that I had sufficient financial 
 backing. Tentative and cautious as the proposition was there 
 was every reason to believe he meant business and only waited 
 my assent to get behind such a movement in a substantial way. 
 
 I repected both these men, but their preference for my 
 procedure did not strengthen it in my mind. Even then I took 
 Jesus' sayings about wealth too seriously to believe that moral 
 vision is on the side of money. 1 had the feeling already in 
 embryo that good work is not going to be everywhere well re- 
 ceived, and that the favor of the well-to-do under ordinary social 
 circumstances is not an altogether favorable sign. lint it was 
 not until years afterw.ards that I came to understand why it is % 
 that wealth looks with complacency upon church work of the 
 "spiritual" and evangelistic type. 
 
 Yet I was beginning to wake up. T turned over uncasih- 
 on my own easy bed when someone reported to me that one rf 
 the members of the church, an old man of sober habits and 
 industrious life but dependent now with his wife on an over- 
 worked and often underpaid young woman relative, had been 
 actually seen fumbling over a garbage barrel at a neighboring 
 store, kept by another of my members, in the effort to pick out 
 some pieces of unspoiled fruit to take home. 
 
 I think mv preaching was still evangelistic the next Snndav 
 night. Both the church and the pastor were so set on "saving 
 souls" that we had no time to develop a saving social sene just 
 then. If the matter was mentioned among us we agreed that the 
 misfortune was individual and unnecessary It was too Knd. of 
 course, but what man needed was to "accent Christ.'' \Yhat I 
 didn't see then was that the church itself had no idea of what the 
 accepting of Christ actually involved, and if the proposition had 
 been presented to them in all its breadth they would have shrunk 
 from it with quicker repugnance than that excited bv the gar- 
 bage barrel. They were content with evangelism, and I was con- 
 tent with evangelism, though neither of us knew it. because 
 evangelism is one of the easiest ways in the world of exciting
 
 58. 
 
 moods of "spiritual" self-satisfaction in your own mind and 
 making an appearance of helping the other fellow without hurt- 
 ing yourself. Doubtless it has its place, and I still believe in 
 the evangelistic mind when the terms are taken in their deepest 
 sense. But much of that which passes for evangelism now is 
 the substitution of playing with theology while we work be- 
 tween times at all sorts of social injustice between man and man.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE TURN* OF THE ROAD. 
 
 It was during my first pastorate in Oakland that the Rev. 
 George D. Hcrron gave a series of lectures in that city in the 
 large auditorium cf the First Congregational Church. The 
 audiences were the largest and most representative I have ever 
 seen for lecturing of that kind in a Christian church. 
 
 Hcrrrm was then in good standing with the churches, al- 
 though reckoned by many a dangerous radical. Years after- 
 wards, sitting with one of the leaders of New England religious 
 life at a dinner table in Boston, ho said to me when George D. 
 Herron was named: 
 
 "I sincerely hoped for awhile that Herron was to be the 
 prophet of our generation." 
 
 Herron divorced his wife and married another woman. T 
 do not know the merits of the controversy which raged over 
 the matter. The minister who performed the second ceremony 
 told me in confidence of conditions which, if exactlv stated, must 
 hive very much modified the condemnation of Herron among 
 religious people had the facts been generally known. This was 
 long after I hearo Herron in Oakland, of course, and on the 
 same journey during which T dined with the Boston clergyman 
 who voiced what had been undoubtedly the earnest expectation 
 of many religious people- 
 
 Herron 's standing with religious people was never better 
 than it was when he made his visit to Oakland. Very few of 
 tin se who heard him there, however, accepted his message. I 
 was one of those who almost contemptuously set his sayings 
 aside. 
 
 I remember asking him in one of the question periods which 
 followed his lectures, with callow confidence in the profoundness 
 of my own philosophy: 
 
 "How can you make a perfect society out of imperfect men 
 an 1 women?" 
 
 Herron treated the question with the indifference which it 
 deserved. It would have been just as sensible to have asked 
 Abraham Lincoln when Tie was about to sign the Emancipation 
 Proclnmation' : 
 
 "How do you propose to set men free outside. Mr. Kincoln. 
 who are not free inside'?" 
 
 The blacks are not all free since Lincoln freed them, but 
 th<>v are at leist delivered from the huge injustice of that par- 
 ticular bondage by which the white man exploited their bodies
 
 60. 
 
 at the same time that he evangelized their souls. And the 
 churches were pitifully slow to see that teaching negroes to sing, 
 "I'm Glad Salvation's Free," was no justification before the eyes 
 of an all-merciful Father for forcing them to kneel in bondage 
 before the juggernaut of the white man's dividends. Every 
 taskmaster in Christendom who grinds the faces of the poor 
 would have approved the question which T asked that night. 
 They are all willing to wait to see men individually converted 
 if you will let alone the social injustice out of which they exploit 
 their fellows. 
 
 It was the reading of a book which first seriously disturbed 
 my shallow philosophy. The book was one that had been writ- 
 ten many years before. It had been my father's in his later life, 
 and he had passed it on to me almost as soon as he had read 
 it himself. To him it was a gospel which warmed with its 
 glow the sunset of his personal fortunes, and gave him hopes of 
 a bright morning for the world when his own night was drawing 
 near. 
 
 I do not know ho\v it was I had failed to read it before, for 
 it had been on the shelves of my library before I went to Mex- 
 ico. Ministers spend so much time in intellectual mumbling 
 over ancient texts, and are so tied up to scribal scrutini/dngs of 
 dead languages, dead laws, and the literature of dead peoples 
 that many of them find little opportunity to give serious heed 
 to the great prophetic messages of the age in which they live. 
 Most of our sermonizings are built on the model of the scribes 
 who rejected Jesus, much more than they are on Jesus' method 
 of talking about nature as he saw it and life as he found it every 
 day. 
 
 It was when I had ceased the weekly preparation of two 
 sermons for each following Sunday that I came to the reading 
 which revolutionized my way of approaching truth and under- 
 standing life- The men who called me away from my Oakland 
 church to go out and minister among the churches at large had 
 in mind for me a kind of bishop's office, overlooking the smaller 
 congregations especially and promoting new congregations of 
 our sect in whatever portions of the State there was apparent 
 need and opportunity. I visited the larger churches to collect 
 missionary funds, and. with the co-operation of our "State Con- 
 vention Board" I supervised the expenditure of these funds 
 and the missionary moneys which we received from the East. 
 At that time the denomination in the East gave us two dollars 
 for every dollar which we raised ourselves. 
 
 Most of my work, therefore, was raising money, as even 
 the churches which were helped were expected to help the board
 
 61. 
 
 in return. I could use the same sermon over and over again, 
 as I had more than one hundred and thirty churches to visit. 
 To a man who is intellectually lazy, that sort of a bishop's office 
 may mean mental somnolence under the guise of administrative 
 activity. Even the travel and the broader contact with men does 
 not always compensate for the monotony of one's message and 
 the habit of dealing either with dependents on the one hand or 
 with donors on the other. Men of affairs, whether those af- 
 fairs are commercial or ecclesiastical, are seldom progressive 
 unless they use their intellectual leisure for much reading. 
 
 Fortunatey for me I read, and read omniverously, when I 
 w r as set free from the pressure of immediate pulpit preparation. 
 One of the first books which I read, whose title I have thus far 
 withheld, was "Progress and Poverty," by Henry George. 1 fol- 
 lowed it with "Equality," by Edward Bellamy, and "Socialism 
 and Social Reform," by Prof. Richard T. Ely of the Univer- 
 sity of Wisconsin then for some years. These were but intro- 
 ductory volumes, but they impressed me more definitely than 
 any other half dozen which followed. 
 
 Only one of these .books is written from the Socialist point 
 of view, "Equality," and that belongs rather to "Nationalism* 1 
 than to the larger industrial revolutionism of our time. Both 
 Henry George and Richard T. Ely are critics of the Socialist 
 philosophy. Yet their concessions, and their criticisms of the 
 present order, did more to make me a Socialist than the direct 
 advocacy of the Socialists themselves. 
 
 Two things I recognized then which are at the bottom of 
 my thinking today- One is the law of evolution covering the 
 whole field of life. The other is the influence of economic en- 
 vironment in determining the directions in which men have 
 moved. 
 
 It was during the days of my missionary superintendence 
 and while I was still resident in Oakland that I joined the Rus- 
 kin Club. This was a group of Socialist "intellectuals." includ- 
 ing a fair pro|>ortion of 1x>th professional and business men, 
 with a very few of those who are commonly dubbed working- 
 men. It was not the least snobbish, however, and its point of 
 view was emphatically that of the working class. 
 
 The largest service of the Ruskin Club to me was that I 
 met there men who had neither any deference nor any anlip- 
 pathy toward the ministry. They were more consistent than 
 most Socialists in that they recognized with perfect courtesy the 
 economic environment of the minister, and neither blamed him 
 nor excused him for it. but tried to understand him just where 
 he stood. At the same time their intellectual size made the
 
 62. 
 
 small "tatting work" of the ministry look like the light work 
 that it is for a real man. 
 
 Once, years later, when I was pastor again in Oakland of 
 the same church which I had served before, I preached one 
 night on baptism. It was a Statement in dispassionate form of 
 the ritualistic contentions of my people, and I know now that 
 I had not very much heart in it. Quite unexpectedly, a group 
 of the "Ruskin" men were there. They listened with perfect 
 courtesy, and made no sign of dissent from anything I said. 
 But I felt, and am not ashamed to admit it now. as if I had 
 been caught playing with dolls. 
 
 Twice within a period of three years I visited Southern 
 California. The first time was whil^ I was yet in my first Oak- 
 land pastorate. I went by special invitation to the meeting of 
 the "Southern California Convention" at San Diego, and gave 
 one of the addresses. I said nothing in particular, rnd it was 
 very cordially received- 
 
 My second visit was made when I was missionary super- 
 intendent. I was 'one of the special speakers at the first meet- 
 ings of the "Assembly" at Long Beach. 
 
 "We want a real message," said the young minister who 
 wrote me. "Give us something on the social line, and give it to 
 us straight from the shoulder." 
 
 I wondered, and went. 
 
 My message was on "The Unrighteousness of Our Present 
 Social Order." I did not mention Socialism. I argued quietly 
 and smilingly for an hour these four propositions: (1) Any 
 order of society is wrong which allows the private appropriate M 
 of public property. This was an argument for the common o \ 
 ership of natural resources. (2) Any order of society is wrong 
 which allows the strong to appropriate the earnings of the weak. 
 This was an exposition, shall I say an expose, of our waj;c sys- 
 tem. (3) Any order of society is wrong which crm^els men 
 to compete for the necessaries of life. This dealt frankly with 
 the waste and woefulness of the "battle for bread." (4) Any 
 order of society is wrong which puts the emphasis of human 
 endeavor on the material side of life. This was an exhibit of 
 the inevitable materialism of our present order, and a plea for 
 that order and decency which would give opportunity for a really 
 spiritual social life. 
 
 The address closed the doors of practically* every Baptist 
 church in Southern California to me and left me anathema south 
 of the Tehachapi to this day. Yet our Baptist fathers were the 
 revolutionaries of the revolutionaries in their day, and died for 
 no ritualistic form but for a larger and finer freedom of faith-
 
 63. 
 
 So does every sect, born of a religiously revolutionary passion, 
 forget the big human logic of its birth in the worship of some 
 subsequent and incidental letter of its creed. 
 
 "I know the ministers who are reading," said the foremost 
 book-seller in San 1'rancisco to me about that time. "I know 
 the men who are reading," he repeated, "and it is the men who 
 are not reading who are conservative." 
 
 The meaning of this also the literalists will miss. It might 
 have been said better, perchance. It is not just the men who 
 are not reading who are not progressing. It is rather the men 
 who are satisfied with their reading, and who want to read noth- 
 ing else. It is the men whose intellectual "good" which they 
 learned years ago has bred in them a satisfaction which prevents 
 them from going on -to something better. 
 
 Socialism did more for me than to give me a new creed ; it 
 humanized all my thinking. It humanized the origins of all the 
 creeds, and all the churches, and gave me with liberty against the 
 letter of any of them a larger sympathy with the fundamental life 
 which is working itself out through all of them. It did not make 
 me a new partisan : that I have always refused to be, even when 
 I have worked with the Socialist party. I am still a Socialist 
 more after the manner of the Ruskin Club than after the iron- 
 clad political Calvinism of any dogmatic local. Socialists, like 
 other people, are continually tumbling over their own virtues. 
 Their "good" is more dangerous to them than their bad. The 
 trouble is not so much with any of our labels as it is with our 
 exclusiveness toward all labels except our own. This is the mis- 
 chief of our good, whether it is intellectual or moral, that it will 
 not let us see how much more good, and yet more good, there 
 lies beyond .
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE TOWN- 
 
 It is told of the famous Dutch scholar, Hugo Grothus, thai, 
 when a friend admired his great industry, he replied. "Ah, I 
 have consumed much of my life in laboriously doing nothing." 
 
 One of the heavy tasks of my missionary superintendency 
 was the raising of a lot of money from a lot of poor people 
 for a quite unnecessary new church building at Palo Alto. When 
 I closed my work as missionary superintendent, to my own sur- 
 prise I became pastor of the Palo Alto congregation. 
 
 My Palo Alto pastorate lasted only one year. I had been 
 there but four months when my wife passed on beyond the great 
 silence. My life that year was further broken by three other 
 deaths within the same family circle. The kindness of the 
 whole Palo Alto community to me in that crisis I can never 
 forget. 
 
 Before my wife's death my ministry was already dis- 
 turbed. I went to Palo Alto with the purpose to try out some 
 new methods of church work and a freer type of pulpit teaching. 
 There seemed to me even at that time slight justification for any 
 enlargement of mere sectarian expenditure in Palo Alto, or any 
 like place, unless the newcomer contributed some distinctive serv- 
 ice of real consequence to the Christian cause. We tried, there- 
 fore, a combination of the Sunday-school and the morning. wor- 
 ship, and I spoke at all times from the pulpit with regard to mak- 
 ing the most in a careful way of the new liberty which had come 
 to my own life. 
 
 The new methods were accepted without complaint. The 
 new message, although more moderated to the people than the 
 changed order of work and worship, provoked instant protest 
 which even the after tenderness of our tears together could not 
 overcome. 
 
 I found two distinct attitudes in Palo Alto toward the uni- 
 versity and the whole modern mood of mind for which it stood. 
 There were a few who frankly rejoiced in it, and would have had 
 the churches rise to their intellectual opportunity and enter into 
 the new Canaan of broader religious conceptions. The majority 
 in the orthodox churches, however, were decidedly conservative, 
 and many regarded the students in the university as in very seri- 
 out peril of going far astray from the safe confines of their child- 
 hood's faith. For one class, the smaller class by far, the function 
 of the Palo Alto churches of all denominations was the readjust- 
 ment of faith among their followers to the terms of modern
 
 65. 
 
 thought- To the other class, the older people especially, and 
 those who had never been intellectually young, the students were 
 brands to be plucked from the burning. 
 
 The conservatives were responsible in the first place for the 
 building of so many sectarian churches in Palo Alto, and it is 
 the conservatives there and everywhere else who are responsible 
 for the continued waste of sectarianism today. The tragedy of 
 it is that the worship of the letter is always at the ultimate cost of 
 the big human values of life. 
 
 One Sunday morning, talking about the Genesis stories, I 
 used this illustration : I held a five-dollar goldpiece in my hand, 
 and said : "This is not pure gold ; there is some alloy in it. But 
 it is better for the purposes of circulation that it is so : and. inas- 
 much as the coin has the stamp of the Government upon it we 
 accept it readily as legal tender." 
 
 "Likewise," I continued, "these old Genesis stories are not 
 pure fact. There is doubtless some alloy of tradition here. Hut 
 the stamp of a divine revelation is upon them and they are all 
 the better for purposes of circulation because of the simple story 
 elements which are there." 
 
 This careful and really conservative illustration brought 
 me a letter from one of the chief officers of my church denounc- 
 ing me for destroying the Bible and withdrawing his own sup- 
 port. He was a good man, whose goodness made his mistaken- 
 ness of mind more mischievous for him. 
 
 Tn place of the morning doxologv. which T do not remember 
 to have found in any version of the Bible, we adopted the custom 
 of singing at the opening of the service one of the old songs of 
 the church universal. That which we used most commonly was 
 "\earer. My God, to Thee." One winter afternoon I remember 
 that my wife sat apart in a cold room that I might have privacy 
 for an hour with an old lady who Ijad especially asked for a pri- 
 vate interview. She was from Boston, and the family had pro- 
 fessional connections. In careful language and in kindly tones, 
 and with the express disclaimer of the desire to trouble me. she 
 lnl>orcd with me at great length, nevertheless, to prove to me the 
 peril of our young people through the qse of that hymn. The 
 sum of its offending was that "Xearer My God to Thee" was 
 written by a Unitarian. 
 
 Another woman, one of the best of my congregation, still in 
 the prime of life and long active in Christian service, confessed 
 to me that she had lain awake worrying all night because I had 
 ventured to suggest that the story of David and Goliath was an 
 illustration of the tendency of hero stories to gather around some 
 central heroic character. There is another text than that which
 
 > 66. 
 
 is commonly received in which the exploit of killing Goliath seems 
 to be attributed to one of David's men. 
 
 These were all good people, but they did not want the truth 
 except as it harmonized with their traditions. It is the good peo- 
 ple of the world who keep most of its lies alive. And so long as 
 molehills of ritual and dogma are larger in the eyes of the reli- 
 gious than are mountains of human helpfulness the stupidness of 
 our sectarianism will go on. 
 
 There were few ministerial students in Stanford that year, 
 but there were men among the brightest and best in the university 
 who had been headed for the ministry and had turned aside be- 
 cause they could not stomach that sort of thing. More serious 
 yet was the fact that a much larger number of the best men in 
 the great school refused to take religion seriously for the ordi- 
 nary work of the world to which they were going, because the 
 "good" people whom they knew were in a really human way so 
 little worth while, 
 
 And yet the ministers in Palo Alto that year were a fine lot 
 of fellows. Most of them would have been glad to be less sec- 
 tarian if the denominational machine behind them would have al- 
 lowed them to be so. They did a lot of real work in spite of the 
 unreality of the paltry contentions for which their distinctive 
 boundary lines stood. The churches that employed them did not 
 realize fifty per cent on their actual values because they would not 
 suffer them to be free. 
 
 The church in Salem brought me more or less into contact 
 with the Methodist school there known as Willamette University. 
 My church in Oakland was closely related to our own Baptist 
 college. The year in Palo Alto was followed not long afterward 
 by a year which I spent as a member of the faculty of the Uni- 
 versity of Nevada at Reno. I think I may claim, therefore, to 
 know a little about the atmosphere both of the big schools and 
 of the ordinary college town. 
 
 There is much about such an atmosphere of a tonic quality, 
 and it has a peculiar delightsomeness of its own. The presence 
 of so many young people is stimulating in itself, and the mood of 
 inquiry, however, "cabined, cribbed and confined" by conventions 
 of one sort and another is a mood which makes for enlargement 
 of life. On the social side also the schools have much that is at- 
 tractive to ofter. 
 
 Yet nowhere have I felt the limitations of goodness more 
 than I have in centers of supposedly intellectual life- Nowhere 
 is there less understanding of the common man. If the churches 
 sacrifice the human to their creeds, the schools sacrifice the hu- 
 man to their "culture." The theological conservatism of the one
 
 67. 
 
 is offset by the sociological conservatism of the other. The pro- 
 fessor's chair is freer than the pulpit concerning the things for 
 which sectarianism cares, but the pulpit is freer than the pro- 
 fessor's chair concerning the things for which capitalism cares. 
 In neither case is there the freedom that there ought to be, and 
 in both instances there is lack of the rich red blood of life. Both 
 pulpit and professor's chair represent a goodness which is enemic 
 in the presence of the bigegst issues of the hour. 
 
 Neither our schools nor our sch<x~>l towns are really demo- 
 cratic. They do not know the feel of the pulse of the poor. There 
 are exceptions, of course, in an individual way splendid excep- 
 tions and from these come the most formidable leaders of revolt. 
 But they are outcasts among their own class. Generally speaking 
 revolutions come from the bottom upwards, and the bulk of intel- 
 lectual influence is one the side of social injustice and customary 
 wrong. The scholars of his day did not follow Jesus as a rule, 
 and there is grave reason to suspect that the one or two who did 
 had much to do with turning Christianity aside. 
 
 No goodness is harder to thoroughly save than the goodness 
 of the college town. It is clean, nice-s]X)ken, courteous, well- 
 dressed and Laodicean through and through. Lukewarmness is 
 the favorite pose of culture. The "passion for men" is not a 
 product of polite society. It was Henry George, not a college 
 man, who voiced the most memorable expression of the deepest 
 devotion of our age, "I am for men-" And it was Dwight L. 
 Moody, free from the formalism of the schools, who broke with 
 his mighty enthusiasm the wine-skins of conventional religion a 
 generation ago. 
 
 Palo Alto has suffered less than ordinary from the cnc*Mi < 
 of culture by reason of the big humaneness of the man who has 
 led its university. He is a California monolith whose rock sub- 
 stance is tender as a child's flesh, and whose veins are warm with 
 a genuine flow of life. He will be remembered less fo'* li: -< schol- 
 arship tomorrow than for the part which he has played in pro- 
 moting the cause of the common man. If the university were as 
 forwardly human as he is. there would be a stronger stirring of 
 "the wind before the dawn" through all the broad reaches of our 
 fairly human state. There is a vast amount of goodness in our 
 schools which it is impossible yet to call really good.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A COME-OUTER IN SAN FRANCISSO. 
 
 The majority of the church in Palo Alto would have had me 
 remain when my year was done, and there was na open opposition 
 to me in a local way. But because the church property had been 
 built largely by moneys contributed in a special way by churches 
 all over the State, and because I was myself maintained while 
 there, in part, by a special denominational appropriation, I did 
 not feel as free as I would have in the case of a self-supporting 
 church, ttesides, I was weary of sectarianism and wanted to try 
 some work outside of the lines. So I joined a few of my own 
 mood in the effort to establish an independent work in San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 We called ourselves "Christian Comrades." There was no 
 creed among us. and no church organization. We kept our mem- 
 bership individually wherever it happened to be and advised those 
 who came to us to do the same. It was not another denomina- 
 tion which we sought. Of that we were, if anything, too much 
 afraid. All that we wanted was a chance to give in San Fran- 
 cisco a free Christian message in the most untrammeled way. 
 
 Our experience in a financial way reminds me now of the 
 story of the man who remarked to a friend: 
 
 "You see that man over there? Well, twenty years ago he 
 began business in this town with nothing but a borrowed basket." 
 
 "And now?" inquired the friend expectantly. 
 
 "He still owes for the basket," was the laconic replv. 
 
 We owed nothing when we got through in San Francisco, 
 because we did not borrow, but we never got beyond the basket 
 with which we began. 
 
 Our intention was to support ourselves with our hands and 
 spend all our spare time in an unpaid ministry. There wasn't 
 any spare time for most of us. And even then to make a living 
 those of our company who had families to support had to get out 
 of town. We had no capital of our own, and we were deter- 
 mined that we would not ask favors of those who had, lest we 
 limit the liberty of our social message. The experiment lasted 
 three months and then we were starved out. 
 
 Part of mv Sundays I spent in going about and making a 
 studv of the other come-outers in the town. It was not a very 
 inspiring experience. Generallv speaking, the meetings were 
 small and were a little more lifeless than the churches. I wound 
 up on Palm Sunday by attending the services at St. Luke's Epis- 
 copal church. T thoroughly enjoyed it. Ritual commonly is too
 
 69. 
 
 luxurious for my temperament. But I felt like <. ne who has been 
 out all day for a cold drive and I wanted a warm room. 
 
 Nothing is more mistaken than the notion that truth is the 
 mere denial of that which is false, or that gcxnl consists^n a sim- 
 ple abstinence from that which is bad. Both truth and goodness 
 are vital and never merely of a negative character. If there is 
 any choice between them I think the Sadducees, those who simply 
 deny superstitions, are a little less to be desired than the Phari- 
 sees who are at least warm-blooded enough to want to affirm 
 something. The Lord deliver us from a steady diet of negatives. 
 
 It is odd, too, how easily men can mistake their perception 
 of the failure of other people's good'^ss for the growth of good- 
 ness in themselves. None are so useless as those who only know 
 how useless other people are. 
 
 We failed because we would neither fawn nor fr r ht. We did 
 not propose to toady to San Fraud ^"^'s money, and we were not 
 there to increase misunderstanding and ill will. The churches 
 would not let us speak unless we spoke their shiblx>leths. and 
 those who curiously came to hear us did not care to come again 
 unless we would blow up and burn up shibboleths for them all 
 the time. I could have found a platform had I l>een willing to 
 give the social message alone, but I wanted to give the religious 
 message too. 
 
 There is more to that last remark than appears. Most men 
 w r ho are saying good things in public are saying them with a tacit 
 agreement not to say a lot of other good things. They may not 
 be conscious of the agreement, or they may deny it, but it i^ 
 there. Give the religious message, even in a "liberal" pulpit, ar 1 
 you must muzzle most of the social message which needs to be 
 said. The theological liberals are a well-fed lot. and they IK 1 I a 
 good share of the box seats when the pie is going around. You 
 can say a lot of good things to them theologically, but yt u have to 
 be "good" in a much more submissive way when you would talk 
 downright democracy to them. If "Silence and Health" con- 
 tained as much radical sociology as it does radical psyschology 
 half the Christian Science churches would be empty next week. 
 
 But before the social radicals applaud this at the expense of 
 the theological progressives let me say with equal candor that 
 they also put the mouthpiece between the teeth of their talkers. 
 Many of them will prate of the narrowness of the churches who 
 cannot l>car to have a man utter a word of his honot religious 
 convictions on one of their platforms, though it be said with not 
 the slightest desire to force another man's thought. When they 
 are supposed to be talking economics they will themselves drag 
 in philosophic materialism by the hour. Let another man em-
 
 70. 
 
 phasize the spiritual in the broadest fashion, and, though he may 
 have left all to follow economic righteousness itself they will 
 sneer at 'him as a "come-to-Jesus" deceiver of the people. There 
 are none who need more to make way for other people's good than 
 those who are sure that they have got a monopoly on the latest 
 brand themselves. 
 
 Pad people can make way for other kinds of badness. It is 
 good people who find it hard to believe in any goodness, either 
 intellectual or moral, except their own. I have found only one or 
 two platforms yet where I can say all my message with all my 
 heart. Such a platform, however obscure, is worth a fortune a 
 week. 
 
 My most interesting ministry during those months in San 
 Francisco was with one man, and he a prisoner. 
 
 He was a boyish looking fellow, about 21 years of age, with 
 an appearance so prepossessing that those who knew best how 
 untrustworthy he was nevertheless could not keep themselves from 
 trusting him. T knew prisoners and prison life too well to over- 
 estimate the chances of reform, but I think this boy was abso- 
 lutelv the most discouraging case that I ever met. 
 
 He was the product of a good home. Roth his father and 
 mother, whom T came to know well, were sincerely religious, and 
 as simple as could be in their lives. The father was the picture of 
 sedate trustworthiness and held a responsible position of a semi- 
 public character. The mother was a literalist. both in her reli- 
 gious views and her moralitv, but of kind spirit, besides being of 
 exact life. There was another boy in the family who was a re- 
 spectablv model young man. 
 
 This bov. the vounsrer. rn'l left ^ trail nf crime half the length 
 of the Coast and more when I met him. He made not the slight- 
 est effort to deny it after denial was useless, and made no pre- 
 tense^ of penitence. He had simply played the fool, to use his 
 own lnncruaje. and n Didn't know why. 
 
 With the help of one or two others I got him out of prison 
 nfter six weeks there, and took him to my own home. The first 
 thing that he wanted before he would go into the house was a 
 bath. He was niceness itself in his personal wavs. T got him a 
 phce in the Government service. He held it a few months, and 
 did the thing over again, worse than before. Then he went to 
 the penitentiary, but for two years instead of fourteen, through 
 the fatherly interest of the Judge. When he came out T took 
 him into my home in Oakland, where he staved till T got him 
 work asrain. this time also in a public institution. 
 
 T read the riot act to him then. "This is your last chance, 
 so far as I am concerned," I said. He swt>re by all that was holy
 
 71. 
 
 to be good. He was for six months. Then he stole again. I 
 refused at first to see him. Then I thought again, and again got 
 him a place. After the very first time 1 had been perfectly frank 
 with those who took him. A friend in San Francisco, with a 
 marvelous fund of faith in his fellows, took him in. and treated 
 him as trustingly as an own son. The young fellow betrayed 
 the trust almost as quickly as it was given. Then we let him go. 
 
 Strange to say, the last I knew of him he had married and 
 settled down to a decent life. 
 
 There was this other strange fact to his credit. Although 
 he had two or three times the free run of our home there was 
 never anything missing. Yet he confessed that when the mood 
 was on him he was helpless and that there had been circum- 
 stances of larger trust toward him when the communion table it- 
 self could not hold back his hands. 
 
 I studied his badness a good deal. I think now it was rooted 
 in the defective goodness of those around him. His i>eople were 
 people of the "saving" type, not parsimonious, I think, but pains- 
 takingly careful of the pennies which came their way. He drank 
 in thriftiness with his mother's milk and learned the im}K>rtance 
 of money on his father's knee. 
 
 The church which taught him to worship God also taught 
 him. without knowing it, a more immediate worship of money. 
 Its very minister had his title from a small school to which one 
 of the principal members of the same church had given $500 
 but a very little while before. The connection between the 
 two events, the giving of the money and the getting of the de- 
 gree, was a joke among the ministers of the denomination be- 
 yond the boundaries of the State. It was a well-to-do church, 
 built upon lines of the conventional primacy of the pocket book- 
 so long as the money was gotten in conventionally respectable 
 ways. 
 
 There was the trouble with the boy. He had not learned 
 to take what belonged to other people in legitimate ways, lie 
 was for direct action, and indirect ways of getting other people's 
 goods have always been more res|>ectable. Also in him the 
 desire for life's comforts and conveniences was not evenly dis- 
 tributed over his days, but sometimes congested in the form 
 of impulses which were too strong for a naturally llabby will. 
 Had he consumed his years with one long, steady pull to get 
 rich, so that there was nothing left of him but a heart of stone 
 covered with a skin of parchment it would have ln-en forgiven 
 him even by the church if he had been successful within the 
 verv loose limits of the law.
 
 72. f 
 
 T am not excusing him , nothing of the kind. He suffered 
 and his nearest friends could not keep him from being burned 
 v hen he insisted upon putting his hands on the stove to sec 
 whether it was as hot as before. "Sin and its punishment grow 
 on the same stem." But the goodness around him had never 
 gripped him. I suspect that was so because it had never 
 gripped hold of God very profoundly at the other end. It was 
 afraid of reality, and so its unreality showed up big when it 
 found a weak wire in him. The bad would be too amazed to 
 be bad if the good were ojice to get busy ancj be actually good.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 THE MORALS OF MODERATION. 
 
 Less than half a dozen years ago I sat in his own study 
 with the well-known minister of a well-known church of another 
 denomination in one of the northern towns of California. We 
 talked with utmost freedom along theological lines and with 
 entire harmony. Before I left him he remarked with a smile: 
 
 "Well, I agree with you practically in all your positions, 
 but it wouldn't be good policy for me to say these things in 
 my pulpit." 
 
 The same remark almost to the letter was made to me in 
 my own study here in Los Gatos a year or so later by a neigh- 
 boring pastor of my own denomination. Only, in the latter 
 case, there was much pronounced criticism of my own open 
 methods of teaching. 
 
 I can call to mind offhand now within the circle of my ac- 
 quaintance in Northern California half a dozen ministers, rep- 
 resenting three or four of the leading evangelical denomina- 
 tions, who have made like admissions to me, though perhaps 
 not in just so many words. 
 
 There are many who will seize upon this statement of the 
 situation to condemn the ministry wholesale for it. 
 
 "Ministers are not preaching what they believe," these \vill 
 say. "We have long felt so, and here is one who is frank 
 enough to set forth the facts." 
 
 Many conservative Christians in the churches will join in 
 the complaint of insincerity and will use my admission against 
 the very progressiveness for which I stand. 
 
 "Liberalism does not make for honesty," these will con- 
 tend. 
 
 Which reminds me of the old sea captain who heard a 
 schoolboy declaim Tennyson's famous lines on "The Charge of 
 the Light Brigade'!" 
 
 "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward!" re- 
 cited the boy. But the captain, in the confidence of his nautical 
 knowledge and utterly void of imagination, blurted out : 
 
 "The old fool ! If he meant a league and a half, why didn't 
 he say so ?" 
 
 There are no fools like the literalists. whether they are in- 
 side or outside of the churches. People who have no imagina- 
 tion are always stumbling into absurdities over their own wooden 
 logic. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that I stand now for the open 
 course. I do not believe that policy is the best honesty. \\lv ther
 
 74. 
 
 honesty is the best policy or not. But I have found it better 
 to try to understand men than I have to condemn them. And 
 the course which these men are pursuing I think I under- 
 stand because I tried it myself once on a time. 
 
 It was during mjy second pastorate in Oakland, with the 
 same church which I had served before. I was with them the 
 first time about four and a half years, the second time four- 
 teen months less. The second pastorate was on the face of 
 it more successful than the first. The congregations were 
 larger, often overflowing the much larger church building. 
 My support was more liberal by several hundred dollars a 
 year. The additions to the membership were many. The de- 
 nominational press gave me the most flattering and fallacious 
 write-up I ever had. 
 
 The call to this second pastorate was a compromise, in 
 which affection prevailed over discretion on both sides. They 
 knew that my thinking was not what it had been years before, 
 but their inquiries were incidental and they trusted me to 
 make no trouble where we disagreed. I knew that their 
 thinking had not changed, and that they were resolved not to 
 change, and I trusted my head to find a way in which we could 
 work together in love. 
 
 "Religion is not a matter of definitions, old or new ; it is 
 a life. That which I held yesterday has passed as to its form, 
 but the form of what I hold to-day will also change. Why. 
 then, contend over the incidental? Let us rather 'talk of the 
 big things of character and conduct together, and let me 
 lead them gradually to see that reality is not dependent upon 
 form." 
 
 This program wks, as I have indicated, an apparent suc- 
 cess. As a matter of fact, it was a failure from the first on 
 both sides. 
 
 "I suppose I ought not to say it," remarked a woman to 
 me in the midst of that second Oakland ministry, "but there 
 is something about your preaching which makes me feel that 
 you are not quite sincere." 
 
 She was not a member of the church', and she was eccen- 
 tric besides. But she knew me better than I knew myself just 
 then, and, although I winced under her words, they did me 
 good. 
 
 I am not judging others in this confession even at this 
 point. I only know that the effort to conceal my convictions 
 in what I dubbed minor matters was a continual crucifixion 
 to me. I could not give myself to the church with perfect free- 
 dom, and they could not accept what I said without restraint.
 
 75. 
 
 We kept ourselves from outward contention, but we kept our- 
 selves from the most intimate co-operation at the same time. 
 
 It was during that particular pastorate that a brother min- 
 ister on the same side of the bay put his problem before a 
 group of his fellow ministers. 
 
 "There is a woman in my church," he said, "whose hus- 
 band is a saloonkeeper. She is an excellent woman, and I 
 enjoy ministering to her and to her children. You- all know 
 what I think of the saloon, and that I have no use for it. But 
 i I come out in my pulpit and denounce the liquor traffic I 
 shall lose this woman and her family from the congregation. 
 Isn't it better to lead her on quietly and give her the message 
 in part than it is to drive her away from my ministry alto- 
 gether?" 
 
 The unanimity with which his proposal of moderation at 
 this point was refused was interesting and illuminating to me. 
 
 "There can be no excuse to-day for any compromise with 
 the saloon," was the unanimous verdict. 
 
 "A moral issue," many will say. And it is not a moral 
 issue whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch or not, or whether 
 David was the author of certain psalms or somebody else. 
 Then w*hy say anything about these things if the saying of it 
 makes trouble? 
 
 Why, indeed, except that the issue between modernism 
 and medievalism is much more than a matter of the author- 
 ship of books, or portions of books. It is the conflict be- 
 tween formal and spiritual. authority, between the cage of the 
 letter and the boundless atmosphere of life. But whether this 
 definition of the difference is accepted or not it is plainly in 
 a personal way the issue of whether a man shall be free to 
 speak all his soul or not. If he is consciously keeping some- 
 thing back and is trying to persuade himself that it is not im- 
 portant because he cannot utter it, there is a moral issue in- 
 volved. 
 
 Can goodness profit by the sacrifice of frankness? I tried 
 to think so then. I cannot think so now. 
 
 Most ministers who pursue the course of partial silence 
 are doing so neither from mercenary motives nor because of 
 any conscious cowardice. 
 
 They are doing so in what they believe to be the inter- 
 ests of a larger good. 
 
 "It is better to say what we can say and be allowed to 
 say it than it is to say all that we would say and be refused 
 the right to say anything at all. Better a ministry with some 
 minor silences than to lose our ministry or wreck it in con- 
 tention at last."
 
 76. 
 
 It is so they reason, and it is so that many of the finest 
 fellows in the ministry hold to conscious sincerity with a con- 
 scious consent to the withholding of much which they would 
 like to say. Those who think them dominated by the dollar 
 or by a* timid spirit do them wrong. 
 
 Yet I believe their reasoning is mistaken and mischievous 
 in a high degree. The one proposition to which I am con- 
 tinually returning in this confession is that the half good is 
 the most dangerous enemy of the good. It is for this I have 
 written, not to either exhibit or justify myself. Because I 
 have come to it through years of personal travail, I am tell- 
 ing this truth in a personal way. The half good, whether of 
 faith or of deed, is that which we mean when we talk of good- 
 ness, and it is that more than the open misconduct or the 
 open unbelieving of the world which is the chief impediment 
 to better thinking and to better life. 
 
 It is neither the open sins nor the open insincerities of 
 men which we have most need to fear. It is the goodness 
 which stops short of being good, and the truthfulness which 
 stops short of being altogether true. 
 
 A word more at this point. When a man for the sake of 
 harmony in larger matters consents to play a part in small 
 matters it is the small matters which are emphasized in the 
 mind of the one who has forced the concession upon him. 
 The only way to lead men out of the letter is to refuse to walk 
 with them in it yourself. 
 
 One evening in that second ministry in Oakland I sat up 
 late in my study talking with two of the leading men of the 
 congregation. The question which we discussed till after 10 
 o'clock that night was this : How could Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son be saved inasmuch as he did not believe in the deity of 
 Jesus Christ? 
 
 Both of these men are in the prime of life. They are in- 
 telligent fellows, as the world goes. But with all my efforts 
 to explain that a man's salvation is not something external 
 to him, but is the actual status of his moral health, and that 
 the relation of Jesus to our salvation is not one of intellectual 
 definition on our part, but of vital correspondence with him in 
 spiritual experience and attitude, these men in their devotion 
 to dogma could not see how Emerson, with all his acknowl- 
 edged excellence, could possibly have been saved. 
 
 Some time afterward one of these men appeared before 
 a certain legislative committee at Sacramento to protest on 
 behalf of his employers against the eight-hour law for women.
 
 77. 
 
 The womanhood of the factory for which he spoke is to a 
 considerable extent a girl-womanhood of a very immature and 
 impoverished sort. 
 
 Yet I speak of his action here not with reference to the 
 single act itself, nor with regard to the special circumstances 
 of that particular situation. I have used the incident simply 
 to show the manner in which good men may so misplace the 
 emphasis of their thinking as to make their very goodness 
 a social menace and offense. To live in theological abstrac- 
 tions or personal pieties and proprieties when one ought to 
 live in the forward movements of the race is to make one's 
 personal excellencies more dangerous than the personal de- 
 ficiencies of another man who has the more serviceable public 
 spirit. 
 
 And men are not going to be helped to right thinking by 
 the evasive silences of their teachers. You cannot stop grown 
 men from playing with dolls by joining them in their play. 
 Only an absolutely honest man can help other men to be as 
 honest as they have need to be. If you are going to lead your 
 fellows into the light the first requirement is that you shall 
 walk in all of the light that you have yourself. Being silent 
 about even small convictions is no way to breed big convic- 
 tions in others- 
 It was because in my own experience I became sick of 
 all compromising silences before my people, and because I de- 
 termined that for myself I must be first of all a man, whether 
 I remained a minister or not, that I left Oakland and all 
 thought of another pastorate for a time. My tilt with the au- 
 thorities in Oakland, of which I am about to speak, had 
 nothing to do directly with the closing of my pastoral serv- 
 ice there.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 WHERE CRIME BEGINS. 
 
 One event of my second pastorate in Oakland it is im- 
 possible to pass without mention here, although I have no de- 
 sire to stir up heart-sickening' memories in others, nor to dwell 
 at length upon my own limitations of social understanding at 
 the time. But the experience brought vividly before me the 
 futility of our present punitive attitude toward crime, and 
 opened up to me in a startling way the social origins of much 
 of the individual offending which we stupidly insist upon treat- 
 ing in a purely individual way. 
 
 A young man of my congregation, one of exceptionally 
 lovable personality, was murdered for the money that was on 
 him, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. I was on my 
 vacation at the time at Lake Tahoe, was called home just be- 
 fore he died and it fell to me to bury him. It proved to be 
 that he had been killed by certain boys of the neighborhood 
 who had gone on from one phase of rowdyism to another un- 
 til their lawlessness ended in this ruthless act. They had 
 not intended the death of their victim, but they showed them- 
 selves inhumanly indifferent to the consequences for him in 
 order to possess themselves of his money. 
 
 There had long been a degree of rowdyism in our neigh- 
 borhood which was more than a neighborhood disgrace. Even 
 after this culminating crime the disturbed conditions contin- 
 ued far into the fall and winter months. Police protection 
 was inadequate and reports were frequent of offenses on the 
 streets at night which threatened a repetition of the affair, or 
 worse. There were circumsances in connection with the pros- 
 ecution of the offenders in this particular case, and their as- 
 sociates in much previous and hitherto unpunished lawless- 
 ness, which did not contribute to calm the public mind in our 
 part of the city. 
 
 I dealt with the matter from my pulpit at first in quite 
 an individual way. It was evident enough that the boys them- 
 selves were not wholly to blame^ but I went no farther than 
 did most others in the neighborhood at the time, and was 
 content to seek the cause in the want of proper discipline and 
 education at home. It gave me an opportunity to say some 
 very plain things to other parents of the neighborhood whose 
 children were in danger of traveling the same road. I was 
 especially severe on the willingness of fathers and mothers to 
 defend their offspring against a reasonable disciplinary au-
 
 79. 
 
 thority in school and other public places, and to take their 
 part whether they were right or not. So far as I touched on 
 the social aspects of the matter at all, it was to insist that a 
 man ought to hold the public welfare above partiality for his 
 own child, and that he ought not to defend even his own flesh 
 and blood against a just punishment for crime. 
 
 I preached a series of sermons on "The Boy Problem." 
 and by special request followed these with a second on "The 
 Girl Problem." Their style was more sensational than T would 
 make them now. The people responded with the largest at- 
 terldance the church had ever known. One of the newspapers 
 exploited many of my more epigrammatic sayings, and. al- 
 though there were minor criticisms on the part of conserva- 
 tive members, the popular success of my methods and the per- 
 suasion that my arrows were pointed in the right direction, 
 whether they were too much feathered or not, gave me the 
 cordial support of my congregation as a whole. 
 
 It was shallow work as I see it now. That which fol- 
 lowed was a little deeper, but it was far from sounding the 
 depths. T was looking in the direction from which the trouble 
 came, but I had need to see a good deal further yet. 
 
 As I had said some very plain things about parents be- 
 fore, I said some very plain things about the city and about 
 civic government now. In neither case did I speak as con- 
 servatively and judicially as T might have done. P>ut there 
 was need of plain words from some one. and I was stirred 
 to the heart with the outrages which had happened and with 
 the prospect of more. 
 
 Sensationalism in a preacher, as long as it follows indi- 
 vidual lines, is seized upon approvingly by even the paid and 
 kept press. Let him touch the sources of social corruption and 
 those who profit by it will at once take the alarm. That por- 
 tion of the press in Oakland which had grown fat on graft 
 and which has been ever since the consistent defender of in- 
 decency on both sides of the bay, was at once stirred up 
 against me and proceeded to stir up the authorities to a course 
 of procedure, which, however it may have seemed to discredit 
 me, was of no particular credit to themselves. 
 
 looking backward at the matter after the lapse of years, 
 and after I have come myself to more moderate faith in the 
 efficiency of mere police methods. 1 have no desire to con- 
 ceal my own fault I spoke in terms too sweeping at the 
 time. The information which I had received was confiden- 
 tially given and could not IK' publicly used. ( lood people who 
 ought to have been willing in the interests of the public \\cl-
 
 80. 
 
 fare to tell what they had told me were constrained by per- 
 sonal timidity or economic interest to keep silence, and I could 
 not in honor so much as mention their names. I was there- 
 fore put in the position of having said publicly what I could 
 not with legal evidence publicly maintain. 
 
 Having said this much sincerely about my own course I 
 am bound to say with equal sincerity that the methods of the 
 authorities were as mistaken as my own. How much sin- 
 cerity there was back of them I do not know, and I. am not 
 disposed to raise that issue now. There was vastly more of 
 the spectacular on both sides than there should have been. 
 Had the authorities tried as hard to uncover the crookedness 
 in civic affairs as they did to cover themselves against public 
 accusation they could have justified the substance of all that 
 I had said and could have served the community to much 
 better effect. 
 
 That this was so. one incident toward the close of the 
 matter proved. \Yhen my friends had failed me and the good 
 people of Oakland stood in silent acquiescence while the for- 
 mal evasion of the facts went on a man from the underworld 
 came to me and proffered his help. He made no pretense of 
 any high public motives, but he was willing if need be to al- 
 low me the use of his name. Tt was not necessary. That 
 which he had told me was easilv proved. Within a stone's 
 throw of the verv room in which the Grand Jury sat when 
 they formulated their clearance of the city's character against 
 whnt I had said was one of the worst brothels of the town, 
 which was doing not onlv its own lawless business in open 
 contempt of the authorities of the city, but was selling liquor 
 after midnight hours, an offense explicity against the law. This 
 1 proved by sending men one Saturday evening to make per- 
 sonal investigation, and these investigators were ready with 
 any public proof which might be reciuired. The woman who 
 ran this resort was at the same time living in one of the well- 
 known hotels of Oakland in open adultery with one of the 
 clerks of the Superior Court. 
 
 I said so openly from my pulpit, withholding both his 
 name and hers, but offering to give them to anv authorities 
 of the city who would call upon me for them. There was a 
 flurry of talk in the papers and on the streets the next day, 
 and certain of the authorities loudly proclaimed their inten- 
 tion of callinjT npon me nt once for the proof. They never 
 did. The guilty man stayed away from his desk for some 
 days, but although he thus betrayed his identity he suffered 
 no harm in an official way. Nearly two years later, in the 
 summer of 1<X)7. while T was traveling in the East, 'the woman, 
 in a fit of iealous rage, threw the contents of a bottle of vit- 
 riol into the man's eyes while he was attending a banquet,
 
 81. 
 
 from the effects of which, after a few days of horrible suffer- 
 ing, he died. But even this did not open Oakland's official 
 eyes. 
 
 My own eyes opened slowly to the real significance of 
 all this sort of thing. Yet this I perceived dimly at the time, 
 that the roots of the rowdyism and the consequent crime in 
 our own suburban section of the city ran into the cellars of 
 the best homes in Oakland, and not only the homes from which 
 the offenders themselves came. Even the shameful liaisons 
 of this w"oman and this man. and the exploitation of vice by 
 which she lived and many of her kind, was a part of the price 
 which the city paid for a goodness which was most superficial- 
 ly and indifferently good. 
 
 Oakland respectability was built on foundations of for- 
 tunes made by selling the rights of the poor to special priv- 
 ilege. To secure this sale a more or less open alliance was 
 made with the vendors of vice and with the exph ; ers of the 
 weaknesses of men. such as the brothels, the gambling houses 
 and the saloons. To maintain this alliance a certain ineffi- 
 ciency of the police force of the city was necessary. One of 
 the by-products of this inefficiency was the rowdyism which 
 ended in murder that Saturday night on the "Old County road." 
 Therefore I say that the roots of that rowdyism and tint crime 
 were interwoven with the foundation stones of many of the 
 finest homes in Oakland, and laid hold more or less on the 
 inefficient morality of all the decent people of the town. 
 
 This is. I believe, a sound analysis of all our civic cor- 
 ruption, and to a large extent of all our criminal life. \W 
 prepare a kind of mornl mushroom soil in which to grow tb" 
 quick fortunes which honest labor could never in a thousan-1 
 years produce. What wonder if some of the erowth which fal- 
 lows is of an openly jx)isonous character. Keep a city " oak 
 enough to let legal plunder go on and all kinds of i11**"-l '-hin- 
 dering will breed there as naturally as staMes breed Hies. Nine- 
 tenths of what we call crime is by-product of what we call 
 business. 
 
 This is the thing which T ought to have said in Oakland 
 then and which T did not know enough to c ay. It would have 
 been harder to sav than what T did say. My own people were 
 not disturbed appreciably bv the effort to discredit me in wib- 
 lic. Some of them had told me the things on which I had 
 based my utterance*, and they knew that in substance mv 
 charges were true, whether the phrasing of them was fortu- 
 nate or not. Moreover, it was easv enough for them, as it 
 is for the averacre congregation, to stand attacks uixn the citv 
 government. There were very few of them who depended 
 upon the city government for their support. But tlu-v did 
 depend upon business. Their own respectability was involved
 
 82. 
 
 in the moral accountability of industrial and commercial insti- 
 tutions. To have proven that they were themselves partners 
 in the offending would have been a far more unpleasant task. 
 Muck-raking is popular in proportion as it is punitive of some- 
 body else. And that, as I saw afterward, is exactly where all 
 our muck-raking fails. It is a kind of scapegoat superstition 
 by which we punish a more or less guilty individual here and 
 there and let ourselves go. 
 
 Elsewhere in these articles I have said, with what may 
 seem to some like an unfeeling severity, that in general crim- 
 inals are a stupid lot. They are. If they were really shrewd, 
 they would be respectable and get all the advantages of doing 
 wrong in polite ways. The man who accepts a bribe is a fool. 
 The man who gives it is not much better. It is far more 
 profitable to be the man who hires both, or, better yet, the 
 man who hires him, or the dividend drawer still two or three 
 grades of respectability removed. It is nicer yet to be the 
 women folks of the family who carry the prayer books or the 
 theater tickets, for that matter, bought with part of the plun- 
 der. But this is not a nice or a safe thing to say in public. It 
 isn't even wise in a worldly way, as I learned, to tell what 
 you know about the wrongs that involve respectable officials. 
 The thing that is safe is to hammer the saloons and the 
 brothels, or if they are too closely associated with the sources 
 of your revenues, to go after the men who already have the 
 stripes on them, or the boys who are headed toward prison 
 doors. That is safe, and you can satisfy your moral enthusi- 
 asm and win the approval of all who are ready to rebuke 
 with you the individual and the disreputable wrong-doing with- 
 out danger of disturbing respectability at the point where its 
 unearned revenues begin. But crime doesn't begin with sa- 
 loons. It doesn't even begin with city officials. When vou 
 get to its origin you will find that most of our respectability 
 comes from the same source.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE EAST. 
 
 I left Oakland not because of anything which I had said, 
 hut because of some things which I wanted to say. And be- 
 cause I thought it impossible to find a pulpit in California 
 where I could say all my soul. I turned my face toward the 
 East. ij.j, !r : 
 
 I had been twenty years on the Pacific Coast and had seen 
 nearly every portion of it from Yautepec. in the "tierra cali- 
 ente" south of Mexico City, to Vancouver, across the British 
 border on the north. T had tasted an exceptional variety of 
 experience, so far as the ministry is concerned, and had made 
 mvself acquainted with all sorts of service which is commonly 
 called good- I knew the high inspirations of the ministry in 
 a spiritual way. I knew the comforts of its home and family 
 aspects. T had tried evangelism wtih what seemed like suc- 
 cess. I had ministered to many in a personal way. Prisons 
 and asylums T knew, and all kinds of charitable work. The 
 goodness of the coast had been sincerely good to me. And yet I 
 had found this very goodness one of the chief obstacles in 
 the way of the larger good which T had come to feel the min- 
 istry ought to mean. I could not do the good T wanted to do 
 in the fields that I knew best, because there the lesser good 
 occupied the ground. 
 
 The Eastern trip was a iourney of exploration rather than a 
 journey of expectation. T did not go with any thought of seek- 
 ing a pastorate there. T just wanted to see if goodness was 
 hrgcr in the East than it was here: if truth wa t s freer on the 
 other side of the Rockies than on this side. 
 
 I had been East just once in the twenty years, six years 
 before. That trip lasted three months and took me from sea to 
 sea. T was making observations then, but not under the most 
 favorable conditions. This time I took eight months for the 
 tour. I tarried more or less in twenty-one States. I lec- 
 tured and preached in large cities and small, and held evan- 
 gelistic meetings along lines of the "new evangelism" with 
 rural congregations and with one or two churches of some 
 prominence. T attended upon Or- Torrey's evangelistic meet- 
 ings in Chicago, and spent two weeks with the summer con- 
 ference of Christian workers in Xorthfu-ld. Mass. 1 was with 
 the Salvation Army at Old Orchard. Maine, and in the fa- 
 mous Fulton street noonday prayer meeting in New York City. 
 I heard the priest l>cfore a crowded congregation in St. Pat-
 
 84. 
 
 rick's on Fifth avenue, and Dr. Dawson before a much more 
 fashionable gathering in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian 
 Church, a little nearer Central Park, and attended upon Sun- 
 day evening service at the Judson Memorial on the edge of 
 Washington Square down town. I met ministers, evangelists, 
 laymen of national and international reputation. And every- 
 where I looked to see whether the good was in the way of 
 the larger good . 
 
 Let me tell my impressions in three or four incidents which 
 happened by the way. One of them, the P>oston -story, belongs 
 to the earlier trip. 
 
 One evening I dined in a prominent city of the Middle 
 West with one of the most prominent men in the educational 
 circles of the West. He is not a church man, but so far as I 
 could see. showed no hostility to either churches or creeds, 
 except when they got in the way of human good. This inci- 
 dent he told me in quite an unimpassioned way, with more of 
 discouragement than resentment in his tones. 
 
 "I had occasion to attend a little while ago a notable ban- 
 quet in Chicago." he said. "There were many men of promi- 
 nence present from all the professions. The discusions turned 
 largely upon issues of public welfare. It was pathetic to me 
 that in nearly every instance the burden of protest and prog- 
 ress was taken up by men of secular connections, laymen, and 
 that, generally speaking, the churchmen present were apolo- 
 gists for the existing order, and especially for the big special 
 interests." 
 
 A little later T was in Chicago myself and was invited to 
 address our denominational ministerial gathering there- My 
 theme was "The Message of Jesus to the Men of Today." 
 Two points I made in particular, openness to truth and human 
 interest that is, the passion for men. I spoke freely and with 
 a sense of opportunity which made the hour of much impor- 
 tance to me. 
 
 The discussion which followed could hardly have been 
 more reactionary had it taken place in San Francisco or Los 
 Angeles. There were exceptions, and the speakers who ac- 
 cepted my message were men of more than local prominence. 
 But the mere suggestion that ministers might do well .to read 
 R. J. Campbell's "New Theology/' which was just out, before 
 they condemned it brought down upon the head of the speak- 
 er and the name of the London minister a denunciation and 
 dissent which was barely kept inside the limits of courtesy. 
 Much of personal kindness indeed was shown both then and 
 afterward, but the men who held our leading churche showed
 
 85. 
 
 themselves still followers of a most conservative evangelistic 
 and individualistic faith. 
 
 One of those who received my message told me this ex- 
 perience of his own. He was called up one day over the tel- 
 ephone by a brother minister and urged to be ready on the 
 following Monday to deal vigorously with Dr. J. B. Foster's 
 recent writing on "The Finality of the Christian Religion." 
 Supposing it to be a pamphlet or booklet he went over to the 
 University of Chicago library to get it and found, to his sur- 
 prise, that it was a large and, for most ministers, an expen- 
 sive work. Nevertheless he paid his four dollars and took 
 the book home. 
 
 The proposed condemnation of the book did not proceed 
 smoothly in the ministers' meeting, owing to the influence of 
 the university men and their friends. This particular min- 
 ister, while not prepared to indorse the book, was one of th >se 
 who would not vote against it. and maintained that heresy 
 trials were no proper part of the ministers' meeting. One of 
 his deacons took him to task for not acting with those who 
 were ready to anathematize the book offhand. 
 
 "Have you read the book, deacon?" asked the minister* 
 
 "No, I haven't, and I don't want to read it," said the 
 other man. "I know all I want to know about it now." 
 
 "Well, I have read it in part, deacon." said the minis- 
 ter, who is a man of pluck, "and while there are some things 
 in it with which I do not agree, there is much with which I 
 do, and I am not going to condemn it." 
 
 The deacon balked in consequence and would not per- 
 form his functions in the church, so that it became a ques- 
 tion whether he or the pastor would have to go. in which the 
 church as a whole took the pastor's part. But I found many 
 men of the deacon's mind in the East, and good men, too, in 
 their own limited way. They had some truth and they were 
 using it to keep themselves from getting more. I do not mean 
 that they intended 'it so. but this was the practical result. 
 
 Before I tell the Boston story, let me make it very plain 
 that I am not telling all that I saw and heard. There was 
 much that was delightful in the church life of the Fast, as I 
 had found much that is delightful in the church life of the West. 
 Miracles of moral healing are wrought there also. The social 
 life is less manifest to a stranger, but when once inside the 
 family feeling is not wanting and the fellowship is often fine. 
 Missionary and philanthropic work is splendidly sustained by 
 the churches of the East, and the sacrifices of many of the 
 givers would shame the selfishness of some of the recipients
 
 86. 
 
 in the West to whom ihe funds are sent. If I do not speak 
 more at length concerning the lovablcness of much of the 
 Christian living which I found in the East it is because my 
 story must be brief at this point and because 1 am empha- 
 sizing throughout another point of view. There is much good 
 among the churches and among respectable circles everywhere. 
 The man who does not find] it. whether east or west, has some- 
 thing seriously the matter with himself. 
 
 But there, as here, the good is the chief hindrance to 
 the better- And there, as here, the whole attitude toward good- 
 ness on the part of most of those who are reckoned respectable 
 and even religious is misleading to a mischievous degree. 
 
 I sat at meat in Boston on th^t first visit there to which 
 I have referred with one of the leaders of New England's re- 
 ligious life. He is, in a careful Eastern way, something of a 
 progressive himself. 
 
 "The churches here, as far as I have seen them," I said 
 in answer to his interest in my impressions," do not seem 
 to be very different from the churches on the Pacific Coast. 
 \ have hardly seen enough of them to pass jiulgmen*. But I 
 feel as though your men who are succeeding here are men of 
 methods rather than men with a message : that you are mak- 
 ing more of institutions than of inspiration." 
 
 "I think it is so." he replied, quietly, "I have heard most 
 of the men around Boston, and I have not found one who 
 has a message for me." 
 
 My second visit intensified that impression. Both religion 
 and respectability, generally speaking, are good enough ; -i 
 Boston for those who have them. They- don't want anythin ? 
 better New methods are permissible within reasonable boun- 
 daries of propriety, but a new message that is really vital can 
 only find utterance through more or less disreputable chan- 
 nels. New England goodness is very carefully restr i: " :i ig Xew 
 England from the understanding and pursuit of the best. Yet 
 some things are being said there, even ill 4 Respectable circles, 
 which are big with hope. If only the good there could forget 
 their phylacteries and their prayer tassels and all the rest of 
 the paraphernalia of their piety for awhile and could get into 
 really human contact with the foreigners in the factories and 
 the sweated laborers behind the looms there would be a power 
 in their goodness beyond anything of which they dream to-day. 
 
 Northfield. beautiful beyond words, is strangely far re- 
 moved from the religious reality which Xew England needs. 
 I watched a red-headed lad in the gallery of the big audi- 
 torium making notes on J. Campbell Morgan's lectures on the
 
 87. 
 
 Book of Romans. The boy was about twetve years of age. 
 
 He evidently thought he was interested and was doing 
 the devout thing, although it was as unlikely that he got any- 
 thing out of it except pious self-satisfaction as it was that 
 he understood Sanskrit. Xorthfield is redolent with the odors 
 of yesterday's religiosity and today's respectability. It is a 
 garden of flowers which makes one long for a few common 
 vegetables. Sinners are welcome the.re, very welcome in a 
 way the way of making just one particular type of saints 
 out of them. But Xorthfield is farther away from Lawrence 
 than Nova Scotia is from San Francisco Bay. They only 
 know a man in one posture, the posture of conventional prayer. 
 They talk continually of the new birth there, but the agony 
 of the new social birth is to them but the symptom of an al- 
 ready labeled individual disease. Their ethic is personal, pro- 
 vincial, pious. They are still talking in terms of the ages be- 
 fore machinery was known. They are looking to the skies 
 for the climax of a spectacular and supernatural sahfation 
 which cannot wait on the slow working of reallv spiritual 
 forces in the world. And meanwhile the Man of Xazareth 
 comes from the bench of the artisan again. 
 
 I came back from the East as bewildered as when I went 
 away. I had touched life here, the man of the store and the 
 street, the prisoner behind the bars, 'the workingman in his 
 new comradeship, feeling his wav toward the new democracy 
 They had filled me with a big dissatisfaction with formal re- 
 ligiousness, with the limitations of individual goodness which 
 I saw resting upon the back of the oppressed with no sense of 
 its own parasitical character. T had heard the call of the hu- 
 man, but I knew not how to voice its 'cry. I had not found 
 the pulpit of the West open to it. The pulpit of the East was 
 not less closed. Sometimes I wondered if I could find the 
 democracy of Jesus of which I was trying to talk on the other 
 side of the sea.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ' 
 
 THE SWELLING FLOOD. 
 
 Between Englarid and America there is a wide waste of 
 water. I was six years old when I crossed it the first time, 
 coming' this way. Seven times six years had passed when 1 
 crossed it again, going eastward this time. My impressions 
 of the first journey were a child's impressions and are only 
 dimly recalled. The second journey across, and the return, left 
 ui>on me memories of so much more than incidental impor- 
 tance that all my thinking about civilization is affected by 
 them now. I never saw the shallowness of conventional good- 
 ness so clearly as I saw it on board ship. 
 
 At the time I hardly understood my impressions myself. 
 I knew that I was not happy on shipboard, and that my physi- 
 cal conditions had nothing to do with it. Neither going nor 
 coming did seasickness disturb me to the extent of making 
 me miss a single meal. Going over, old ocean was as placid 
 as an inland lake on an ordinary afternoon, with this differ- 
 ence onlv. that the waters moved in slow, far-reaching swells. 
 We were literally "rocked in the cradle of the deep," but in a 
 very easy, drowsy wav. Coming back, fog and storm beset us, 
 and the way was cold, for it was late November. I remember 
 \valking the deck one da.y when we were "off the banks" and 
 in the very neighborhood where the ill-fated Tit'anic (went 
 down a few months later, and thinking what a fearful thing 
 a wreck would be in such a situation. But none of these things 
 moved me to the deep dissatisfaction with the transatlantic trip 
 which grows upon me whenever T think of it to this day. 
 
 Elsewhere I have written more at length concerning this 
 experience, and concerning our days .in Great Britain. I am 
 writing of that adventure here with just one point in view. 
 But I do not owe this way of looking at my sea experience to 
 this present writing. Rather is the present writing an out- 
 growth of conditions of thinking which have been ripening 
 for manv years and which ripened very rapidlv while I was 
 out of sight of land. I know now that I saw civilization best 
 when I was away from it. or, to say the thinsr more exactly, 
 when it was compressed in one monstrous miniature before 
 my eves. 
 
 So much has been written about the restfulness of life 
 aboard one of the big "liners," and so much has the "palatial" 
 character of the liners themselves been exploited in word and 
 picture that I recognize the fact that mv complaint will seem 
 at first utterly unreasonable to many who read these words. 
 Good people a-plenty have gone across and have thoroughly
 
 89. 
 
 enjoyed the good company, the good fare and the opportunity 
 to rest from the ordinary distractions of life on land. The 
 praise of the passage, when it can be taken without the dis- 
 comfort of seasickness, has been so convincingly set forth 
 by the best writers that I knew some will think I must at 
 least have been bilious while on shipboard to speak of the 
 matter so. Which only leads me to remark that nothing is 
 more positive proof of the heartlessness of a lot of our good- 
 ness than the way in which multitudes of respectable and re- 
 ligious people "enjoy Europe" with not the slightest token that 
 they ever had the slightest stirring of social consciousness from 
 the day they packed their trunks till the day they unpacked 
 again. 
 
 The "ocean palaces" are well named, I freely admit. 
 "Palaces" they are, indeed, with all the snobbery and the ab- 
 surd inequalities and rank injustice of the world of luxury 
 and fashion and unearned wealth gathered into the smallest 
 possible space and exhibited in the most glaring characters. 
 
 Neither going nor coming was our ship crowded, except 
 under our feet. Even there the poor were packed in a little 
 less uncomfortably than common, I was told. Above us, in 
 the "First Cabin," a few solitary figures, remote and morose 
 as Napoleon at St. Helena, swathed in concealing draperies, 
 stalked the decks from which we were excluded as if they 
 were meditating continually on the price which they had paid, 
 chiefly for our exclusion. 
 
 But the mockery of the moneyed mummies above us did 
 not concern me as did the humanness of the company that 
 crowded the squalid quarters below. Some will say that squallid 
 is too strong a word to use in view of the improvement which 
 has taken place of late years in "third cabin" accomodation. 
 But I went below, and went all through those quarters my- 
 self as far as considerations of sex would allow. I saw some- 
 thing, as much as my stomach would comfortably let me see. 
 and more, of the messy manner in which they were fed. 1 
 saw the berths where they slept, and talked with men who 
 had closer experience of them than I cared to know. I studied 
 the men and women who were there, and the accomoda- 
 tions for their comfort and well-being during the long days 
 and nights on board. And besides this I studied the crew, 
 though not as intimately as I might have done, and learned 
 much of the manner of life which they lived on whom our 
 own comfort and prosperity depended in larg- degree. Like- 
 wise I attended religious services Roman Catholic and An- 
 glican Catholic, and plain Protestant in the cabins high and
 
 90. 
 
 low. And I have never in my life felt more the possible im- 
 pieties of pious profession, the substantial irreligiousness of 
 formal religion, or the contemptable indecency of current re- 
 spectability. A ship at sea is a minature of our still most 
 undemocratic and unchristian world. The Christian man who 
 can cross in one of them without feeling it is tremendously 
 in need of a "new birth." And the shame of our Americanism 
 is not that we spend annually millions of unearned increment 
 and legalized piratical toll in spectacular displays abroad of 
 the failures of democracy at home, but that even our well-to-do 
 common people and our peregrinating educators and pulpiteers 
 do not know a denial of democracy when it is thrust under 
 their eyes. We have thought of goodness itself so much in 
 terms of certain proper abstinences and on the active side in 
 terms of formal religiosities and self-complacent philanthropies 
 that we look on our commercial inhumanities as a matter of 
 course and do not know that they give the lie to both the 
 patriotism and the piety which we profess. A week on ship- 
 board ought to be enough to make any decent man feel the 
 moral indecency of the whole respectable regime to which he 
 belongs. 
 
 There is one point on which I have not touched here, 
 and on which I do not need to dwell. A word will explain it 
 to those who can understand, and volumes would be wasted on 
 those who on either sea or land have no sense of anything 
 but physical sensation in life. Everywhere if a man opens his 
 eyes, the mystery of life grows big upon him. Nowhere is 
 that mystery more omnipresent, more oppressive than it is at 
 sea. And in the midst of that vast solemnity to have the 
 heartlessness and the hypocrisy of civilization, condensed before 
 ycu is to experience a moral chill which no words can tell. 
 With nothing to see but the limitless waters, with nothing to 
 do but to putter with life's incidentals, and with the world's 
 social sham and shame glaring before you more searchingly 
 than the light that flares back at you from the shimmering 
 waters, the effect upon a man who dares to think real thoughts 
 and experience real feelings is to all but overthrow the ration- 
 ality of the universe in his mind. Yet therq is nothing really 
 the matter with the universe. The matter is with us, and with 
 rur "goodness" most of all, that it is still such a halt and 
 maimed and blind thing. 
 
 The government of Great Britain more than any govern- 
 ment of equal political significance is busy now "doing good." 
 I studied all her chief cities as much as the unaccustorriedness
 
 91. 
 
 of my circumstances and the limitations of time ami money 
 would allow. Such traveling a.s we did insid * the hor Icrs of 
 (jreat Britain was dominated neither by scenic ITT historic 
 considerations, although we had regard to both of these, as 
 was inevitable. We did not know what we had seen till we 
 were able to close our eyes after it. was all over and see it 
 mentally again. I have been two years recovering fr in the 
 bewilderment of the unusual and the personal in th t c m tact 
 with my own country wherein 1 f.nmd myself a "nativ\ foreign- 
 er," and had an experience so rare in many of its as ects as 
 to seem almost unreal. X'ow that the incidental hn- fallen 
 into its place T can view in their true proportions the rc.ijly big 
 things that we saw. 
 
 The biggest of them all was K Aland's effort to \ s really 
 religious, and respectably respectable. The churches disap- 
 pointed me, and in the main seemed to me to be mouthing shib- 
 boleths as far removed from the word the twentieth century 
 needs as our obsolete orthodoxies of respectability over here. 
 I did not hear, even from K. J. Campbell, the prophet's call to 
 the righteousness which our age imperatively needs. 
 
 Only one man uttered it in my hearing, and he in a very 
 incidental way, so that it was hard to judge how far he had 
 seen the vision of a really moral world. I heard David Lloyd 
 George in the English House of Commons discussing in the 
 committee of the whole his famous insurance bill. Me was 
 too busy to see me. and I was too unimportant to force my- 
 self upon him. P>ut I met the other members of his family, 
 as I have elsewhere told, and I studied him in the reflection 
 of his influence upon the British public, and since I returne 1 
 I have tried to understand what I saw of what he and men 
 like him are trying to do on the other side of the sea. It 
 comes the nearest to real gtxulness of anything of the sort 
 which I have anywhere seen. 
 
 David Lloyd George is a far letter man than the other 
 David of whom we mumble too much in ^>ur pulpits in a very 
 suj>erficial way. Those who. on the other side of the sea. 
 mumble most superficially about the other David are those 
 who most despise the doughty Welshman who l>ears the truly 
 great name. One of the l>cst tokens that David Lloyd (leorgc 
 is actually worthy of the respect of the ages is that lie is 
 so cordially hated by a host of his respectable contemporaries. 
 They hate him. not because his goodness is not good, but lie- 
 cause he is trying to make their goodness something more 
 than the canting cover for all sorts of social injustice which it 
 is today. Any man who tries to make good people really g'od
 
 92. 
 
 is the worst kind of a bad man in the high circles of both 
 church and state. 
 
 I am only afraid that Lloyd George himself is going to 
 be satisfied with a half-way goodness. He is forcing the re- 
 spectable robberies of England into the open, and its plunder- 
 ing piosities are trembling with rage because he has pulled 
 off the surplices which cover their shame. They are willing 
 to buy him off, and the great common horde which is behind 
 him, by letting go some of the feathers if they may keep the 
 fowls on which they have been fattening. Even the loss of 
 the feathers is a discomfort which they can hardly endure. 
 Without the fowls words fail. 
 
 Will Lloyd George be satisfied when he has won a partial 
 victory? Will the people behind him "rest and be thankful'' 
 when the lords of their living have granted them some seats 
 outside the walls on which to unburden their overworked limbs, 
 and let the lords still keep the substance of the earth enclosed 
 against them ? Concessions are more dangerous than opposi- 
 tion. It is goodness again, at a bankrupt percentage, offering 
 to settle with us for ten cents on the dollar if it may keep the 
 other ninety which is our honest due. Goodness is always do- 
 ing that sort of thing, both with God and Man. We are will- 
 ing enough to be nice about our naughtiness if we can keep 
 the profits of our naughtiness. The difference between most 
 good people and most bad people is that the bad people insist 
 on doing it no, "doing us" in their shirt-sleeves, while the 
 good people are kind enough to please us by wearing some 
 really well-made clothes. It isn't the clothes to which I 
 object. I honestly admire them. It is the using such good 
 clothes for business that isn't good.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 GOODNESS IN A DRY TOWN. 
 
 The greatest victory of goodness in Los Gatos is that it 
 has met and conquered the saloon. The fight was long, and 
 was complicated with many other issues of a personal and so- 
 cial character. There were reverses, due in the main to the 
 purposeful obscuring of the real question. The issue was forced 
 in the first place by the saloons themselves. 
 
 This story was told me by one of the leading merchants 
 of Los Gatos. He is not a member of any church and seldom 
 attends upon any preaching. As a business man and citizen 
 generally his standing has always been first class. 
 
 There was a man here, young enough yet to be called a 
 young man, although he had a family of his own. A good 
 man under ordinary circumstances, he was so addicted to drink 
 that for the sake of it he would let his family starve while 
 he squandered his earnings across the bar. 
 
 One day his father, seeing the obvious need of the familv. 
 gave the man five dollars to get some supplies for the wife 
 and children. A little later in the evening the father discov- 
 ered that the family need had not been met. 1 fe suspected 
 the truth, and going to one of the saloons he found his son 
 sitting at a table where he had been drinking and otherwise 
 dissipating that which had been given him to supply the table 
 at home. 
 
 Without a word of protest the younger man rose in re- 
 sponse to his father's quiet word and went out. The father 
 lingered a moment, and approaching the man behind the bar 
 said to him in a modest and reasonable way. "I wish you 
 wouldn't sell my boy any liquor. He needs what he has for 
 hi.s family, and he can't stand drink." 
 
 The saloon keeper turned upon him contemptuously. "Von 
 go to h 1," he said. "I'll sell liquor to whoever I please." 
 
 The same business man who told me this named half a 
 dozen men or more whom he had known in this town, all men 
 of naturally fine qualities and good industrial and professional 
 capacity, who had each and all fallen into a drunkard's grave 
 within the term of his residence here. 
 
 'I am not naturally a prohibitionist at all. and 1 don't call 
 myself one now. but that sort of thing has made me ^ick of 
 the saloon here," he remarked.
 
 94. 
 
 One other word needs to be said. The temperance people 
 did not at first proix>se to close the saloons outright; they asked 
 only for Sunday closing. It was the saloons themselves which 
 in the arrogance of their persuasion that they had the people 
 at their mercy refused to accept any curtailing of their liber- 
 ties, and challenged the church people to make the issue ab- 
 solute, saloon or no saloon. It was not until they were unex- 
 pectedly beaten on their own ground that they' posed as ad- 
 vocates of "moderation" themselves. 
 
 That which has happened here is going to happen all over 
 the United States. The saloon has no capacity for self-re- 
 form, and will die rather than be decent. 
 
 There is no doubt that the fight against the saloon was 
 won here by the church people. There were men outside of 
 the churches, and women, who helped on the victory, as in 
 the instance of the business man to whom I have referred, but 
 in the main outside respectability was either neutral or nega- 
 tive. On the straight issue of saloon or no saloon today, how- 
 ever, the decency of the town whether outside or inside of the 
 churches, is all but unanimous against the return of the sa- 
 loon. 
 
 If in this series of articles I have said more of the de- 
 ficiencies of goodness inside the churches than I have of the 
 deficiencies of goodness outside of the churches it has been 
 chiefly due to the (net that my own life work has been mainly 
 with church people, and that church people are .reasonably 
 supposed to represent emphatically the righteous cause. But 
 lest I contribute to an increase of Phariseeism in a quarter 
 where it is already evident enough, and lest by lack of candor 
 I cater to a favor for myself which I do not want, let me say 
 right here some things which need to be said about the short- 
 comings of non-religious respectability. 
 
 I have always had a liking for the man on the outside. 
 Generally speaking he is freer from cant, piosity and the whole 
 parade of ritualistic and dogmatic righteousness. 
 
 Down in Maine, on my Eastern trip, I heard this story 
 and enjoyed it: At one of the big summer resorts not far from 
 Portland a wealthy woman, very pious and very irritable and 
 arrogant, was staying. One morning she complained in ex- 
 ceedingly bad temper that she had been annoyed by some man 
 swearing under her windows. 
 
 "Oh." said the hotel owner, to whom the complaint was 
 made, "that was mv manager. He is really a very decent 
 fellow. That is just his way of saying his prayers, madam, 
 and he doesn't mean them any more than you do yours,"
 
 95. 
 
 I know men whose swearing is less offensive to me than 
 some other men's prayers. They at least are genuine, and gen- 
 erally their indignation is directed against the thing that is 
 hypocritical and inhuman, i know of nothing more blasphe- 
 mous, than a cannibalism which says grace before meals. 
 
 But I have found that omitting the formulas of religion 
 does riot necessarily make men better. They may be less marked 
 non-religious respectability has its own piosities. I have found 
 by superficial insincereties, though even this is not always so, for 
 more affectation of tone and manner in the clubs, especially the 
 more fashionable women's clubs, than I have ever found in the 
 churches. The social cant and pretense of the "smart set," or 
 worse yet the would-be smart set of the small town, is more in 
 evidence than any cant and pretense which I have ever met in 
 religious circles. 
 
 This, however, is rather incidental whether it is of the 
 church or of the club. Affectation is too amusing to be taken 
 very seriouslv. whether it affects piety or propriety. The de- 
 fectiveness of non-church goodness is deeper yet. 
 
 The larger insincerity of life is just as common among the 
 merely respectable as it is among the religious. 
 
 In my Oakland ministry one of the frequent attendants in 
 the evening was a man who was always superciliously com- 
 plaining about the hypocricies of church members. lie had 
 had religious training, had been intimate with church affairs, 
 and "had seen too much of the dishonesty of ministers and 
 church members to have any patience with either." 
 
 Whether he thought me honest or not I do not know. 
 From the friendliness with which he treated me I suppose he 
 thought well of me. I liked him. 
 
 I had a chance to test his work just once, and it was as 
 insincere a job as I ever saw. The reasons may have been 
 economic. I do not know the price he was paid for the work. 
 Hut T know the work itself was of a kind of which any truly 
 honest man ought to have been ashamed. 
 
 Nothing is more common than the accusation that ministers 
 trim their teachings to suit their salaries. Some of them do, 
 though much more in the way of silence than in the way of say- 
 ing what they do not believe. Hut moral cowardice is much 
 more rare among them than it is among ordinary business men. 
 The average resjxxrtable non-religious man in business will run 
 to cover if there is any danger of his convictions costing him 
 a dime. That is the reason why commercial Ixxlies can In- 
 trusted commonly to get on the wrong side of all progressive 
 issues.
 
 96. 
 
 Nor is the economic explanation always sufficient either 
 outside of the church or in it. Respectability is sometimes just 
 heartless, without regard to money. 
 
 One of my brother ministers in this neighborhood met the 
 appeal of the petition against capital punishment with a dog- 
 matic refusal. 
 
 "Capital punishment is right, and 1 know it. The scripture 
 is plain enough. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by mdil shall 
 his blood be shed." 
 
 One of the chief ministers of his own church proved in an 
 elaborate treatise sixty years ago that the Bible was on the side 
 of African slavery. And he lived in Vermont and not in Vir- 
 ginia when he wrote the book. 
 
 The same petition against capital punishment was presented 
 to a man who is not a church member, a public official in this 
 vicinity, and presumably a man of decent personal morals. He 
 replied succinctly. "Stop hanging them? Xo, d n it. I'd 
 like to see a lot more of them hung." 
 
 I canvassed the streets of San Jose one evening, bearing 
 that petition, with anotjier minister. He is a liberal, a scholar, 
 an optimist. It was perfectly plain to him that this was a pro- 
 gressive measure, in the direction of the forward movement of 
 man, and he could see no reason why any man should refuse to 
 sign it, unless he were a hide-bound theological conservative. 
 
 He talked with man after man on the streets. Most of 
 them were plainly not church men, and had no interest in the- 
 ology. They were not street loafers. They were just average 
 respectable business men. By and by he came back to me. He 
 was both physically and morally, to use a picturesque expres- 
 sion, "tuckered out." 
 
 "I am not sure," he said with a whimsical smile, "but that 
 I do believe in capital punishment after all." 
 
 But it was not the criminals that he wanted to hang. And 
 the criminals themselves could not have talked more heartlessly 
 about the matter than did some of those respectable men. 
 
 There is a current morality among us which is more dan- 
 gerous thn religious pretense. It is the morality which deems 
 it sufficient if a man pays his debts, treats his family decently, 
 abstains from drink or knows how to drink without getting 
 drunk, wears good clothes, and does his grafting without get- 
 ting into trouble with the law. Its god is success, and its work- 
 ing creed is respectability. -And there is nothing that stands 
 more in the way of the world's progress than this sort of thing 
 today. 
 
 All that I have written thus far about the defectiveness of
 
 97. 
 
 religious goodness applies to this non-religious respectability 
 with equal or with greater force. It is as pretentious, as patroniz- 
 ing, as pauperizing, as insincere. It defends even more desper- 
 ately the perquisites of special privilege, and the dividends of 
 social robbery. It stands in with the worst elements in the 
 churches against the best efforts of our time on behalf of the 
 common good. It is Sadducean in spirit, but it can be counted 
 on generally to make common cause with Phariseeism whenever 
 there is a real Messiah to be done to death. It has all the 
 heartlessness of religious heartlessness without conscience enough 
 to even covet the shelter of a creed- 
 
 This I have felt that I must say in faithfulness before I sum 
 up what 1 have come to feel concerning all our goodness through 
 years of acquaintance with goodness in its every phase. Some 
 of the selient features of my experience 1 have told. Let me tell 
 in a few words more what these experiences mean to me.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 A POET'S WAY OF PUTTING IT. 
 
 One of the men who called me pastor a few years ago was 
 Joaqnin Miller. He was not a member of my church, nor of 
 any other church, I am quite sure. He was never so much as 
 an attendant in my congregation. But I have a letter yet in 
 which he dubs me "pastor," and I had the pleasure and profit 
 of more than one pastoral call at his cabin on "The Heights." 
 The profit, I think, was chiefly on my side. 
 
 Miller hated cant and insincerities of every sort. His con- 
 tempt for the conventional was so pronounced that it became 
 almost a formalism itself. His brusqueness was more marked 
 than that of Moody. 
 
 Once, I remember, he lectured at "California College/' our 
 local Baptist school. He came to the platform with his trousers 
 tucked in the tops of his boots. What he said was very much 
 in the same style. The pastor of our leading church in Oak- 
 land went up to him, when the address was done and with a 
 broad smile, said : 
 
 "I enjoyed your lecture very much, Mr. Miller." 
 
 "Well, don't lie about it: if yon do you'll go to hell," was 
 the instant response of Miller. 
 
 The last time I talked with him in his cabin on "The 
 Heights" mention was made of the work that he had done 
 with his own hands. He was proud of the walls which he had 
 built, and the multitude of trees which he had planted. 
 
 "Fifty thousand trees!" he ejaculated, "all growing on Sun- 
 day." 
 
 That last remark was more than a challenge to my clerical 
 character. It was his affirmation of the freedom of nature from 
 all our formal restraints. The soul of his protest against insti- 
 tutionalism was there. 
 
 "Of course, I have made mistakes," he confessed in that 
 same conversation. "Take the mistakes out of my life and I 
 wouldn't have six bits left." 
 
 Again, referring to his laborious life, he said, with fine 
 antithesis. "I don't know whether T have worked so hard be- 
 cause I have been so strong, or whether I have been so strong 
 because I have worked so hard." 
 
 I think I understand Joaquin Miller now better than I did 
 in those days when I talked with him face to face. I might 
 have talked with him far more than I did. But T am not writ- 
 ing of Miller either to exploit him or the measure of my ac- 
 quaintance with him. I have told these incidents and these say-
 
 99. 
 
 ings of his here because they express in a concrete way so much 
 of the substance of that which I have come to feel is lacking in 
 the respectable goodness of the world. Miller's impatience of 
 our ordinary insincerities, his contempt for formalism, the large- 
 ness of his charity toward others, and his wholly unsanctimon- 
 ious humility toward himself, and finally his faith in common 
 everyday labor for every man and his unwillingness to live by 
 the sweat of other men's brows made him, in my opinion, a real 
 prophet to our generation. He did not let his half good deceive 
 him into thinking that he had achieved the good. He was void 
 of cant, conceit, and covetousness. And these all are the vices 
 of the virtue of our time, north and south, east and west, and 
 on either side of the sea. 
 
 Nothing in all my long and varied experience of the min- 
 istry has impressed me more than the prevalence of cant. For- 
 mal phrases and affected mannerisms are the stock in trade of 
 all respectability. Religion itself is always running into relig- 
 iousness, which is quite another thing. Sincerity in a superficial 
 way is common to most men : there are comparatively few con- 
 scious imposters. In this sense hypocrites are really rare, and 
 most people at least mean to be genuine. But genuineness in 
 fact, the higher sincerity of being simply and naturally real and 
 open to all reality is one of the rarest and one of the most diffi- 
 cult achievements in the world. The first sin of goodness is 
 its ordinary want of simple, wholesome, unaffected naturalness. 
 
 This is true of the pulpit itself. Conventions of dress, con- 
 ventions of attitude, conventions of tone, conventions of phrase, 
 conventions of subservience to texts, conventions of thought, 
 from beginning to end the man in the pulpit is a formalist be- 
 fore he is a man. We see it plainly enough when we go into 
 some church where the conventions are more elaborate, or at 
 least notably different from our own. What we are slow to sec 
 is that it is not the quantity of our formalism which makes us 
 formalists, but it is our bondage to it and our willingness to be 
 unreal for somebody else's sake. 
 
 In the old Y. M. C. A. building in Oakland the Rev. Ro]>ert 
 Stuart MacArthur of Xcw York, passing through the Hay Cities 
 on his way to the Orient, met one day a group of our ministers 
 and gave us a real heart talk. One of the things he said was 
 this, though he was pleading for more ritual rather than less. 
 
 "Bondage to ritual is not a matter of how much you use. 
 Our hard and fast services, with an opening invocation or short 
 prayer, a long prayer, three hymns, a sermon, and a benediction, 
 may be as rigidly ritualistic as a much more elalrate service. 
 As a matter of fact we of the non-ritualistic churches are ju.st
 
 100. 
 
 as much tied up to our bare conventions as anybody well could 
 be." 
 
 Now, I am not arguing for ritual, or against it. I care 
 nothing about it, except when it gets in the way of my being 
 natural and altogether genuine. I object to all kinds of tight- 
 lacing. That is to my mind the chief trouble with all of the 
 churches. I don't like smoking, and I don't like spitting, and I 
 certainly would not like to see saw-dust floors and the spittoon 
 introduced as features of religious meetings. But I think I 
 understand today in spite of my repugnance toward a smoke- 
 laden atmosphere and the unsightliness of the floors in places 
 where the workingmen gather in large numbers why such 
 places are more popular than churches. It is not the nastiness 
 of men naturally, nor their natural depravity in any other way. 
 The preference for such places is fundamentally the preference 
 for reality. There is a wasp-waist Miss Nancyishness about a 
 lot of our piety which makes it as uninviting to an ordinary man 
 with a lot of good red blood in his veins as any mincing maiden 
 of the old spinster sort could be. It is altogether too much done 
 up in cosmetics and clothes. 
 
 I have made manifest in this series the freedom of my con- 
 tact with men outside of the churches because they have done 
 me this large service ; they have made me ashamed of the ef- 
 feminacy of a lot of our religious life. And by effeminacy I 
 do not mean any reference to the preponderance of women in 
 the pews, although doubtless this has something to do with the 
 ultra "niceness" of ordinary religious meetings. The eman- 
 cipation of woman is going to emancipate us from a good deal 
 of coarseness on the one hand and a good deal of overniceness 
 on the other. The effeminacy of religious gatherings is much 
 more than a matter of sex. It is because religion is too respect- 
 able that it runs so to primping and to mincing ways. All re- 
 spectability does that sort of thing. Very few of us know how 
 to be decent without being overdressed. 
 
 Last Sunday night I spoke at a Socialist meeting in San 
 Francisco. Some of those who have only heard me in church 
 before were there to hear me. One of the best women that I 
 know was there, a woman whose face is set in a halo of white 
 hair, and whose life is whiter yet with its own purity and kind- 
 liness and ministry to others. She had never been in such a 
 meeting before. Afterwards she remarked to me with wonder: 
 
 "It seemed to me such a queer audience at first, such a 
 lot of common looking people." 
 
 The freedom of the hall, and the wholly unconventional 
 ways of the audience impressed her as entirely different from
 
 101. 
 
 the surroundings of church life where she has seen me hitherto. 
 I know just how she felt, because I felt that way myself when 
 I launched out after leaving Oakland, and for a time spent 
 many a Sunday night oti the radical lecture platform. 
 
 Joaquin Miller would have been entirely at home with that 
 audience on Sunday night. He might not have agreed with 
 them in their thinking, nor they with him. but the personal con- 
 tact would have been cordial and understanding. He had some- 
 thing of Jack London's liking for men in "the raw," and if with 
 both Miller and London the rawness seems to be sometimes 
 overdone the fault is on our side as much as on theirs. Over 
 emphasis there may be of purpose with them, but it is to cor- 
 rect the over emphasis which is first of all with us. 
 
 London was one of the members of the Ruskin Club in 
 Oakland when I joined it. He was in my parish in East Oak- 
 land when he was working his way toward the recognition of 
 today. I did not know him then and would not have understood 
 him if I had known him. Very few "good" people understand 
 him now He is too human for our niceness to tolerate him. 
 He returns repugnance for our niceness, with interest, some- 
 times too much compounded, I confess. But London came into 
 my life at a time when I needed him, and together with a lot 
 of men "of the world," as the pious would say, he has helped 
 me more than the pious ever did to feel how human and how 
 real religion ought to be. 
 
 What I have written will probably not help London, or the 
 memory of Joaquin Miller with nice people. I know. It will only 
 hurt me so far as their estimate is concerned. Nevertheless, I 
 want to say it again, just a little more plainly if I can before I 
 quit. The first trouble with all of our goodness is that it is too 
 far away from shirt-sleeves and overalls. Most churches make 
 an ordinary man feel about as much at home as he feels in a 
 fashionable woman's club. The "feel" of virtue is, not that of 
 denim and gingham, it is rather that of chiffon and lace. Most 
 of the men whom I have known in the churches whom the 
 churches could not hold were men who wanted to touch life 
 humanly, and the churches were not human enough for them. 
 Big, hearty, red-blooded men do not take to the churches. "Billy" 
 Sunday's strength is not his theology, it is his humanity. He 
 overdoes it, of course, in the reaction from the unreality of most 
 of our religious work. But he is much nearer that which good- 
 ness needs than are all the fine essayists of all the pulpits in the 
 land. Moody was vastly more effective before he became re- 
 sj>ectable.
 
 102. 
 
 The scandals which arise from the exposure of outright and 
 outrageous insincerity in circles of religion and respectability 
 are not the most serious menace to the progress of real right- 
 eousness among men. They are less injurious than our ordinary 
 and unconscious insincerities. Bad men who pretend to be good 
 and are detected in the pretense do not hurt us as much as good 
 men who are good but who do not know how to be human in 
 their goodness. More girls are lost to goodness through the 
 over-niceness of the good, than through the maliciousness of 
 the bad. The chief trouble with righteousness is its remoteness 
 from the common things of common life. 
 
 I can see now that the humanness of my father and 
 mother helped me more than their piety. There was no cant 
 about their goodness, it was real flesh and blood. I have suf- 
 fered more from cant in the churches than from anything else, 
 and cant in respectable circles outside the churches. Those who 
 have helped me most have been those who have touched me 
 deepest with the feeling of their humanity. Missionaries, min- 
 isters, slum workers, educators, editors, agitators, I value them 
 all today as I find them natural, unaffected, open-minded and 
 open-hearted, simply and wholesomely and humanly sincere, 
 without cant, without piosity, and without pretense.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 "NEITHER Do I CONDEMN THEE." 
 
 The most human thing that 1 heard at Xorthiiekl was a 
 story by "Lem" Broughton, then of Atlanta, but now of Lon- 
 don, England. It was told in his mose effective manner, too 
 effective indeed for any one to repeat it with equal effectiveness. 
 It is a pity that all the decent people of the nation c^uld not 
 hear his telling of it in his own way. 
 
 The story concerned one of the young women of his con- 
 gregation who had "fallen." She walked into church unexpect- 
 edly one morning, when Broughton was preaching with all his 
 heart the love of God. Her seat was far in the rear of the con- 
 gregation, near the door, where she herself had dropped down 
 in a timid way. 
 
 Carried away by the tenderness of his own message 
 Broughton gave an invitation at the close of the sermon, al- 
 though such was not his custom on a Sunday morning. To the 
 confusion both of the preacher and of some of the leading offi- 
 cials of the church who knew the girl's reputation this woman 
 arose, after a moment of hesitation, and made her way down 
 to the front. 
 
 Broughton was very frank about his own short-coming of 
 spirit on that occasion. He owned that he dropped his eyes, 
 afraid of a scene, and feeling in himself the similar confusion 
 of his respectable congregation. The awkwardness of the mo- 
 ment was increased when the woman just as she reached the 
 front, overcome by her own feelings and the consciousness of 
 her shame, threw up her arms and with a loud cry to God for 
 mercy fell on her face before the altar <>f the church. 
 
 The preacher still hesitated, his eyes downcast, wh.-n he 
 heard a stirring behind him. He was afraid to f' r n-e out in 
 his own mind what it meant. And then he and all the congrega- 
 tion were swept away in a great wave of mighty moral uplift 
 by what happened. 
 
 Led by one brave girl as pure as she was brave the whole 
 choir came down silently from their recess behind the pulpit, 
 and falling into line each girl as she came opjxsitc the sinful 
 woman at the altar stooped down and kissed her tenderly on 
 the forehead. 
 
 "They literally kissed that girl into heaven." was the 
 preacher's dramatic conclusion, as he pictured the effect up m 
 the woman. And the hearts of all that mighty audience in At- 
 lanta and the hearts of all who heard tin- telling of the story at
 
 104. 
 
 NorthfieM were caught up to heaven also on the wings of that 
 wonderful up-reach of love. 
 
 I wish I could tell that story as a part of my own ministry. 
 I could forget years of formalisms for one such experience of 
 /such a real Christian humility and sympathy as that. Yet it 
 is something, it is much indeed, to know that so many can re- 
 spond to even the telling of such a story today. 
 
 There is no point at which our. goodness commonly falls 
 more than it does with respect to our ordinary censoriousness 
 of others. Such censoriousness exhibits itself naturally to 
 poorest advantages in the small town where everybody knows 
 everybody else. 
 
 A few days ago I met a man on the streets of Los Gatos 
 who had lived here for years. He has recently moved away 
 and makes his home now in San Francisco. His life here was 
 blameless in a moral way. I do not remember to have ever 
 heard a word reflecting upon his character. He is a man of 
 kindly spirit naturally, and besides his religion will not allow 
 him to think harshly of others. It was all the more remarkable 
 therefore, that he made the confession he did. 
 
 I had asked him how he liked San Francisco. He spoke 
 most cordially his appreciation of the place. 
 
 "The best thing about it is this," he said. "I have lived 
 so long in a small town where everybody knows everybody that 
 you can hardly imagine what a relief it is to be able to walk 
 the streets and just be one in the crowd, and to feel that nobody 
 is concerned to pass judgment upon you." 
 
 If he, who had suffered so little from censoriousness, could 
 feel the criticalness of our ordinary social contact whenever it 
 becomes intimate how evident is it that a really humble estimate 
 of ourselves and a kindly judgment of other people is not even 
 in good society a common mood. 
 
 The trouble is not with our town. It is, I think, freer 
 from that sort of thing than most small communities are. Nor 
 do I think the trouble was due to any supersensitiveness on his 
 part. The difficulty is rather that it is so much easier to be 
 good as we commonly understand goodness than it is to be 
 kind. 
 
 At the bottom kindness means understanding. When we 
 understand others, and especially when we understand ourselves, 
 we cannot help being kind. 
 
 The ignorance of our goodness is responsible for the con- 
 ceit of it. When some big wave of circumstance flings wide the 
 doors and we get a full view of some fellow being's heart and 
 see how much like our own it is we forget our petty pride and
 
 105. 
 
 reserve and for the moment any one of us can lay all our cen- 
 soriousness aside and be as human as the Christ in the presence 
 of the woman who had sinned. If we could maintain the moods 
 which come to us in such an hour we would know something of 
 what it means to be really good. 
 
 There has been much in my ministry in Los Gatos to make 
 me glad. I could write of it readily at length if such fulness 
 could serve the purposes of this confession. It has been the 
 freest ministry of my life. I have never done so much hard 
 work nor done it so easily as here, because I have never been 
 so free from formalisms of every kind. The pulpit here seems 
 to me the sincerest pulpit I have ever known, that is. it is pos- 
 sible to speak a wider variety of truth here with concern only 
 to serve the truth in simplicity of soul than on any platform 
 on which I have ever stood. No man who has once tasted the 
 fulness of freedom can ever hold it again second to anything 
 in his life. If I had known what liberty is I would have had 
 liberty before. 
 
 But it has been easier for us to learn liberty here than it 
 has for us to learn love. To get away from servitude to creeds 
 and rituals, and from common cant of every kind, is easier than 
 to get into a really human fellowship with all your fellows. 
 
 Nothing which I have said will bear repetition better than 
 that which I said in my first chapter in this series. The hardest 
 test of virtue is its attitude toward vice. Liberal churches arc 
 sometimes more loveless than illiberal churches, Goodness often 
 understands badness less than badness itself. 
 
 I am more afraid of the conceit of goodness than I am of 
 its cant. Our formalisms among ourselves do less harm than 
 does our unfriendliness toward those who arc outside our so- 
 cial or moral pale. Even sincerity cannot turn the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven. The only way we ever let people into life 
 is the way of love. And very few of us really love sinners. 
 
 More than anvthing else our conceit keeps us from loving 
 them. We think they are so different from ourselves, when in 
 truth they are very much like us. Only sometimes they arc 
 sinners because they wanted to l)e better than ourselves. 
 
 Don't misunderstand me. Do you remctnl>er that saying of 
 Rev. R. J. Camnbcll of Ijomlon which gave perhaps greater of- 
 fense than anything else which he said in his famous 1>onk on 
 the "New Theology." It was to the effect that oven sin innv lx- 
 a quest after good. It is a mistaken quest which take* fearful 
 penalty for its mistakeness. but at the liottoin what we know 
 as sin' began with a great hungering of heart for more happi- 
 ness, more wholcsomcness, more abundance of life.
 
 106. 
 
 Xow there are some people who are not positive enough to 
 be very bad. They are moral cowards who never venture away 
 from entirely safe and conventional courses. Their goodness, 
 .such as it is, is purely negative. Lots of what passes for vir- 
 tue is made up of timidities of disposition and hardnesses of 
 self-restraint as unlovable as vice itself. I am not sure but 
 that a great deal of apparent goodness is more ruinous to char- 
 acter than some of the misadventures of men who have at least 
 had the openness of heart to fare forth in search of a larger life. 
 The mere impassiveness of a negative nature which hasn't life 
 enough in it to feel the pull of life may pass the formal tests 
 of respectability, but I dare to believe that it will fare worse 
 in the eternal working out of the issues of character than much 
 which we have called vice. 
 
 I am not sure but that the prodigal son even before he 
 turned back was a more hopeful proposition by far than his 
 very proper and negatively heartless elder brother. 
 
 I have known a good many men of very defective habits 
 who had more of the humanness of real character about them 
 than many a more proper man. This I say quite apart from 
 those social considerations which must be weighed carefully if 
 we are to measure fairly our merit or demerit. Propriety is irt 
 an individual way sometimes' the headiest kind of a servant for 
 the most serious social impropriety. But of that I shall speak 
 yet more at length. What I mean here is that character is a 
 good deal more than outward conduct, just as health is a good 
 deal more than a superficial flawlessness of skin. There may 
 be outward blemish and more health inside than where the 
 blemish does not appear. I have found a great many "men of 
 the world" more Christian in spirit than many who mouth un- 
 consciously the Master's name. 
 
 Joaquin Miller wrote a bit of verse years ago better than 
 anything he ever said to me. It would vastly improve our good- 
 ness if we could really learn it "by heart." Here it is : 
 ''In men whom men condemn as ill 
 I find so much of goodness still. 
 
 In men whom men pronounce divine 
 
 I find so much of sin and blot 
 I hesitate to draw a line 
 
 Between the two, where God has not." 
 
 My old pulpit classifications of "saved'' and "unsaved," 
 "sinners" and "saints" have already passed for me. I am afraid 
 to use them, excent ns I use all of them and all together for 
 everybody else and for myself. I am both "saved" and "un- 
 saved," both "sinner" and "saint" if I can trust my own con-
 
 107. 
 k 
 
 sciousness. And I would rather trust it than to trust any kind 
 of a mechanical theory which ministers to spiritual self-conceit. 
 I have found the church and its ministers helpful, that is 
 why I stick to them in spite of their very obvious shortcomings. 
 But I have found that badness and goodness cannot be meas- 
 ured by any ecclesiastical or theological or social scales. There- 
 is so much badness in all the goodness, so much goodness in all 
 the badness, that I am more and more of the opinion that all our 
 formal sitting in judgment on one another is a colossal, yes, a 
 criminal self-conceit. I would not substitute pity for con- 
 demnation, though that would often prove a real advance. But 
 our badness does not need pity half so mcuh as it needs under- 
 standing. And that is one of the chief defects of all our good- 
 ness, its lack of a big, human understanding love. Goodness 
 could melt badness away if only it had the warmth of its heav- 
 enly origin in itself.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE PIETY OF THE PARASITE. 
 
 Since I became pastor in Los Gatos two of my friends of 
 other years have gone to the penitentiary, convicted in both 
 cases of having misappropriated other people's money. They 
 were leaders in respectable and religious society five y irs ago. 
 They are wearing stripes as common felons today. 
 
 One of these men I knew but casually, yet I knew him as an 
 active and influential member of one of the leading evangelical 
 churches in the community. His income was large, in appearance 
 at least, and he had the entrance to the best society in town. He 
 served the state in a high legislative office before he was brand- 
 ed with the colors of crime. 
 
 The other man I knew intimately, and his father before him. 
 He came of one of the finest families on the Pacific Coast, a 
 family of much more than ordinary moral stamnia. He was 
 brought up in the atmosphere of prayer. His own domestic cir- 
 cle was of the religious type. He was himself an earnest and 
 devout Christian, and not at all of the canting kind. His friends 
 trusted him implicitly, and I would have trusted him myself with 
 all I have. Besides he had a salary quite sufficient for any rea- 
 sonable man's needs, fifteen to twenty times greater than the av- 
 erage yearly earnings of the average working man. Neverthe- 
 less, he gambled heavily with other men's money, not as ordinary 
 gamblers do but in a business way, the luck of the game went 
 against him, and shame unspeakable has overtaken him and 
 the innocent who bear his name. 
 
 I have said "the innocent." but I am afraid I shall have to 
 withdraw the word. But I will not withdraw it for them unless 
 I can withdraw it for us all. 
 
 There has been a good deal of talk among the respectable 
 and religious people who were scandalized by the exposure and 
 the conviction of these men concerning the causes of their moral 
 collapse. I do not believe the men are any worse men today in 
 stripes than they were in broadcloth a little while ago. Nor do 
 T think that they are being punished for the wrong which they 
 did so much as they are for the wrong way in which they 
 did it. They might have been worse men and have continued 
 to be honored both in church and in society. I am not at all 
 certain that most good people are really any better than these 
 men are. 
 
 Most good people are entirely willing to live luxuriously
 
 100. 
 
 on the earnings of other people. Indeed, that is the way most 
 good people get their luxuries. Gambling is not necessarily 
 dealing in cards, or betting on the turn of the wheel. This 
 much we are willing to admit today. Taking chances of any kind 
 some people would say is gambling. But that is also beside the 
 mark. The essence of gambling is the willingness to take other 
 men's money without earning it, to get something for nothing. 
 That, we are practically all of us willing to do. The favorite 
 day dream of nice, respectable, good people who have very little 
 money is getting a lot without earning it, and "doing good" 
 with a portion of the sweat of other men's toil. As for those 
 who have it in any considerable amount, and to whom we cater 
 in all sorts of ways because they have it, almost without excep- 
 tion they got it by playing more or less cleverly some game in 
 which they were able to exploit their fellows. Respectability, 
 generally speaking, is only another name for successful para- 
 sitism. Criminality is playing the game violently or clumsily, 
 so that you are caught breaking the rules. Even the breaking 
 of the rules isn't so serious if you don't get caught at it. "Pris- 
 ons." as the small boy said, "are for them as gets kotched." 
 
 One of the men who joined me in the "Christian Comrade" 
 movement in San Francisco had been for years a traveling 
 man. Although brought up in a devout home he got to drink- 
 ing some and gambling. lie was never extreme in resj>ect to 
 either, and never hccnme disreputable. Once, in talking over 
 this part of his experience, he told me graphically of an eve- 
 ning in a saloon when he had staked a good deal on the turn 
 of the wheel, atvl how he prayed earnestly that God would 
 prosper his fortune, vowing to make good use of his success 
 if he won. 
 
 "I never prayed more earnestly or more sincerely in my 
 life," he said. 
 
 Old John Newton, afterward a very noted divine, testified 
 that he never enjoyed sweeter fellowship with God than he 
 did on some of his early voyages when he was returning with 
 the hatches of his ship full of naked, sick, half-starved and 
 wholly miserable Africans whom he sold to the likewise pious 
 planters at a splendid profit. His goodness was sincere enough, 
 but it was purely personal, and had no consciousness of the 
 moral values of economic considerations. 
 
 I cannot see that John Newton's blindness was any more 
 dense in a moral way than that of respectable and religious 
 people who can enjoy "touring Kurope" or our own country, 
 for that matter, with the hatches of civilization crowded to 
 the death with' a huddle of miserable toilers whose sweat is
 
 110. 
 
 the price of all our superior possessions and ways. 
 
 Nor can I see that my friends who are at San Quentin 
 for misappropriating other people's money contrary to the rules 
 of the game are really any worse in their stripes than they 
 were when they sat at the banquet board with a lot of other 
 respectable parasites and studied out legal ways of getting a 
 larger share for themselves of what other men had produced. 
 
 "So you would like to be good?" said Jesus to a certain 
 rich young man who had a good deal more of this world than 
 he had ever earned, and wanted to find out some easy way 
 of making sure of the next world. "And you tell me that 
 you have lived an orderly, respectable life? What do you 
 know about goodness, anyway, that you pass on the compli- 
 ment so lightly to me? Nobody but God has ever yet got 
 * hold of what goodness really is. But if you want to make a 
 decent beginning suppose you quit living on other people, get 
 rid of all this truck that you don't really need and give it to 
 those who do need it, strip yourself down to yourself and join 
 us just as a man among men in our work of trying to build 
 up a really human world." 
 
 Do you wonder that with all his ordinary decency and 
 conventional religiousness the young man promptly turned down 
 the proposition? Or" do you wonder that all of us preachers 
 and all the rest of the very respectable following of a man 
 who - was esteemed less than a convict in his day have been 
 busy ever since he said this awkward thing in trying to ex- 
 plain it away? 
 
 The ordinary cant of goodness is bad enough. The con- 
 ceit with which we sit in judgment on our fellows who have 
 been .a little franker in their wickedness than ourselves is 
 worse yet. The cowardice which is back of a lot of our de- 
 cency which makes our very virtues less attractive than the 
 more daring or less coldly calculating ways of some who there- 
 by fall into trouble is likewise to our discredit. Our content- 
 ment all along the line with half-way goodness, half-way truth- 
 fulness, half-way progress of every type is further condemna- 
 tion for us. I confess that I have sinned with others both 
 better and worse than myself at all these points, and my min- 
 istry has revealed to me very slowly indeed, and through 
 much of varying, vacillating mood as I have witnessed in these 
 articles how cheap a thing most of our clatter about goodness 
 is. I see the shallowness of it all so self-convictingly now that 
 I hate the whole condemnatory system by which we sit in 
 judgment on sinners whose worst condemnation is that they 
 are so very much like the rest of us even when they reform.
 
 111. 
 
 But the most pitiful part of it all to me is the blindness 
 which we continue to sit on the backs of our brothers 
 while we whip them for falling down, and the appearance of 
 sincerity with which we say our prayers at the same time that 
 we are going through our weaker brother's pockets. 
 
 One of the members of my congregation here is a Ger- 
 man, who speaks broken English. He is not a member of 
 my church. He was brought up a Lutheran. His pastor took 
 'him to task for not attending his own church in another town. 
 The man explained by trying to tell his social convictions, 
 which are radical. 
 
 "Don't you know." said the minister, "that if you neglect 
 the church and run after that sort of thing you will lose your 
 .soul and go to hell?" 
 
 "Well," said the man. with eyes full of great sorrowful 
 compassion, "I'd be willing enough to lose my soul and go to 
 hell if I could help in that way to save the poor people of this 
 world from the hell in which so many of them are living 
 today." 
 
 Convert that man ! I'd be glad enough if I could convert 
 ihe preachers themselves to that kind of religion. Nor will the 
 goodness of the world ever be good for very much until it 
 feels that way. 
 
 "The rich are willing to do anything for the poor except 
 .to get off their backs," said Tolstoi. 
 
 Good people will do almost anything nowadays for the 
 'bad except quit the profits of the social processes which make 
 them bad. 
 
 Our criminal classes are not our dangerous classes. The 
 I. W. W.'s, foreign labor, the agitators, the tramps and the 
 hoboes themselves are not our dangerous classes. Even the 
 "higher ups" whom we are trying vainly to reach in a puni- 
 tive way are not the sources of social disturbance and unrest. 
 If we could catch all the chief capitalists tomorrow and put 
 them in jail it would be as vain as killing mosquitoes and 
 leaving their breeding places intact. All our muck-raking zeal 
 against individuals whether for individual or for social offenses 
 is as futile as swabbing up floors with the faucets turned on. 
 We shall have to keep on swabbing, of course, until we have 
 sense enough to turn off the faucets. And the chief reason 
 that we keep the faucets going is that we are all willing to 
 take the risk of mining or neighbors if we can get unearned 
 l>cnefits for ourselves. 
 
 It was an ancient Greek philosopher who. when he was 
 asked by a patronizing king, "What can I do tor. you?" re-
 
 112 
 
 sponded promptly, "Get out of my sun." 
 
 That is the first thing that good people need to do for 
 bad people today. Go on with your piosities if you please. 
 Think yourself as superior to others as you will. Stumble 
 over your own virtues into a stupid content with a goodness 
 which has not yet really begun to be good. BUT GET OFF 
 THE BACKS OF THE POOR! 
 
 The piety of our day is still the piety of the parasite. The 
 missionary is commonly as blind to it as the "heathen" whom 
 the supporters of the missionary are rushing to exploit. The 
 slum worker pays for his hymn books out of the rent that only 
 vice itself can afford to pay. The evangelistic minister is helped 
 in his evangelism by the very men who are doubling ,their div- 
 idends by halving the lives of his converts. The religious 
 editor is dependent upon all kinds of irreligious humbug in an 
 economic way. Even in such an earthly paradise as this se- 
 questered nook the only chance for a man to live is to have 
 stored up the honey of other men's toil, or to live upon those 
 who have such a store. There is plenty of chance to be pious 
 today. It is the hardest thing in the world to be simply just, 
 to stop clinging to other men's backs and stand on your own 
 feet. 
 
 I am a parasite myself, living on what other men pro- 
 duce. The little that T have in property is all "unearned incre- 
 ment," which society made and did not have the sense to keep. 
 Had I devoted myself to getting more I need not have worked 
 half as hard and I might have been vastly more respectable, 
 because I might have had thousands for every dollar which I 
 have. Some, trying to get such thousands, have failed, and 
 are unfortunates to be pitied now and suffer our charities. 
 Some, more impatient in their methods, have been caught and 
 are wearing the stripes. Some have gotten what it has taken 
 the toil of thousands to produce, and when they come to church 
 occasionally everybody is breathlessly hoping they will be good 
 enough to give us a part of the spoil. Some of us have only 
 dreamed of such successful taking toll on the highways of life 
 from the fruits of others' labors. But our goodness .never 
 seems so good to us as when we are able to dress ourselves 
 in fineries which we have taken off the backs of the poor. 
 
 Suppose Jesus asked us to strip down to our manhood to- 
 day and begin to be just before we even tried to be good? 
 
 Wno says that the men in stripes would be any more un- 
 willing to work real social justice and righteousness than our- 
 selves,
 
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