THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs, George Gore
 
 The Coming People 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. DOLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE GOLDBN RULE tN BUSINESS,' 
 " THE AMERICAN CITIZEN," ETC 
 
 New York: 46 East 14TH Street 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
 
 Boston: 100 Purchase Street
 
 COPYRrGHT, 1897, 
 BV THOMA8 Y. CROWELL & COMPAJiy. 
 
 TTPor.RAPnr By C. J. Peters & Son, Hoston. 
 Pkksswdrk by Kuckwell ii Cblucuill.
 
 2j ^^ 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I SUSPECT that certain readers may com- 
 plain of this book, that it is too boldly 
 optimistic. It seems therefore fair to say 
 something in advance about the personal 
 point of view from which I approach the 
 subjects here considered. I am not in 
 any way an optimist by temperament, but 
 quite the reverse. I am accustomed to 
 think of the sad and sterner aspects of 
 life. I know by experience the facts and 
 the moods that tend to make men pessi- 
 mists and even cynics. If I am an opti- 
 mist, my optimism has not come to me 
 easily; it is not one-sided, or negligent of 
 iii 
 
 822414
 
 iv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 facts. It is not the product of fortunate 
 and exceptional circumstances. It has 
 been bought with a price ; it has been 
 urged upon mu thruugli all the varied 
 lessons of life. It is not merely the out- 
 come and summary of my religion, but it 
 is the net result of the questioning and 
 the thought of a naturally sceptical mind. 
 I have endeavored to test and try it. I 
 have never feared to bring strain and 
 pressure upon it. In my case it is no 
 mere ardor of buoyant youth, but the 
 growth of years. 
 
 I have watched the working of this 
 bold optimism in a considerable number 
 of other men's lives, under different forms 
 of faith, and in some instances even where 
 its possessors, being somewhat shy of re- 
 ligious terms and pious phraseology, have 
 hardly been aware that in their habitual
 
 INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 attitude of good temper, friendliness, un- 
 wavering honesty, disinterested and unself- 
 ish activity, they have been living precisely 
 as intelligent men would live in a good 
 universe, and have been illustrating in 
 their lives what veritable religion is, more 
 than their words would allow. 
 
 I have also tried other ways of thought, 
 and found them to fail altogether. I have 
 observed that, while optimism is always 
 challenging and urging us to be consis- 
 tent and thorough-going in our faith in it, 
 pessimism, on the contrary, can never be 
 consistently applied ; but in all the high- 
 est moments of life the pessimist must 
 act like an optimist, must face the way 
 of hope and progress, must trust in truth, 
 in duty, in love, and in goodness, as if 
 they were indeed eternal. I have ob- 
 served that the agnostic cannot remain
 
 Vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 evenly balanced on the narrow fence of 
 hesitating doubt. He must act and live 
 on one side or the other, toward evil or 
 toward good. Is it not evident that liis 
 best and most successful action is at those 
 times when, like the boldest optimist, he 
 goes heartily over to the side of good? 
 
 If my optimism seems bold, it is not 
 presumptuous. I have no merely personal 
 word to utter about it, or I should not 
 venture to speak. My courage to speak 
 arises wholly out of the conviction that 
 my message is not my own, but is rather 
 the great and universal message to all 
 lives. I am sure tliat, if I can face the 
 problems of the world with hope, any man 
 may learn the great happiness of doing 
 the same. I am equally sure that, if we 
 can venture to take the ground of opti- 
 mism at all and in any particular, we may
 
 INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 as well be bold enough to trust that it 
 will altogether bear us up. If, on the 
 whole and in consideration of all the facts, 
 I am constrained to be an optimist, that 
 is, a believer in good, while I desire al- 
 ways to be modest and undogmatic, I can 
 see no intellectual merit in being ashamed 
 of my best conclusions, or timid and dis- 
 trustful in using and uttering them. 
 
 I believe that Jesus was quite philo- 
 sophical in the instinct with which he ha- 
 bitually insisted that men should choose 
 which master they proposed to serve, and 
 should straightway begin to serve that 
 master with all their hearts and minds 
 and strength. The purposeless life runs 
 with narrow and sluggish flow. If men 
 do not dare or wish to serve evil, if it 
 is intolerable to live as if the world were 
 the sport of evil, let them take the only
 
 viii IN Tii on u c tion. 
 
 other distinct choice, and serve the good. 
 Let thcni go over altogether to the side 
 of the victorious Goodness in which they 
 trust. 
 
 CHARLES F. DOLE. 
 
 Jamaica Plain, %Iass. 
 September, 1897.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Prophecy 1 
 
 II. Certain Clear Facts 12 
 
 III. Heroism, or the Iron in the Blood, 33 
 
 IV. The Divine Universe 46 
 
 V. The Point of View 61 
 
 VI. Short Cuts to Success 79 
 
 VII. The Law of Cost 95 
 
 VIII. The Problem of the Prosperous . 109 
 
 IX. The Ideal Democracy 129 
 
 X. Possible Revolution 149 
 
 XI, The Motto of Victory 167 
 
 XII. The Happy Life 190
 
 " I would write for young people, and for those 
 who never mean to grow old, who wish for plentiful 
 life, — for life that shall not only be rich and joyous, 
 but true, pure, honorable, noble, and reverent. 
 
 " I would show what such life is, here and now,"
 
 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROPHECY. 
 
 The prophecy is to be found in one of 
 the most beautiful and familiar passages in 
 all literature. It is one of the verses 
 known as the Beatitudes, " Blessed are the 
 meek : for they shall inherit the earth." 
 Often this is not really believed to be 
 prophecy at all. In fact, most readers re- 
 gard the whole passage as beautiful, like a 
 cluster of pearls ; but they have no use for 
 these pearls, except to look at them. Who 
 takes the Beatitudes seriously, as matters 
 of fact? Who stops to ask whether they 
 are true? Who believes that they may 
 1
 
 2 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 have any reasonable place in the life of 
 modern men ? 
 
 The fact is, the somewhat ancient lan- 
 guage needs to be translated into the living 
 style of speech such as Jesus doubtless 
 always used. Let us translate our proph- 
 ecy, then, so as to see what it meant to 
 those who heard it first. Let us read for 
 blessed, happy or fortunate ; let us rid our- 
 selves of that word meek, which has come 
 to bear an ignoble sense. The word has 
 been spoiled by keeping company with too 
 many passive, inoffensive, lifeless, colorless 
 creatures. What active mind ever wishes 
 to be "meek"? What Anglo-Saxon father 
 or mother wishes a child to be " meek " ? 
 Let us choose a word that shall make 
 Jesus' meaning live again ; we will say 
 kind, or gentle, or friendly. Blessed, or 
 happy, are the kind people ; or, if you 
 choose, Happy are the true gentlemen and 
 gentlewomen. 
 
 See now what Jesus ventures to predict
 
 THE P nop II EC Y. 3 
 
 of these gentle people. He does not con- 
 tent himself with saying, what any one 
 would expect, that they shall win heaven. 
 But he asserts that "they shall inherit the 
 earth." That is, in plain words, these are 
 the coming people. The days will come 
 when the gentle and friendly people will 
 cover and hold the world. 
 
 There was never a bolder prediction 
 than this. Nothing, in fact, better illus- 
 trates what that much misunderstood per- 
 son, the prophet, really is. The prophet 
 is the man who sees in advance the march 
 of law. The astronomer foreseeing an 
 eclipse is a prophet. He catches sight of 
 the plan and construction of the universe. 
 He sees its unity of design. From what 
 is now, his eye runs on to what must be, 
 centuries ahead. So with the man who 
 discerns the moral and spiritual laws that 
 bind the world of men, and construct the 
 fabric of human society. The prophet dis- 
 cerns the lines upon which society must
 
 4 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 move. He catches the difference between 
 the transient and the permanent. Long 
 ago, standing on his mountain-top, he could 
 see the stars that would still be shining 
 on men, ages after all the kings, the war- 
 riors, the prie3ts, of his day liad passed 
 into dust. 
 
 Thus, in an age of blood and war, when 
 the fame of conquerors was in all men's 
 mouths ; when human sacrifices had not 
 yet ceased to be offered on the altars of 
 the great capitals of the ancient civiliza- 
 tion ; when the type of human prosperity 
 was coarse, brutal, arrogant; when woman 
 was a slave or a plaything; underneath the 
 outward confusion great seers traced the 
 deeper necessary laws of a nobler life to 
 come. They foresaw a world which should 
 actually have no further use for fighters, 
 or bloody sacrifices, or gorgeous temples 
 and rituals. They foresaw a time when 
 pride, arrogance, cruelty, hate, would be 
 put beliind man as so much barbarism.
 
 THE P HOP EEC Y. 5 
 
 Great truths often come in parables and 
 by picture language. There is a marvel- 
 lous outward parable, or rather a series 
 of wonderful parables, that illustrate and 
 enforce the teachings of the propliets con- 
 cerning the future of men, and the race 
 that is bound by Divine destiny to win the 
 supremacy of the world. Science, peering 
 backward into the dim past, tells us of a 
 vast period when gigantic creatures, sauri- 
 ans and mastodons, possessed the earth. 
 Would it not have seemed wild prophecy 
 if an archangel from heaven, watching the 
 sports, the fury, and the carnage of those 
 gross brutes, should have even guessed that 
 the whole monstrous race would pass away 
 to make room for the smaller and compara- 
 tively feeble creatures of our present time ? 
 Or, when the cavemen struggled with wild 
 beasts in every forest, what a strange ven- 
 ture it would have seemed to predict that 
 in after times the wild animals would cease 
 from the earth, and only gentle creatures,
 
 6 THE COMING I'EOPLE. 
 
 t;inie and friendly to man, his pets and his 
 servants, the oxen, the sheep, the horses, 
 would prevail I 
 
 Nevertheless, to the eye of intelligence, 
 such prophecies would have seemed from 
 the first to be only manifest destiny. As 
 Mr. John Fiske has remarked, there came 
 a " Waterloo " as soon as the earlier reptil- 
 ian creatures met the new and higher order 
 of mammals. The animal that suckled 
 its young was better than the beasts that 
 had no care for their own offspring. The 
 intelligence that bound even a pack of 
 wolves together to hunt their prey was 
 more sicrnificant than the mere size of 
 
 O 
 
 the mammoth. At every stage, whenever 
 the finer, more intellectual type appeared, 
 there was the type which the angel or the 
 prophet, watching the majestic procession 
 and order of life, must have foreseen would 
 prevail. 
 
 There was not only a law of progress that 
 gave to tiny man, with his wits, his skill,
 
 THE PBOPHECT. 7 
 
 and his bow and arrows, precedence over 
 the great beasts around him. There was 
 also a deep law touching the uses to which 
 creatures could be put. To the eye of 
 intelligence it might have appeared gen- 
 erations ago that the wild and fierce crea- 
 tures had no large and universal usefulness, 
 Man had now come as the master of the 
 earth. The wild creatures were his ene- 
 mies, killing his flocks and herds. For 
 the tame things he had ever larger and 
 more imperative uses. For the wild ani- 
 mals he had always less use. 
 
 It would not have required more than 
 clear understanding a hundred years ago 
 for the Indian huntsman to become a 
 prophet, and to foretell to his tribe what 
 was already beginning to come about. 
 The forests were being swept away; the 
 area of tillage and pasture was stretching 
 always farther away from the sea. There 
 would not be any more room for the bears 
 and the wolves. The fur-bearing creatures
 
 8 THE COMiyO PEOPLE. 
 
 would perish before the devouring saw- 
 mill. By and by, where the buffaloes 
 roamed, the white man's sheep and cattle 
 would possess the land. In the presence 
 of millions of men, with the select crea- 
 tures which offered manifold and vast uses, 
 the wild beasts, and even the wild men, 
 with few or no uses, must inevitably dis- 
 appear. 
 
 Thus, in a world once wholly wild, a 
 scene of ceaseless strife and blood, the tame 
 and gentle creatures have won their way, 
 and already largely inherit the earth. Our 
 museums and zoological gardens have to 
 seek far to find specimens for science to 
 study, to satisfy curiosity, or to amuse 
 our children. AVe even begin to won- 
 der if the great world will be quite so 
 picturesque and interesting when all the 
 tigers and lions are exterminated, and the 
 very jungles will be drained, and made to 
 bear hai-vests of rice. So safe have we be- 
 come from man's ancient enemies, that we
 
 THE PROPUECY. 9 
 
 are hardly ready to part with them alto- 
 gether. Here, indeed, is a strange series 
 of parables to show how in man's outward 
 world already " the meek inherit the earth." 
 Is it not plain that the prophet ages ago 
 would not have made a mere random guess, 
 but rather a scientific prediction within 
 the realm of law, in foretelling, contrary 
 to all appearances, that the peaceful, timid 
 sheep were better and more enduring than 
 panthers and wildcats ? 
 
 So when the first just and friendly man 
 appeared upon the earth, from that day a 
 fatal Waterloo was visible for all the men 
 of pride and fraud and blood. Here was 
 a new type of man, finer, superior, more 
 intelligent. Here was a man under whose 
 hands the overruling Power was to bring 
 a whole train of larger uses. The wild 
 man that had been was strong to destroy, 
 but he was not strong to build and con- 
 struct. The arrogant conqueror might, in- 
 deed, compel men to accept a despotism,
 
 10 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 with its unstable equilibrium, resting upon 
 the merely temporary basis of serfdom. 
 But the just and friendly man would weld 
 cities and nations together. The right- 
 eous, obedient, merciful man was the ])re- 
 cursor of the republic, with its mutual 
 obligations and its liberties. Surely the 
 inferior type of man must disappear. Less 
 and less could he meet the conditions 
 of existence. The superior type of man 
 must survive. This was Jesus' prophecy, 
 rising out of the perception of a universal 
 law. 
 
 This thought of Jesus showed marvel- 
 lous insight. To look beneath the sur- 
 face, and to catch sight of the working of 
 mighty principles; to see the simplicity of 
 the law beneath the diversity of its ope- 
 ration ; to look beyond masses of bulky 
 material, and conceive the unity of the 
 builder's plan, — this is genius, always 
 rare and costly. We call it, therefore, a 
 very wonderful thing, that first an un-
 
 TEE PROPHECY. 11 
 
 known psalmist uttered the propliecy that 
 the coming race must be the race of the 
 gentle ; and that, generations later, the 
 clear spiritual genius of Jesus singled 
 out this earlier word and wrote it anew, 
 where men must forever read it, become 
 familiar with it, and hold it as a shining 
 ideal. It will be my purpose in the next 
 chapter to show to how large an extent, 
 far greater than the world generally sup- 
 poses, the remarkable prophecy has already 
 become true.
 
 ^2 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 
 
 To a merely casual observer the spec- 
 tacle of our present modern world does 
 not give proof that the meek or gentle 
 have as yet won the earth. Imagine some 
 ancient Egyptian brought to life again, 
 shown the vast military establishments of 
 Europe, taken to the English naval ports 
 and shown the great " destroyers ; " let 
 him hear the talk of Tsar and Kaiser ; let 
 him be told the sums raised by the tax- 
 ation of the great civilized nations for 
 the support of armies and navies ; let him 
 traverse the regions of Asia and Africa, 
 and watch the evidences of tyrannical mis- 
 rule; let him see cities marked by the 
 bloodstains of recent massacres, and the
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 13 
 
 immense ignorant and oppressed popula- 
 tions, — he would not think that the world 
 had got on very much since the days of 
 the Pharaohs. 
 
 Or again, if an early prophet of Israel, 
 an Amos or Hosea, were to visit the great 
 factory towns, were to hear the bitter com- 
 plaints of the masses of working-men 
 about their straitened conditions, their in- 
 sufficient wages, the greed and avarice of 
 their employers ; if he were to read the 
 newspapers, and be told the old story that 
 the rich are growing richer and the poor 
 are growing poorer, — his soul might well 
 be stirred within him, as when he lifted 
 up his voice against the rapacity of the 
 noblemen of Samaria or Jerusalem. The 
 present world seems in fact to be con- 
 trolled by the fighters, the proud, the self- 
 ish, the unjust. 
 
 We need not, however, merely look at 
 the bewildering dust, strife, and noise 
 which mark the surface of life ; but we
 
 14 THE COMING I'EnPLE. 
 
 nnist also consider those deeper conditions, 
 industrial and commercial, out of ^v]lich 
 the Avonderful network of our civilization 
 is wrought. "We need to look, not at what 
 kings, parliaments, and congresses are do- 
 ing, but more closely at the lives of the 
 multitudes of llic humble and uiipraised 
 who weave the warp and woof of history. 
 We need not be concerned about the sta- 
 tionary East, or ask how much it has 
 changed in a thousand years ; it will be 
 enough for our purpose if we trace i)ro- 
 found marks of change and advancement 
 among the peoples who lead the van of 
 civilization. Where the leaders go, there 
 the multitudes sooner or later must fol- 
 low. We will consider some of the distin- 
 guishing characteristics of our Anglo-Saxon 
 people, and especially the developments 
 that have taken place within a century 
 in the United States. We are prepared 
 to show that in this great leading nation 
 of the world, to whicli all other nations
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 15 
 
 look, the signs of the incoming of the 
 new age of the gentle and friendly race 
 are obvious. 
 
 Let us ask, in several important direc- 
 tions, what kind of people are in demand 
 to meet and fit most nicely the conditions 
 of our American life. Who are the men, 
 for instance, pre-eminently in demand on 
 the hundreds of thousands of American 
 farms? What type of man is most sure 
 to succeed in acrriculture — the business 
 upon which mankind must forever de- 
 pend? The men whom our farms require 
 are not the coarse, the brutal, the cruel, 
 but the friendly, gentle, and humane. 
 Here in a certain town is a farmer of 
 the ruder sort, with his sheep and cattle 
 and horses. With like outward condi- 
 tions near by is the man of the new type. 
 The one, careless and inhuman, abuses his 
 creatures. The other gives his animals the 
 most enlightened, thoughtful, patient care. 
 Is there any doubt which of these two
 
 16 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 men Mill succeed? Is there any doubt 
 that the well-tended herd of cows will 
 give more and better milk, and pay larger 
 profit? Is there any doubt that the sheep 
 and the young lambs to which their master 
 is a friend will thrive better than the flock 
 of the careless and brutal neighbor? The 
 fact is, that in the great realm of agricul- 
 ture the demand already is for kindness 
 and humanity. The time has come when 
 no other qualities meet our needs. 
 
 Suppose, again, that in one of our cities 
 two teamsters, each with a stable full of 
 horses, compete for success. One of these 
 men belongs to the old regime. lie seeks 
 to get the most out of his horses and to 
 give them the least. Their food is inade- 
 quate, the teams are overloaded, the drivers 
 force and beat the horses. The other man 
 luis caught the new ideas about the treat- 
 ment of creatures. He loves his horses, 
 and gladly gives them proper care, plenty 
 of food, air, and light in their stalls, the
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 17 
 
 needed time for rest ; he refuses to employ 
 a man who beats his animals; he never 
 overloads his teams. This man does not 
 need to interfere with the business of his 
 neighbor, or try to get away his customers. 
 But which of the two will men, desiring 
 excellent service, choose for permanent em- 
 ployment? As the years go on, which of 
 these men is bound to succeed and pros- 
 per? Which will certainly get the most 
 work out of the horses? The world is 
 coming to require the best service. The 
 best service cannot be maintained except 
 by men of intelligent humanity. 
 
 No doubt there is very much to dis- 
 hearten us in the conduct of business. It 
 is a fair question whether society is not 
 outgrowing our present industrial and com- 
 mercial system. All that I can show at 
 present is that the great bulk of commer- 
 cial transactions is vastly more just and 
 kindly than many suppose. The treacher- 
 ous, overreaching, disobliging dealer is not
 
 18 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 ■wanted anywhere. A righteous competi- 
 tion inevitably pushes him to the wall. 
 Who chooses to deal with men who show 
 a disposition to injure and cheat? Wlio 
 ■will purchase more than once from an un- 
 civil salesman? IMore and more we appre- 
 ciate and expect just, friendly, humane 
 treatment from those with whom we deal. 
 More and more is the demand in all stores 
 and offices for the faithful, friendly, and 
 cheerful. There are not as yet enough 
 men of this sort to fill the places. Other 
 things being equal, these are the men who 
 surely have the future in their hands. 
 There is every reason to believe that there 
 was never before in the world so large a 
 proportion of such persons as there is now 
 in the business establishments of America. 
 Comparing all times together, there was 
 never a period when the poor man, the 
 little child, or the woman would have 
 been so certain of kindly, just, and respect- 
 ful treatment in buying and selling as they
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 19 
 
 are in this last decade of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 One hears loud complaint in many quar- 
 ters to-day of the bearing of capital toward 
 labor, of the harsh treatment of working- 
 men by their employers. It is not my 
 wish to overlook actual facts, or to make 
 light of evils which certainly need to be 
 righted. On the other hand, I wish to 
 make it obvious that there is another class 
 of facts which is frequently overlooked. 
 There are undoubtedly harsh, despotic, 
 arrogant, overbearing masters of capital. 
 Plenty of barbarism still inheres in the 
 tissue of our civilization. 
 
 What I claim is, that the tyrannical em- 
 ployer is an anomaly in our industrial 
 system. He does not belong there. He 
 makes mischief. Like the ugly teamster, 
 he wastes the power which he is set to 
 direct. Like the farm-workman who abuses 
 his animals, his doom is already written and 
 sealed. The law of righteous competition.
 
 20 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 which always works in the long run to re- 
 place the bad thing by a better, and the 
 better thing by a best, works relentlessly 
 against harsh and inhuman masters of 
 industry'. Already, in a considerable num- 
 ber of mills, factories, shops, and rail- 
 roads, the new and enlightened kind of 
 employer is in command. Who will as- 
 suredly get most work out of the men, 
 who will save the tremendous losses in- 
 volved in strikes and lockouts, who will 
 reduce the human friction, who will final- 
 ly pay sure and permanent dividends, so 
 well as that captain of labor who repre- 
 sents not merely money or authorit}-, but 
 also friendliness and intelligent sympathy, 
 who treats workmen, not as machines, but 
 as men ? Such masters as these are com- 
 ing into demand everywhere. It is in ac- 
 cordance w^ith human nature that the work- 
 ing-people will finally be content with no 
 other leaders tlian these. By the inexora- 
 ble laws of trade the great corporations,
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS 21 
 
 granting that they continue to serve us, 
 must furnish this type of captains and lead- 
 ers. The vast machinery of industry de- 
 mands the nicest sort of material in timber 
 and steel. The same complex machinery is 
 bound to require also the most excellent 
 human material. The time is already rap- 
 idly approaching when coarse, unfriendly, 
 avaricious men cannot be suffered to touch, 
 much less to control, the costly plant of 
 industrial civilization. 
 
 Let us hasten on to a far plainer but 
 still more impressive and interesting illus- 
 tration of the working of our law. Only 
 so short a time ago as the first half of 
 this century schools were generally in the 
 hands of brute force. As horses used to 
 be broken to their work, so it was generally 
 assumed for generations that the will of 
 each child must be broken to discipline. 
 Millions of children grew up with the com- 
 mon siffht of the rod in the schoolmas- 
 ter's hand. Only the few prophetic spirits
 
 22 THE COMIXG PEOPLE. 
 
 thought any other method of discipline 
 possible. We have almost totally over- 
 turned the old kind of discipline through- 
 out the United States. The coarse, brutal 
 teacher has been obliged by a beneficent 
 competition to disappear in favor of the 
 teacher who is the children's friend. No 
 intellectual superiority, no superb furnish- 
 ing by the university, is sufficient recom- 
 mendation for the teacher who does not 
 love his scholars. There are not indeed 
 as yet teachers enough of the higher type 
 which we require. But even inferior teach- 
 ers must, at least in outward form, corre- 
 spond to that type. The proof is over- 
 whelmingly evident that the coming race of 
 the world's teachers must be the gentlemen 
 and the gentlewomen whom our ancient 
 prophecy foretold. These alone can secure 
 the best results from our children, at the 
 least expense of needless friction. These 
 alone can provide workmen, farmers, arti- 
 sans, merchants, leaders, and organizers
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 23 
 
 of that industrious, faithful, intelligent, 
 kindly, humane type, such as our grow- 
 ingly delicate, costly, and sensitive civili- 
 zation requires. 
 
 We turn to another remarkable illustra- 
 tion of the working of the law which tends 
 to dispossess the bad and the unfit in favor 
 of the better and the capable. It is a 
 direction in which few would look for such 
 an illustration. It is in the realm of di- 
 plomacy. The old world diplomacy has 
 notoriously been an open field for fraud, 
 international hate, and corruption. Till 
 our century, the evil name. Machiavellian, 
 had come to characterize all diplomacy. 
 We have been trying in the United States 
 with marvellous success a new experiment. 
 True, we have not always consistently lived 
 up to the ideal of this higher experiment. 
 We have tried also the opposite kind of 
 experiment, and invariably to our grief 
 and shame, as in the case of the Mexi- 
 can War. But we have already achieved
 
 24 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 enough to make a clear object-lesson of 
 the superiority of the higher method. "We 
 have had a series of statesmen, who, in 
 their dealings with foreign nations, have 
 ventured to tell the truth, v/ho have not 
 wished to overreach their neighbors, or to 
 do the weakest nation an injustice. The 
 names of Washington, Franklin, Charles 
 Sumner, and Lincoln are proof of the pos- 
 sibility of our having men at the head of 
 our foreign affairs nearly, if not altogether, 
 free of jealousy and suspicion toward the 
 nations over the sea. In other words, 
 friendliness, and not aggressiveness, has 
 characterized the most successful acts of 
 our American diplomacy. 
 
 It is in accordance with this spirit that 
 it has now come to be the settled Ameri- 
 can policy to adjust all those differences, 
 over which nations once used to fight, by 
 the peaceable method of arbitration. The 
 whole world may be said to be watching 
 our American experiment. Who will deny
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 25 
 
 that the eye of the seer who foresaw the 
 coming of the new race of the humane 
 and peaceable caught sight of the trend 
 of a mighty universal law ? Is not his 
 prophecy vindicated already by the fact 
 that the mightiest and leading nation of the 
 world, with its seventy millions of people, 
 exists to-day almost without an army, ex- 
 cept for a few thousand men to patrol 
 the frontiers of the wilderness? 
 
 We are brought to a more startling and 
 significant witness to the law the motions 
 of which we are tracing. We have spoken 
 of the armed camps of Europe and of 
 gigantic fleets of war. But even out of 
 the history of war there is coming into 
 sight a series of suggestive facts of a 
 higher order. The late Civil War in our 
 country, terrible as it was, illustrated on 
 a great scale the growth of humanity. In 
 the old days the fighters faced each other 
 with hatred ; war developed mainly the 
 passions of the savage and the brute ; the
 
 26 THE COMING PEOPLE, 
 
 sole purpose of each contending force was 
 to do mischief to tlie enemy. In our Civil 
 War, on the contrary, the great leaders, 
 and especially tlie common soldiers, who 
 best represented the spirit of the victo- 
 rious party, harbored absolutely no hate 
 in their hearts, wished permanent benelit 
 for their adversaries, and made the motto 
 of war the grand words of tlieir illustri- 
 ous commander. Let us have peace. 
 
 Here was a war, — the outcome indeed 
 of the great national crime of slavery, 
 purged away by blood atonement, — upon 
 the completion of which the representative 
 men on both sides set to work at once to 
 love and respect one another, and to bind 
 the country together in the bonds of good- 
 will. Never before in tlie history of the 
 world had tliere been such results of war. 
 They were not, indeed, the results of war 
 at all. Tliey came in spite of war. The 
 only possible explanation of these facts is 
 in the line of what we are endeavoring to
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 27 
 
 explain, namely, that in spite of all the 
 unseemly dust and noise on the surface of 
 things, the great ruling, inward, spiritual 
 forces work together to bring in the rule 
 of the coming friendly and gentle people. 
 
 Are there not also indications of very 
 marked improvement with respect to the 
 actual holding of power and property? 
 Not so very long ago the power, and es- 
 pecially the property, of the world were in 
 the hands of the fighters, of the arrogant, 
 of greed and avarice. Vast domains were 
 held by single conquerors. Whole towns 
 were possessed by feudal lords. The poor, 
 even when they were not slaves, were 
 forced to pay tribute to harsh masters. 
 
 We do not deny that something of this 
 earlier condition of things still holds true. 
 It was not to be expected that the ruder 
 and brutal powers would give way easily 
 or at once. What we call attention to is 
 the extraordinary prevalence already of a 
 new order. An extremely large proper-
 
 28 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 tion of the millions of the farms and 
 homesteads of the United States are held 
 in the name of justice, good-will, and hu- 
 manity. Making all allowance for masses 
 of ill-gotten wealth, a considerable amount 
 of all the property has been honestly 
 earned. Fair and beneficent equivalent 
 has been paid for it in services rendered. 
 The acquisition of it has not impover- 
 ished any one, but has rather enriched 
 all. Friendly service is not yet the sole 
 condition of the holding of property in the 
 United States, but it is at least coming to 
 be recognized as the only decent and tol- 
 erable condition. Let any one count how 
 many persons there are within his acquaint- 
 ance who have not righteously earned 
 what they possess. Let him enumerate 
 also how large the class is of kindly, in- 
 dustrious, just, and friendly persons who 
 have had at least measurable success in 
 winning possession of the earth. 
 
 I wish that we might say as much about
 
 CEUTAIN CLEAli FACTS. 29 
 
 the power and the places, the rank and the 
 offices of state. But it is possible to ex- 
 aggerate the extent to which corrupt and 
 mercenary methods prevail in our govern- 
 ment. There are in the worst governed 
 cities and States a large number of in- 
 stances, showing promise of the new order. 
 There are upright, faithful, generous, and 
 noble men in every department of the pub- 
 lic service. What is more (and this is the 
 point which I wish to emphasize), such men 
 as these are more and more clearly seen to 
 be the only type of men whom the state can 
 afford to sustain. The growing dissatisfac- 
 tion throughout our country with bad offi- 
 cials and corrupt government is a signal 
 that the days of the self-seeking political 
 managers are numbered. As in industry, 
 in commerce, in education, the demand is 
 for the best ; and as only the best can sur- 
 vive, so in politics, the same imperative 
 demand for the best is certain sooner or 
 later to produce the corresponding supply.
 
 30 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 We have seen how in the brute world the 
 creature that lias few or ill uses must give 
 way in favor of the creature of many and 
 beneficent uses. So, inevitably, the politi- 
 cian and the office-seeker who serve only 
 themselves must go to the wall in favor 
 of the men who offer large services for so- 
 ciety. 
 
 I wish to guard carefully against misun- 
 derstanding. I do not speak in order to 
 make any one better satisfied with exist- 
 inor conditions, least of all satisfied with 
 evil conditions. I am making no defence 
 for the idle rich, or for the too great gains 
 which our American society has allowed 
 shrewd adventurers to win through the 
 corrupting influence of various kinds of 
 selfish or class legislation. I wish to call 
 things by their right names. I wish to 
 leave it perfectly evident how far barbarism 
 still survives in America. I shall speak 
 later with reference to ridding ourselves of 
 the remnants of barbarism. What I have
 
 CERTAIN CLEAR FACTS. 31 
 
 desired to make plain in this chapter is the 
 actual extent of the incoming of the realm 
 of light and good will. I hold that the 
 winning forces in the world to-day are not, 
 as many suppose, greed and selfishness 
 working by brute force, but rather good- 
 will, friendliness, and humanity. I hold 
 that these forces of civilization — the trade- 
 winds of the universe — are mightier than 
 the old world forces with which they com- 
 pete. They are permanent, while the others 
 are passing away. 
 
 There are those who, in their discontent 
 at the rate of human progress, suffering, it 
 may be, the effects of injustice, with their 
 eyes fixed on wrongs which need to be re- 
 dressed, judging human progress by a hasty 
 glance at the waves on the shore, rather 
 than by the mighty rising tide on the scale 
 of the centuries, see no help for the modern 
 world except through catastrophe and revo- 
 lution. There have always been voices, 
 honest and well-meant, but harsh and bit-
 
 32 THE coMiya peoi'le. 
 
 ter, foreboding terror and evil to be paid 
 as the price for further advancement. I 
 propose to show the contrary. The great 
 new doctrine of evolution, which comes as 
 a clew to explain so many strange things 
 in our world, does not support these gloomy 
 forebodings. On the contrary, a wide read- 
 ing, both of history and science, goes to 
 show how deep is the law that works ever 
 toward tlie achievement of the best and the 
 most desirable things. Whatever is best, 
 whatever fits the larger need, whatever most 
 nicely adjusts itself to the ruling condi- 
 tions, this the universe demands, and works 
 to effect. Here the highest teaching of 
 religion is one with science and history. 
 If God lives, so sure as justice and benefi- 
 cence are at the heart of the universe, we 
 have nothing to fear, but all things to liope 
 for. I wish to make this plainer as we 
 go on.
 
 TEE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 33 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HEROISM, OR THE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 
 
 It would seem as if every one would 
 like the idea of filling the world with gen- 
 tle, that is, civilized, or, if you choose to 
 call them so. Christian people. It may be, 
 however, that there lingers in some minds 
 a real concern as to the character of this 
 coming people. We are the descendants 
 of sea-rovers and soldiers. We have been 
 nurtured through many generations on the 
 songs and stories of the heroes. There is 
 no one of us whose heart does not beat 
 faster at the sound of a drum, or at the 
 sight of marching men. The history of 
 the winning of our liberties through sev- 
 eral glorious centuries comprises many 
 hard-fought fields in the Old World and
 
 34 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 ill the New. Many of the great and good 
 men of the past, like Alfred of England, 
 William of Orange, Admiral Coligny, and 
 our own Washington, distinguished them- 
 selves upon the battle-field. Tlie most 
 familiar type of the hero has come to be 
 the man who can face death without wa- 
 vering. Is there not a hard and stern ele- 
 ment in the life of man ? Are there not 
 needful grains of iron in his blood, without 
 the bracing presence of which he would 
 become effeminate ? 
 
 It becomes, therefore, a perfectly fair 
 question, what effect long-continued civili- 
 zation will have upon the manliness of the 
 race. Disband the armies, let the White 
 Squadrons rust, settle all disputes in a 
 great international court, and how will 
 you be sure any longer to keep the tonic 
 iron in the blood of the youth of this more 
 peaceable world ? If men become timid ; if 
 no noble occasions ever whet their cour- 
 age ; if manly risks and ventures disappear
 
 THE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 35 
 
 from life; if anodynes, whether of drugs 
 or mental healing, are found to drive pain 
 from the earth, — what is to hinder that 
 most fatal of all kinds of decay, which has 
 repeatedly swept luxurious empires from 
 the face of the earth, and given over their 
 cities to the people of a wild but fresh and 
 hardy stock ? So far in the history of the 
 world, the wild men, the fighters, have had 
 a part to play in reinvigorating the race. 
 Up to our time the hardy and strenuous, 
 the intense and energetic, have inherited 
 the earth. Will it ever be well for the 
 world if these forceful qualities fade out? 
 Are they not bound to fade out under the 
 peaceful conditions of a gentle and really 
 Christian civilization ? 
 
 Before I go on to show how ground- 
 less such fears of the effects of civilization 
 are, I wish to express a complete sympathy 
 with the ideal of the virile and forceful 
 man, whom the advocates of the old leaven 
 of barbarism wish to perpetuate. I desire
 
 36 THE COMIXa PEOPLE. 
 
 to see no tame and cowarJly world wliich 
 has ceased to liavo a use for the heroes. 
 I desire not less, hut even more, of the 
 tonic iron in tlie life of man. Our prol> 
 leni, indeed, is like that of the fruit-grower 
 who has discovered some rich and lus- 
 cious variety of apples or pears. It may- 
 be that the tree that bears the new 
 fruit is too delicate to withstand the cli- 
 mate. What then, if, taking a graft of 
 the new tree, we insert it in the hardy 
 and native stock? What if we can turn 
 the force of the wild growth, no longer 
 to bear small and bitter apples, but the 
 good rich fruit? So we propose to com- 
 bine gentleness with hardihood ; we have 
 in mind, not only men of kindly spirit, 
 but men possessed with the energy and 
 vigor of tlie best native stock. If we 
 foresaw that courage and virility were to 
 cease or to grow less, if we supposed that 
 in the new regime there would be little 
 occasion or demand for these manly forces,
 
 THE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 3« 
 
 we should wish that our children might 
 have lived and died in the stormy days 
 of Magna Charta or Bunker Hill, instead 
 of praying, as we do pray now, that they 
 may live to see the golden days of the 
 incoming civilization. 
 
 On the very threshold of our argument 
 we meet a striking and significant fact 
 to establish a presupposition in our favor. 
 Hitherto, tliroughout human history, there 
 have always been wild and untried races, 
 hovering over the borders of civilization. 
 For centuries no man could predict what 
 strange new race might not descend like 
 an inundation from the mysterious North, 
 or from undiscovered continents over the 
 sea. To-day explorers have pushed into 
 every wilderness and island. For the first 
 time in history there are now no longer 
 new races to reckon with. Everywhere 
 the savage peoples are dying out, or giv- 
 ing room for civilized colonists. Is it not 
 clear that Nature has got through with her
 
 38 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 earlier method of reinvigoratiiig old and 
 effeminate races from tlie infusion of a 
 hardier barbarous stock ? On the contrary, 
 the world is becoming unified on the lines 
 of civilization. The majestic push from 
 behind is now in one direction, the way 
 of a common commerce, a common body 
 of knowledge and science, similar institu- 
 tions and laws, by and by also (who shall 
 say not?), a common language and reli- 
 gion. However desirable or picturesque 
 some of the methods of barbarism may 
 seem to the lovers of the antique, barba- 
 rism is as certainly doomed as were the bear 
 and the wolf when the Mayflower landed 
 at Plymouth. We have to look, not to 
 barbarism, but to the broader and more 
 intelligent development of civilization to 
 find the needful means for making brave 
 and noble men. 
 
 What, then, is this fine and beautiful 
 thing, courage or virilit}^ which we all 
 agree that our coming people must liave as
 
 THE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 39 
 
 truly as our sea-roving forefathers pos- 
 sessed it ? Is it mere pugnacity, or the dis- 
 position to quarrel, as some might hastily 
 suppose ? On the contrary, I assert that 
 virility is the natural characteristic of 
 sound and robust health. Pugnacity is 
 often, indeed, the symptom of weakness 
 or nervous instability. The fretful child 
 is quarrelsome. The vigorous child is 
 good-natured. It is true that energy must 
 find something to do. It is capable of 
 being drawn off into the channels of mis- 
 chief and even cruelty. But mischief and 
 cruelty do not belong to its nature. Find 
 for the lively boy's energy positive con- 
 structive things toward which to run, and 
 it will grow no less virile and courageous. 
 The point which I emphasize is, that if we 
 want brave men, we must have sound and 
 healthy men. Give us plenty of men, 
 well born, well fed, well trained, men of 
 clean lives and orderly habits, temperate 
 and self-controlled men, precisely such
 
 40 THE COMfNG PEOPLE. 
 
 men, as the type of the Christian gentle- 
 man requires, and we will show you more 
 men of virile, physical courage than any 
 army that Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon 
 ever saw. 
 
 Our Civil War established this fact : 
 There was need of discipline to make an 
 army. But there was no lack of physi- 
 cal courage. Boys who had never been 
 in a fight in their lives, men who came 
 from behind desks and counters, and had 
 hardly smelt gunpowder, were brave 
 enough, and very soon well enough disci- 
 plined, to storm deadly batteries. This 
 latent virility is always abounding in a 
 healthy and well-nourished people. To 
 believe in a good God and to love one's 
 neighbor work no harm to such virility. 
 It is all the more vigorous in a people 
 who believe that, as sons of God, they 
 hold the future in their hands. 
 
 There is no greater mistake than to 
 suppose that viiility needs the exercise
 
 THE IRON IN TUB BLOOD. 41 
 
 of fighting, as if there were no other ex- 
 haustive occasions for its use ! It is true 
 that fighting has frequently furnished the 
 occasion for the display of courage and har- 
 dihood. Quite brutal customs once held in 
 every school-yard, where boys were trained 
 to fisticuffs and cruelty. But the genera- 
 tions of boys who fought and bullied each 
 other did not necessarily make heroes; 
 they never failed also to produce a due 
 proportion of cowards and sneaks. We 
 do better for our American boys than to 
 urge them to fight one another. There 
 are feats of daring and adventure, there 
 are hardy athletic sports, there are horses 
 to be managed and boats to be sailed, 
 there are a thousand channels where energy 
 runs, where a quick eye, a skilful hand, 
 and the brave and ready mind to meet 
 an emergency, have daily practice with- 
 out ever the need of ill-will or a hostile 
 thought. Is civilization so unintelligent 
 that it cannot educate its sons to manly
 
 42 THE COMIXG PEOPLE. 
 
 courage, ay, its daughters also to healthy 
 womanly heroism ? 
 
 Moreover, the arts and tlie occupations 
 of industry, the pursuits of science, a world- 
 embracing commerce, help to develop the 
 virility of a people on a vast scale. Ships 
 still sail venturesome voyages; discoverers 
 and engineers still strike out paths through 
 the wilderness and over the mountains ; on 
 the colossal network of the world's railway 
 and steamship system an army of kindly 
 and brave men daily run the risks of death 
 to keep other lives safe. As in the past, 
 so now, a great silent host of women, 
 wives and mothers, face pain and death 
 for love's sake. Barbarism indeed, with 
 unconscious prevision of the great hu- 
 mane laws, taught its heroes to suffer 
 and die, the few for the many. But civ- 
 ilization, facing the solemn facts of life 
 and death with cheerful intelligence, keeps 
 good the ranks of its heroes, bidding the 
 many to live, and if the need comes, also
 
 THE IRON IN TEE BLOOD. 43 
 
 to die, for the sake of the common hu- 
 manity. 
 
 I have said that courage is the charac- 
 teristic of a healthy and well-ordered body. 
 But this is the bare parable and outward 
 illustration of a deeper spiritual fact. 
 There is abundance of physical courage to 
 undertake deeds of daring. There is as 
 yet but little moral courage to match and 
 direct the lower and merely animal kind 
 of virility. The lower order comes first 
 to meet the earlier rude necessities. We 
 have come now to the stage when new and 
 higher needs confront us, and demand a 
 finer form of satisfaction. 
 
 It is no loncrer enoufih for the modern 
 state that its leaders shall be men so brave 
 as not to run away from an enemy. It is 
 not enough for the captain of industry to 
 be stronger than any of his workmen. We 
 want another and more costly quality. We 
 have yet to require in our political leaders 
 that they shall be brave enough to stand
 
 44 THE co^fI^G peovle. 
 
 alone, and to say the eternal No to the pro- 
 jects of avarice or selfish ambition. We 
 want capitalists of moral fibre to decry and 
 veto the use of bribery and corruption in 
 legislation, and none the less firmly wlien 
 subtly debasing methods promise for the mo- 
 ment to foster their own selfish interests. 
 
 If we are to have rich men at all in the 
 future, we are going to demand men of 
 courage, who sliall speak out whatever they 
 honestly think is for the social welfare. If, 
 in the old times, men despised the weakling 
 and coward, will not men come to see that 
 moral cowardice is not respectable? If the 
 big-bodied man, afraid to use his strength 
 when it was needed, was the worst sort of 
 coward, wliy shall we not rate as beneath 
 respect the man whose money-power or self- 
 ish greed of gain or place takes away his 
 manly independence, and reduces him to 
 the level of the sneak ? 
 
 The truth is, superb moral courage is 
 the crying need of democracy. If man-
 
 THE IRON IN THE BLOOD. 45 
 
 kind had attained sufficient results in viril- 
 ity in the days of war, we might perhaps 
 tremble lest the new civilization, having 
 no further fields for its conquest, should 
 decline to supine ease. On the contrary, 
 the grand attainments are yet before us. 
 There was never so great a pressure on 
 the civilized peoples for the product of 
 courage. Such a demand is itself a proph- 
 ecy that we are on the eve of a new and 
 forward march. It need not be marked by 
 bloody steps, but it must needs be all the 
 more strenuous and masterful. It will call 
 for brave hearts, who know not the fear 
 of death, or — a harder test of courage — 
 the fear of the face of man.
 
 46 TUK CUMlMi I'KUl'LE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Men are quite used to liearing it said 
 that we live in a universe. Few yet re- 
 alize what a stupendous statement tliis is. 
 The fact is, that long after we have dispos- 
 sessed demons and wind-gods and forces of 
 evil from their hold of the world, the vague 
 superstitions tliat survive from the beliefs 
 of early men still haunt our minds. We 
 call this a universe, but it is not obviously 
 so. In the face of tlie appearances of 
 things, it often looks far more like a scene 
 of life-and-death struggle. In the midst of 
 a hurricane, sweeping away great trees, un- 
 roofing houses, deluging the fields, does it 
 not seem as if the men of Homer's time 
 were right, who thought the unseen power's
 
 TUE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 47 
 
 were at war in the heavens? How shall 
 we easily persuade the doubter that every- 
 thing is orderly, that there is no actual 
 conflict at all, that one Power, not many 
 powers, and this a beneficent Power, is 
 behind the whirl of the tempest? 
 
 Let us go up, however, into one of the 
 new meteorological observatories. Let us 
 imagine that we can take with us the Ho- 
 meric man, full of his childish fears. Let 
 us look at the charts and maps, and study 
 the reports that have been coming in on the 
 wings of the lightning for many hours, from 
 Montana, from the Gulf States, from the St. 
 Lawrence basin. Let the observers tell us 
 where the storm started days ago, what its 
 track has been, where its centre now is, 
 where it is moving, and how soon blue skies 
 will follow it. Let them lecture us a little 
 on the part which the sun plays in start- 
 ing storms, raising winds, distributing rains, 
 irrigating the earth. The same sun which 
 makes the corn grow moves the clouds. It
 
 48 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 is only a step to seo that all forces are 
 the manifestation of the one force. It is 
 but a step to add that, if the sunshine is 
 good, its children, the wind and the light- 
 ning, cannot be evil. 
 
 Let us try, as hard as we may please, to 
 get away from this logic. The universe is 
 all one; we must admit this. But let us 
 try to deny that it is good. Let us call it 
 indifferent, or even mischievous. We can- 
 not consistently do this, if we try. Order, 
 law, harmony, truth, unity, are all names of 
 good, and cannot be translated into terms 
 of insignificance, much less of evil. It is 
 easy and reasonable to trust that the won- 
 derful and beautiful order is beneficent ; for 
 this idea fulfils our thought, and adds to it 
 the needful element of reason. To say 
 "order" and "unit}^" and then to add 
 "evil," is to the intellect wholly baffling 
 and inconsequential. Neither, when you 
 have said "unity," does it make sense to 
 mix good and evil together. Their sum
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 49 
 
 does not make unity. On the whole and 
 profoundly, beneath and behind all appear- 
 ances, the mind, quite as truly as the heart 
 of man, requires to find good as the sov- 
 ereign fact. The mind demands good as 
 well as unity. The mind that discovers 
 the universal order is bound to believe that 
 what we call "evil" is only incidental to 
 the progress and development of the order, 
 as the discords made by the young violinist, 
 far from being outside the kingdom of 
 music, are incidental to his learning the 
 harmony. Thus, as soon as we drive out 
 the demons, and make the great nature or- 
 derly and one, we are straightway brought 
 face to face with God. God only is left, 
 whom we cannot drive out, and give thought 
 itself any standing-room. 
 
 We are interrupted now with a practical 
 question. "Tell us," some one asks, "ex- 
 actly what you mean by a Divine uni- 
 verse." What is the Divine universe that 
 includes within it Armenia and Crete and
 
 60 THE c'OMiy: peovle. 
 
 Cuba, tlie shims of toiling cities, the sul- 
 pliur mines of Sicily, the Siberian prisons? 
 The truth is, although the devil has been 
 banished from his old place in nature, he 
 remains for a Avhile in men's thoughts of 
 human societ}'. We propose to drive him 
 altofrether out of our world. If there is no 
 devil or imp in the hunicane, the volcano, 
 the flood, there is no devil in the mine, the 
 factory, the tenement-house, in the Sultan's 
 palace, or the plague-spots of Bombay. 
 If the universal order holds good behind 
 and throughout the hurricane, and is never 
 broken, so the universal laws hold good 
 in the face of all the surviving barbarism 
 of Turkey or Africa. Let us see if this is 
 not so. 
 
 What does any one really think who 
 holds that this is not a moral or Divine 
 universe? He means, if he means anything, 
 that you cannot quite depend upon the 
 working of the righteous laws in this earth. 
 Sometimes they may work, but at other
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 61 
 
 times they fail you. Sometimes it may be 
 well for a man to be just, and at other 
 times it is better to lie and cheat. This is 
 a world, then, of moral expediency, where 
 you must guess your way, but where you 
 cannot trust that the doing of righteousness 
 will be altogether safe. 
 
 This is as if there were a room in some 
 factory where the workman could not quite 
 depend upon the laws of mechanics. Imps, 
 and not laws, play havoc with the work. 
 Sometimes a direct blow of the hammer 
 will strike the nail, and again the best- 
 aimed blow will hit the workman's hand, 
 or smite his face. Sometimes it will be 
 well to work from the pattern, and again 
 it will serve better to use no pattern what- 
 ever. The man who throws away his 
 square and plumb-line may do as well as 
 if he used them, in this strange workroom 
 of chance. This is what men, in whose 
 minds the superstition of a devil still lurks, 
 say of our world. This is precisely what it
 
 52 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 comes to •whenever one sees no Divine uni- 
 verse to believe in. Is it possible to believe 
 in moral chaos? 
 
 How can any one soberly believe in the 
 outward universe, and not tliiuk that the 
 orderly structure proceeds right through 
 and includes with its majestic sovereignty 
 all human things ? Is there any area of hu- 
 man life in which the moral laws play fast 
 and loose, and leave the man who keeps 
 them to be the sport of the imps and de- 
 mons? Is there any time when the man 
 who steers by the guesses of expediency 
 will be safe, and the man who steers by 
 the stars of principle will go to shipwreck? 
 
 Is it in the realm of the home and the 
 affections that the world ceases to be a 
 Divine universe, and its laws mislead us? 
 Will the man or the woman build a home 
 out of savage lusts, out of unfaithfulness, 
 out of envies, jealousies, selfishness? Every 
 taint of animalism or barbarism spoils the 
 liome life, and poisons the fibre of the affec-
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 53 
 
 tions and friendships. There is no work- 
 shop in the world where the mechanical 
 laws hold so surely as the subtle spirit- 
 ual laws hold in human society. Do you 
 want friends? Do you wish to be loved? 
 Do you desire the joy of a civilized home? 
 Do you care to enter noble human society? 
 By every such question that you try to an- 
 swer the world proves itself a Divine uni- 
 verse. To the boj^s on their playground, 
 and even to savages, the moral universe 
 begins to display itself. Let the boy be 
 true, frank, brave, manly, generous, obli' 
 ging, and like the young Abraham Lincoln, 
 every one wants to have his good company. 
 Let friendly Bishop Patteson go to live 
 with the pagan South Sea Islanders, and 
 the universal human nature in them ral- 
 lies to support the noble man. Let a Low- 
 ell or a Sumner visit England, and the 
 most aristocratic society unlocks its doors. 
 Why ? Because the only real aristocracy in 
 the world is compacted of virile, courageous,
 
 64 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 high-minded, find public-spirited characters. 
 Because human society throughout is trav- 
 ersed by the univei-sal ethical laws. Be- 
 cause already in "good society" the gentle 
 prevail, and no others are wanted. Be- 
 cause, obviously, the all-round man whom 
 we admire is the just and friendly man, 
 and the w^omen whom we love are the 
 large-hearted women. Who, then, denies 
 that this is the same sort of Divine uni- 
 verse in all the ramifications of human so- 
 ciety as it is in workshops or meteorological 
 observatories ? 
 
 Perhaps, however, men who arc trying 
 to make all the money they can, see no 
 signs of an imperative reign of righteous 
 laws in Wall Street. They think that 
 the imps still play about the workshops 
 of trade, bringing honest men to shame! 
 What are the merchants thinking about 
 who talk so? Do they not know that 
 every figure must be exact in every page 
 of the ledger, that orderly system must pre-
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 55 
 
 vail from the counting-room to the factory, 
 that the whole gigantic fabric of modern 
 business rests upon confidence, tliat every 
 lie, dishonesty, error, is waste, and some- 
 where at last has to be reckoned with ? Do 
 they not also see that commercial book-keep- 
 ing is one grand parable of the nice and 
 accurate working of righteous laws, in a 
 realm where no disobedience can ever be 
 covered up? 
 
 Is it the politician who despairs of the 
 righteous universe, or dreams that he can 
 play with its laws ? Such a politician does 
 not read history. Nothing in history is 
 more interesting, impressive, or encoura- 
 ging than to see how by inexorable justice 
 every man goes to " his own place." Men 
 lightly think that the world worships brains, 
 smartness, popularit3^ The nation is always 
 trying experiments with cheap material, 
 and slowly learns the lessons of its dis- 
 appointments. The nation always hopes 
 that behind the successful man of the mo-
 
 66 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 nient, use and service will appear to justify 
 his notoriety. But the world loves and 
 worships no such man as this ; or if for a 
 little it is deceived, it soon ceases to wor- 
 ship. What does the world care to-day for 
 the old-time despots and conquerors, for a 
 dull King George or Louis, for the sen- 
 ators and Presidents who stood for human 
 slavery? The world groans at their names. 
 But it reveres, never so much as to-day, 
 the mart3TS of its liberties, its laws, and 
 its faith ; not Jeffei-son Davis, but Presi- 
 dent Lincoln ; not Gates, but Washington ; 
 not Lord North, but Pitt, the friend of free- 
 dom ; not Philip of Spain, but William the 
 Silent; not Herod, but Jesus. Place once 
 the statue on the pedestal of righteousness 
 and it stands forever. Teach our youth the 
 solemn object-lessons of history, and they 
 will not dare to go the slippery way of 
 the unfaithful, the cowardly, the selfish, 
 and the traitors. Temptation will hardly 
 be possible to those who have once seen
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 57 
 
 the grand march of right through all the 
 generations. 
 
 This does not mean that we live in a 
 universe where the experiments of injustice 
 are forbidden. It would not be a moral 
 universe at all if men's hands were tied, 
 and they were forced, like slaves, unwill- 
 ingly in the way of justice. As it is a 
 world where the child can fall, and indeed 
 must fall before he can walk; as it is a 
 world where the ill-aimed blow of the 
 hammer spoils the work, and necessitates 
 the more skill in the workman ; as it is 
 a world full of conditions which, if you 
 break, will straightway narrow the flow 
 of your life, — so it is a world where 
 you can do wrong, tell falsehoods, break 
 promises, injure your friends, bring woe 
 and tears to multitudes, crucify your holy 
 ones. 
 
 I do not find that this large liberty 
 proves the triumph of unrighteousness or 
 the malign powers of a Satan. It proves
 
 68 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 the contrary by every new experiment. It 
 shows that evil does not work, that cruelty 
 is barbarous and intolerable, that selfishness 
 goes at last to tlie wall, that tlie righteous 
 man, though alone, is niighlier than the 
 multitude, that — 
 
 " behind the dim unknown 
 
 Standeth God witliin the shadow, keeping watch 
 above his own." 
 
 Why then, some one asks, if this is so 
 evident, why does not every one see it? 
 Because, as I shall show more carefully 
 in tlie following chapter, the movement is 
 progressive ; because it presents itself to 
 our minds as an order of evolution. It 
 is a Divine universe in the process of 
 becoming ; it is vital and organic. No 
 one pretends that it is a mechanical world, 
 wound up like a clock, so as to keep the 
 true time from the day that the pendu- 
 lum starts. We have no use for Paley's 
 world ; we cannot wonder that men who
 
 THE DIVINE UNIVERSE. 59 
 
 look for that kind of universe become in- 
 fidels. 
 
 There is a strange and cloudy mixture 
 in a vial ; it looks worthless ; I am tempted 
 to throvi^ it out of the window. But wait : 
 I begin to see at the bottom of the vial the 
 beautiful shape of a crystal. By that token 
 I know what the obscure mixture is doing ; 
 it is depositing crystals. So whenever, in 
 the apparent chaos of human life, I see 
 the beginnings of the beautiful, orderly, 
 crystalline structure, I know what the uni- 
 verse is doing. I see the structural order 
 of a single righteous life ; I see the crys- 
 talline structure of a single true home ; I 
 see the structural lines traversing business, 
 trades, statecraft, education. Wherever I 
 see the lines of such durable structure, 
 I have no doubts any longer about the uni- 
 verse. The mixture may be still largely 
 obscure, the greater part of it remains in 
 apparent chaos ; but I know that it is de- 
 positing crystals. The laws of the crystals
 
 CO THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 are woikinc: tlirousfhout the mass. The 
 prophecy of the crystals is certain from 
 the moment wlien, out of the seeming 
 chaos, the first perfect and beautiful sliape 
 appears.
 
 TUB POINT OF VIEW. 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 "Why should there now be any doubt or 
 disagreement about the things which we 
 are discussing ? Why, for instance, if this 
 is a universe, should any one question our 
 main proposition, that the whole trend of 
 the world is toward the rule of the just 
 and the gentle ? If this is so, why, prac- 
 tically, should intelligent persons do any- 
 thing else than obey the mighty universe- 
 law of good-will ? Least of all, how should 
 any one dare to stand on the side of bar- 
 barism, and oppose the victorious forces of 
 this incoming civilization ? Why should 
 men fight against God ? Yet many persons 
 who think themselves well educated are 
 found doing this very thing. Many do
 
 G2 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 this who call themselves good Christians. 
 They are often quite pessimistic about the 
 outcome of the forces and processes which 
 they see working around them. They at 
 least deem it the part of greater safety 
 to act with distrust, suspicion, rivalry, jeal- 
 ousy, and enmity. In short, they think it 
 safe and even necessary to live in many 
 particulars as barbarians, and not as civil- 
 ized men, citizens of the universe. How 
 can men making any claim to decency, 
 much less professing to believe in God, 
 ever lie, cheat, evade, refuse duty, or do 
 outright injustice ? 
 
 Most differences of opinion between men 
 arise from the different points of view at 
 which they stand. Let a man be lost in 
 the woods at the foot of a mountain, and 
 he will have no idea of what the mountain 
 looks like, or of the country to be seen 
 from its summit. Let the man stand in one 
 of the narrow, crowded courts or lanes of 
 London, and he will have no idea of the
 
 TUB POINT OF VIEW. 63 
 
 splendor of the city as seen from the West- 
 minster Bridge. So the man who looks at 
 the problems of the great world from the 
 point of view of his own petty personal in- 
 terests, from his bit of a farm, from behind 
 his counter, from his office, or even from his 
 own fireside, cannot expect to see things as 
 they are on the vast scale of the world and 
 the centuries. From the narrow and per- 
 sonal point of view, each man asks. What is 
 the outlook for me, for my business, for my 
 crops, for winning my cases, for getting a 
 living? or perhaps a little more broadly, 
 What is the outlook for the success of my 
 party or my denomination ? Each man, 
 therefore, sees things somewhat differently 
 from his neighbor. Neither tries to see the 
 other's side, much less'to get the panoramic 
 view of the whole. It is not strange at all 
 when men who stand in the din and dust 
 of the crowding competition of the street 
 are told that the order of the world is surely 
 toward the methods of a perfectly friendly
 
 G4 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 justice, before which all cruel selfishness is 
 foredoomed, that many answer that they do 
 not see this at all. How could they be ex- 
 pected to see it from an obviously wrong 
 point of view? 
 
 There is a point of view for any pic- 
 ture or statue from which it ought to bo 
 seen. There is a point of view for the 
 works of the Great Artist, for every master- 
 piece of scenery, where you best see it in 
 its contrasts and proportions. So with all 
 subjects of human thought. After taking 
 proper pains to look at the thing in detail, 
 there is a best point of view where you may 
 sum it all up, see its proportions and values, 
 and understand what it signifies. Let us 
 see if we cannot find a common and true 
 point of view where we may stand and look 
 at the grand questions of the destiny of 
 man. We mean his destiny, not in some 
 other life, but in this earth with which 
 at present we are chiefly concerned. 
 
 In t} ^ first place, the right point of view
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 65 
 
 for seeing things as they are is that of 
 complete intellectual honesty. It is essen- 
 tial that we simply ask, What is true ? 
 We do not ask, like children, what we 
 should like to see, or what is pleasant, or 
 beautiful. We do not ask to be shown 
 what we have been taught, what our re- 
 ligion says, or what the great names of 
 ancient authority have said. We want the 
 facts ; and we wish to see them, not with 
 others' eyes, but with our own. 
 
 We are lifted to a new level of obser- 
 vation about any subject as soon as we 
 put the main question. What is the truth? 
 Science is here a great schoolmaster for 
 the philosophers, and for the plain reli- 
 gious people also. Science will not let 
 any one spin a theory out of his own brain, 
 and then try to twist the facts to meet it. 
 Science will not let any one be content 
 merely with saying, " My church teaches 
 thus and so." 
 
 Darwin, Huxley, Gray, Romanes, are
 
 GG THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 shining examples of a new, imperative, and 
 beautiful method. Like the photograph, 
 they report precisely what they see. "The 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth," is their motto. Show them that 
 they have been mistaken, if you can, and 
 they will thank you, and own their error. 
 Displace their report witli a fuller and 
 more accurate report, and they will praise 
 you. The established facts and principles 
 of science arise out of the reports of men 
 who have risen to this level of scrupulous 
 and unprejudiced truthfulness. The dif- 
 ferences of science touch those matters 
 which the lovers of truth agree in con- 
 fessing to be still obscure. 
 
 In admiring the lovers of truth we are 
 unconsciously admiring religion. What 
 kind of a world is it that is so put to- 
 gether, so jointed and compacted in every 
 member, so nicely accurate in the fuiish 
 of every atom, that the masters of inves- 
 tigation believe in it, and only care to
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. Gl 
 
 report what it tells them? Though jou 
 should give worlds to bribe them, they do 
 not dare or wish to falsify the majestic 
 records of nature. What kind of a world 
 is it that inspires its closest thinkers to 
 love truth more than mortal life? What 
 kind of a world is it the laws of which 
 the great investigators bank upon, as if in- 
 deed they were the pledged words of the 
 Almighty Wisdom? This is surely a re- 
 ligious world. If there were no religion, 
 there would be no truth, there would be 
 no science. 
 
 If the world is a picture, it is a pano- 
 rama ; if life is worth living, it belongs to 
 an order of progress. Familiar as this 
 fact is, we can scarcely emphasize it too 
 highly, or overstate its fair consequences, 
 which are only beginning to be generally 
 admitted. Men once looked at the world, 
 and interpreted things as they are from the 
 point of view of an imaginary and quite sta- 
 tionary Paradise. They therefore dreamed
 
 08 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 that, if they could ever again establish 
 another fixed and quiet Paradise, they 
 would regain lost happiness. They liave 
 di'eamed, and they still di'eam, of finish- 
 ing their work in the world, completing 
 their cities, fire-proof, whose streets will 
 henceforth remain as they are laid, com- 
 pleting their institutions also, settling all 
 problems of labor and wealth, setting a 
 finh at last upon all legislation, and then 
 sitting down for a millennium to rest, — a 
 most insignificant anti-climax to the story 
 of the world's heroic endeavors. 
 
 The true point of view, on the con- 
 trary, is like that of the astronomer in 
 his observatory. Here all things move, 
 and he moves with them. As with pass- 
 ing trains, there is parallax upon parallax 
 to disturb the view, and to stir the be- 
 holder to seek to unravel the laws of the 
 motion. There is no great fixed star, no 
 distant group of constellations, that does 
 not participate in the majestic motion.
 
 TUE POINT OF VIEW. 69 
 
 But this motion is nowhere chaotic or 
 insignificant. It does not return vainly 
 upon itself, paralyzing the mind of man 
 with its eternal futility. It is an order of 
 growth or evolution. This means that an 
 element of time and space comes into our 
 thought. We look at things in the large, 
 and not merely in detail. We judge the 
 vast motion, not on the scale of terrestrial 
 moments, but on the larger scale of the 
 ages. To try to do this is man's splendid 
 discipline in patience and humility. 
 
 This is not a diflBcult thought, suited 
 only to the mind of a philosopher. We 
 are used to the same larger view about 
 our own undertakings. Here is a great 
 piece of railway engineering that will 
 abolish all the grade crossings of a city. 
 It is very slow and inconvenient ; foolish 
 people ask what is the use of this ex- 
 pense; strangers do not understand at all 
 what we are about. The work for a 
 while is chaos except to the expert. But
 
 70 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 WO simply say, Wait, and wlienever the 
 first piece of the new elevated track is in 
 place, even a passer-by will catch the idea 
 that once was only in the mind of a few 
 engineers. 
 
 There is an ugly plant in the green- 
 house. It was never known to have a 
 blossom. The child asks. Why do you 
 keep that great useless plant? Wait, we 
 say, it is growing; it is a night-blooming 
 cereus ; at last it puts forth its wonder- 
 ful beauty. And that one night, when 
 the plant has shown what it was slowly 
 coming to, it has justified for itself abun- 
 dantly the barrenness and ugliness of many 
 winter months. 
 
 So with the great mysterious growth of 
 the life of our earth. Grant, if you like, 
 that it seemed to be doing nothing sig- 
 nificant through the rude saurian ages. 
 Grant that, looking back now, we would 
 none of us wish to have lived, and much 
 less to have brought up children, in the
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 71 
 
 old cities of Thebes, Nineveh, or Babylon. 
 Grant that, taken in short views, history- 
 seemed to be repeating itself, and the tides 
 of human life to be breaking and vainly 
 falling back on the sands. Nevertheless, 
 when first in Egypt or Judea or Athens a 
 righteous man, the lover of justice, ap- 
 peared, when first the type of Jesus, the 
 lover of man, appeared, in the sight of in- 
 telligence the long dreary ages were abun- 
 dantly redeemed by one consummate flower 
 of humanity. It became known at that 
 moment that history did not merely repeat 
 itself, that the generations of human life 
 did not break idly on the sands. It began 
 to be seen what the barren and ugly ages 
 were about. 
 
 And why, to-day, do the early ages seem 
 fruitless or dreadful? Not because they 
 did nothing, not because they had no 
 meaning to those who shared their life 
 and helped on their endeavors. But they 
 seem pitiable to us because new and glo-
 
 72 THE COMING rEOPLE. 
 
 lious ideals have now como into view, 
 because our faces cannot be content wliilo 
 looking to the past, because we are des- 
 tined of God to march on beneath the 
 grand sway of the law of a nobler man- 
 hood. 
 
 Let us acrree that no view of the world 
 or of human life can be right which starts 
 with a finite standard, or proposes any- 
 limited ideal as a stopping-place. Laws, 
 motions, tendencies, the grand general 
 direction, we can trace like the astronomer 
 watching the stars and the earth. Like the 
 astronomer also, we cannot see far enough 
 by the help of finite instruments to locate 
 any single central sun about which all 
 creation moves. The analogies brought to 
 view by every new invention show that 
 the pious writer spoke the literal truth 
 when he said that, "Eye hath not seen, 
 nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
 the heart of man, tlie tilings which God 
 hath prepared for them that love him."
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 73 
 
 It is significant that man can rest in 
 nothing sliort of an infinite quest. There 
 is in him an infinite hunger and aspira- 
 tion, as if, indeed, he were the child of 
 an infinite nature. Every small and lim- 
 ited view of life in detail finds its neces- 
 sary correction only when we take account 
 of the fact of the ceaseless motion of man 
 toward an infinite goal. 
 
 In this large view of life as a progres- 
 sive order, the changes of the ebb and flow 
 on the little shores of a single generation 
 need not perplex us. It may be true that 
 our great cities, filled rapidly with a new 
 emigration, set up the danger-signals of 
 increasing barbarism and political misrule. 
 It may be for a while that superstition, 
 startled by the incoming light, shifts its 
 form toward outright doubt of God. There 
 may be a greater volume than ever of the 
 raw material of which life is wrought out. 
 The demand for true men's endeavors is 
 all the more urgent. This need not terrify
 
 74 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 any one. It is enough that tliis raw mate- 
 rial all belongs to tlie universe, that the 
 divine structural laws are working upf)n 
 it, that the principle of the crystal is sure 
 to prevail over the chaos, — yes, that, as 
 matter of fact, the crystalline structure 
 everywhere is shining out. Not disorder, 
 but order, appears as the victorious law, 
 not only in the march of the centuries, but 
 wherever one sees the subtle bonds that 
 hold together the most primitive forms of 
 society. No dangerous strike in the mines 
 that does not exhibit order, self-restraint, 
 humanity. 
 
 The want of large views does not alto- 
 gether account for men's habitual distrust 
 of God and his universe. The want of 
 good-will makes the great and real heresies. 
 More than anything else selfishness sways 
 a man away from the lines where things 
 appear as they are. To be selfish is really 
 to be unintelligent; it is the survival of 
 barbarism. Watch men, and see what a
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 75 
 
 twist selfishness gives to their sight. Is 
 the man thinking what he will get for him- 
 self, — his pay, honors, and fame ; to be con- 
 firmed in his own opinion ? Is he arrogant, 
 egotistic, conceited, and wilful? Then 
 he is not even looking for the simple 
 facts, that is, the truth. But suppose a 
 man wants only the best, not for himself, 
 but for you and me, for society, for the 
 nation, for the welfare of mankind. Is it 
 not evident that this man is at the precise 
 point of view on every question where he 
 will be most likely to catch the distinct 
 and full meaning of tilings ? For he asks 
 nothing for himself, but only what is best 
 for all. And he holds that the best of all 
 things is truth. The facts are the foun- 
 dation on which he builds. 
 
 Or does any one suggest that the truth- 
 seeker should be utterly dispassionate, that 
 he should not care whether the truth is 
 good or evil, or for any consequences what- 
 ever ? This is to suppose a man who would
 
 7G THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 not be truly liuman. We can suppose a 
 man so honest that he wnuhl tell the truth, 
 thouirh it menaced his own doom and the 
 doom of the race. IJut we cannot suppose 
 a true man who would not care what be- 
 came of mankind. The fact is, truth, like 
 order and unit}', goes unalterably with good 
 and not with evil. Truth and good are 
 made to go together and to match, liow- 
 ever far we may be from seeing where they 
 come together. No man can really believe 
 in the truth, and not believe in the good, 
 and hope for the best. We cannot think 
 that a veracious world is not a good world. 
 Our interest in the truth, therefore, is at 
 last an interest in the welfare of man ; 
 wdiicli somehow, we are sure, is bound up 
 in the veracity of the universe. 
 
 Let honest men who desire to see things 
 substantially as they are, and in theiT true 
 perspective, come out of their narrow alleys 
 and their dusty shops, and stand under the 
 open sky ; let them put aside conceit and
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW. 77 
 
 their small personal aims ; let them ask 
 only and first, What is the truth? Let 
 them look far and wide, and see the co- 
 lossal scale of the universe, the long road 
 by which mankind has come, the serene 
 vistas of space still before us ; let them 
 feel within their souls the stirrings of the 
 infinite nature, reaching out always toward 
 the unattained heights ; let them use mod- 
 esty and patience befitting their destiny. 
 Let them supplement this patience, which 
 by itself might easily lapse into idle won- 
 der, with the warm and hearty humanity 
 that reveres truth all the more because of 
 its faith that truth and human well-being- 
 are one. 
 
 Do not doubt that, whenever men thus 
 see with the eyes of the pure in heart, they 
 see the great things that constitute life. 
 Do not doubt that, if multitudes still differ 
 and quarrel; if they are often sceptics, 
 cynics, and pessimists ; if they are civilized 
 only in streaks, and otherwise barbarians;
 
 78 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 if they are Christians on Sunday, while 
 they distrust their religion throughout the 
 week, — it is not hecause there is no grand 
 and restful basis of truth, neither is it be- 
 cause truth is only for philosophers, and 
 not for plain common men ; but it is mainly 
 because men insist on looking at life and 
 the world through the eyes of their own 
 egotism and selfishness. More and more do 
 the great lovers of men see the same things, 
 and report tlie same message. What their 
 message is, the one purpose of this book is 
 to set forth.
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 79 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 
 
 Every hope for human progress hinges 
 on the fact that we live in a universe. 
 Does any one believe in the continued 
 march of inventions, in wiser and more 
 universal education, in purer politics, in 
 happier homes, in a nobler society, in a 
 more equitable distribution of wealth? 
 The only conceivable basis for such splen- 
 did ideals, the only reasonable spur toward 
 realizing these ideals, comes from a more 
 or less conscious belief that we are citi- 
 zens of a Divine universe. If there were 
 no rational course to be sailed, if there 
 were no good end or purpose, no disci- 
 pline of manhood, and no ideals toward 
 which this discipline proceeds, what reason
 
 80 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 Mould any man have for strugL,^ling to urge 
 onward a colossal raft of existence, floating 
 on the waves of chaos? 
 
 I have already suggested that, if we 
 all really believed this to be a universe 
 throughout, we should hardly dare to do 
 wrong. But our education is not yet very 
 thorough-going. In all the moral realm 
 especially it lags behind. Men who think 
 themselves scientific still imagine that there 
 are easy, short cuts to success and happi- 
 ness. Perhaps all that is known on the 
 personal side as "sin," and on the social 
 side as "crime," may be traced to the 
 ancient and barbarous impression that this 
 is a realm of more or less chaos and chance, 
 w^here you may get your ends by short cuts. 
 The fact is, all wrong-doing is a practical 
 denial that this is a universe. 
 
 The desire to economize human labor is 
 not in itself wrong. There may even be 
 a noble reason for wishing to buy the 
 gooda which the world offers in the cheap-
 
 SNOUT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 81 
 
 est market. The more we can honestly 
 procure, the more we have to share. The 
 less labor we need to bestow upon getting 
 our bread and butter, the more we have 
 to use for art, education, friendship, and 
 humanity. The processes of civilization 
 are processes in all sorts of beautiful and 
 wise economies. There are quite right- 
 eous short cuts to success. We cannot 
 plant, or harvest, or build, or manufacture, 
 or distribute goods too effectively. The 
 righteous short cuts to success are charac- 
 terized by a scrupulous regard for facts and 
 laws. They proceed from the most intelli- 
 gent obedience. What was it but a most 
 patient and accurate obedience to the teach- 
 ings of nature that gave us Bessemer steel, 
 and the telephone, or that laid cables under 
 the ocean, connecting the continents ? In a 
 very literal sense the right way is the short- 
 est, that is, the easiest and most economical. 
 We need to make a clear distinction 
 between the short cuts which are really
 
 82 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 nature's liighways, and belong to us all, 
 wliieli are, indeed, universal, and those 
 other short cuts which nature marks " Dan- 
 gerous Passing." For example, the ^vay of 
 truth tends, like a royal liighway, to bind 
 society together. But every lie, however 
 convenient it seems for the moment, de- 
 stroys confidence between men. Honest 
 weight and fair measure are like "the rule 
 of the road." To cheat is to break this 
 rule. How strange that men who believe 
 in modern science think that they can break 
 the rules that make business possible ! 
 
 Boys are often wiser and closer to na- 
 ture than men are. Each sport has cer- 
 tain rules. Boys do not praise a comrade 
 who breaks the rules, and cheats his way 
 to victory. The fact is, the object of the 
 game is not a prize, or the glory of being 
 proclaimed victor. The true object of the 
 game is the development of strength, skill, 
 hardihood, the joy of endeavor and of com- 
 radeship. To break the rules of the game,
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 83 
 
 therefore, is to sacrifice something of that 
 which the boys seek in their sports. 
 
 We can see this in any business that 
 touches mechanics. Here is the builder 
 of a railway bridge. Is he building in 
 order to make money ? And is his success 
 measured by the prolits of the work? No! 
 He is building for the convenience of man 
 and for the security of human lives. To 
 sacrifice strength and durability, however 
 large profits accrue to the builder, is not 
 to succeed in bridge building. 
 
 Is there some short cut in education ? 
 No ! In the world of letters, the man 
 makes himself ridiculous who bears de- 
 grees and honors that represent no real 
 learning. There are plenty of places where 
 you may take a scow over bars and ledges 
 into the harbor. But if you are steering 
 an ocean-liner, well freighted, carrying hun- 
 dreds of lives, you must sail in by the ship- 
 channel. So if you wish to bring in a 
 noble, all-round, and disciplined mind, ac-
 
 84 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 curate, thoroiigli, well-furnislied, you may 
 use the tides and currents that flow iu the 
 regiou of the intellect, you may blast away 
 the ledges that impede the course, you may 
 straighten the channels ; but the more heav- 
 ily you are freighted the less can you afford 
 to neglect the buoys and the beacons that 
 show the great safe and common way into 
 port. Education demands work which no 
 short cut of laziness can ever avoid. 
 
 Is it not strange that the very boys who 
 despise humbug, sham, and mere " marks," 
 ever come to suppose that the great realm 
 of commerce or " business " is traversed by 
 short cuts? Boj's tliink it success to get 
 an easy berth and a salary by favor and 
 the influence of rich relatives, or by some 
 political "pull." Boys learn to tell lies 
 in the name of business in order to sell 
 goods. Yes ! Good boys learn to break 
 the rules of the sport, and to cheat their 
 way to the goal. It is a false education 
 that spoils our boys, and persuades them
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 85 
 
 that there is any single great department 
 of human interest where men can safely 
 neglect the great highways, and take pri- 
 vate ways of their own. Do boys yet 
 know the alphabet of the universe who go 
 from school to use lies, frauds, and falsi- 
 fied accounts, or to build Bussey Bridges? 
 Or does any intelligent j^outh imagine that 
 there can be in business a short cut that 
 does not finally carry the mean or selfish 
 man who follows it to loss, disgrace, or 
 ruin ? 
 
 " He made a fortune," men say. 
 
 "Yes," the answer comes, "by telling 
 falsehoods, by watering stock, by wreck- 
 ing railroads, by bribing legislatures, by 
 lobbying in Congress, by partnership with 
 fraud, by agents whom he allowed to lie 
 for him." 
 
 Do you suppose a man is ever proud of 
 the fortune against which these charges are 
 true? 
 
 The universe is absolutely accurate in
 
 86 THE COMiyO PEOPLE. 
 
 it3 accounts in the long run. All mere ap- 
 pearances to the contrary, you really get 
 what you pay for. Never was word more 
 philosophical than Jesus' refrain, "Verily, 
 I say unto you, they have their reward." 
 Make short cuts, take short views, scamp 
 your work, evade the great laws, neglect 
 the permanent and eternal, and you get 
 your returns in the same currency as you 
 insisted upon using. Where is the unprin- 
 cipled millionaire or corrupt politician 
 whose success any intelligent person en- 
 vies ? It is the bank burglar's kind of suc- 
 cess, who escapes with his plunder. It is 
 the success obtained a century earlier by 
 pirates and banditti. 
 
 The time is surely coming when the rail- 
 road wreckers, the stock-gamblers, the man- 
 ufacturers of whiskey, the exporters of rum 
 for the African coast, the colossal manipu- 
 lators of legislatures, will be classed with 
 the list of malefactors. Their grandchil- 
 dren will be as ashamed of their record as
 
 snORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 87 
 
 men are ashamed to-day whose ancestors 
 fitted out slave-ships. 
 
 The law of rewards is not negative, in- 
 tended merely to inflict penalties. Its pri- 
 mary purpose is positive. It means that in 
 the long run the true, the sincere, the 
 friendly, who give what the great world 
 wants, who keep the eternal laws, who care 
 first to do honest service and take pay and 
 thanks afterward, — these have their reward 
 in the same terms with their efforts. They 
 get what they sought, — thoroughness, real- 
 ity, welfare, wisdom, love, life. Others 
 took short cuts, and threw away part or all 
 of their cargo. It is given to the thorough, 
 the honest, the obedient, without sacrificing 
 anything, to bring their whole ship's load 
 into port. 
 
 I have said nothing about a "social or- 
 ganism." I have had in mind a multitude 
 of individuals, each seeking the utmost 
 measure of life. Mathematical, mechanical, 
 chemical, vital laws hold sway around and
 
 88 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 over tl)em. A very few simple moral laws, 
 truth, justiee, i^urity, good-will, — equally 
 inexorable and beautiful, — serve to main- 
 tain human welfare. We will not here call 
 men's disobedience of moral and social laws 
 sinful and wicked ; let it be enough to call 
 such disobedience unintelligent and barba- 
 rous. To lie, to cheat and overreach, to 
 follow lust and caprice, is to pla}' the part 
 of the savage who has not yet heard that 
 this is a universe, traversed and hedged 
 about by laws. 
 
 All this becomes more clear and impres- 
 sive the moment any one sees the larger 
 purpose that underlies the universe. What 
 is this larger purpose, worthy of llie uni- 
 verse itself, of the Creative Intelligence, 
 and also of the chivalrous heart of man? 
 It is not merely the welfare of favored 
 individuals picked out by some capricious 
 "doctrine of election," to possess what the 
 others forever must go without. It is the 
 welfare of all the individuals. As it is not
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 89 
 
 success witli the farmer's corn if only here 
 and tliere a fortunate ear fills out to ripe- 
 ness, so with the world of men it is not 
 enough to see an occasional healthy, happy 
 life, well nurtured, sweet, sound, pure, 
 and noble. Such lives are prophetic of 
 what all lives will be. They are so beauti- 
 ful, not because they are exceptions, but 
 rather because they show forth the univer- 
 sal nature. It is in all souls to be sweet, 
 sound, pure, healthy, filled with life. 
 There is no individual success that is not 
 typical and characteristic of this larger 
 human welfare toward which the universe 
 moves. 
 
 Some one has a grand house, many ser- 
 vants, sumptuous dress, table, and equi- 
 page. We are doubtful if this is true 
 success, even for the individual himself or 
 for his cliildren. But he cannot be consid- 
 ered apart from the welfare of human so- 
 ciety. Is all this sumptuous show and 
 style, of which there can never be enough
 
 90 TIIK COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 to go around, wlucli lifts tlio possessor to 
 a level of exception above humanity, truly 
 beneficent in the view of the larger good? 
 It is not success to have that which does 
 not enrich the life of mankind, much less 
 if others have less for their needs because 
 of this ostentation and luxury. 
 
 Has some one gained for himself thor- 
 ough health. This is not good merely by 
 itself, and for the healthy individual alone. 
 It is worth very little if only one man in a 
 hundred can ever maintain decent hygienic 
 conditions. But it is very good when the 
 healthy man shows by object-lesson the 
 hygienic conditions which we all propose 
 to secure for the million. 
 
 Have the few gained university educa- 
 tion, culture, the enjoyment of books, art, 
 and music? Have the few learned to use 
 leisure? It is not enough if all this is 
 for the few only. It is not success un- 
 less the leisure and culture of the few 
 are prophetic of coming days when all
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 91 
 
 men who desire shall have noble oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 Did one man long ago attain the beauti- 
 ful life of a Christ? But the world that 
 produced a single Christ and stopped there, 
 leaving the rest of mankind timorous, cyni- 
 cal, selfish, heathenish, would not be a suc- 
 cess. The beautiful and Christ-like life 
 that springs to ripeness, as if before its 
 time, is good to show the sweet nature 
 wrapped up in every kernel of human life, 
 waiting only for the propitious sun and 
 air. 
 
 The characteristic of our time is that the 
 great universal qualities are coming into 
 general demand. Time was when a man's 
 success was limited to the advantage of 
 his family, his party, his sect, or his tribe. 
 Time was when men praised the good 
 father whose goodness was only to his own. 
 Men praised the loyal friend, although his 
 hand was violent against other men ; men 
 praised the patriot, aUhough he hated for-
 
 92 TIIK COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 eisfners. We are cominof now to ask more 
 of men. Tliis is a social world. We can- 
 not tolerate anti-social practices, customs of 
 business, habits of life. The short cut that 
 runs apart from the great social thorough- 
 fares gets no justification merely because it 
 is convenient for your family, your friends, 
 or your set. Sliow us, if 3'ou can, that it 
 is good also for jour neighbors. Beware 
 lest your private way run to tlie loss, the 
 harm, or the undoing of the many. 
 
 In every direction we tend to produce 
 supplies for the universal demands. We 
 are developing power and material plenty. 
 We are making it possible for the millions 
 to have true homes, to ride in beautiful 
 parks, to read books, to enjoy art and 
 music. We are getting these results by 
 combination and co-operation. Who can 
 straighten and improve the great highwaj'S 
 of human life, and make tlicm more com- 
 modious for all ? He is a benefactor ; he is 
 the master of the future.
 
 SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS. 93 
 
 We may now distinguish the mission of 
 the new and modern type of religion. 
 There have been and are forms of religion 
 which claimed to be short cuts to heaven. 
 There has been a form of religion that left 
 out personal morality, offering heaven on 
 easy terms to sluggards and cowards ; there 
 has been a form of religion that left out the 
 divine element of reason : forms of religion 
 have sacrificed humanity, or have thrown joy 
 overboard, and left human life orphaned and 
 austere. The world has proved that there 
 is no short cut in religion. You must take 
 the great ship-channel; j^ou must sacrifice 
 no fraction of real life ; you must hold the 
 reason, preserve the moral integrity, keep 
 the sympathies warm, unite enthusiasm 
 with reverence. Again and again the short 
 cut promises more immediate personal satis- 
 faction. What man ever tries it, and does 
 not presently find the rigorous and benefi- 
 cent angel standing as with a flaming sword 
 to warn man back from any mere volup-
 
 94 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 tuous Eden to the eternal highway of 
 truth? 
 
 These things, to clear tliought, seem self- 
 evident. In our best moments none of us 
 can doubt them. Even on the ordinary 
 level of men's intelligence, there is a dim 
 sense that feeLs out after the way wdiere 
 reality lies. 
 
 •' Like Verdi when at his worst opera's end, 
 While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang 
 His orchestra, . . . 
 
 lie looks through all the roaring and the wreaths, 
 Where sits liossini patient in his stall."
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 
 
 Theke is a profound law of life that may 
 already have astonished us. It is the law 
 by which everything bears a burden of cost. 
 Life itself proceeds by a nice balance of 
 profit and loss. Higher life comes at the 
 expense of lower forms. Death itself is a 
 constant factor of life. Nothing is gained 
 anywhere except at some expense, we may 
 almost literally say, by the shedding of 
 blood. All effort is thus a sort of disso- 
 lution of tissue. As Paul almost pathet- 
 ically writes, "We die daily." 
 
 At first sight, we are always tempted to 
 quarrel with this law. Here is the " seamy 
 side" of life, tlie reverse side to the pattern. 
 There is no beauty in this side, seen by it-
 
 9G THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 self. We are disposed to c|uestioii whether 
 the balance of the total account is not dead 
 loss. Consider the sum of the sufferings 
 of myriads of animals by tooth and claw, 
 by famine and cold, since the world began. 
 Review the weary annals of human history, 
 the torture, the crime, the greed, the sor- 
 rows of the innocent, the waste of martyrs' 
 blood. Or single out any individual life, 
 and sum up the debit side of the account. 
 Think of the cost and cares and tears which 
 the mother pays as the price of her love for 
 husband and childi-en. Count up the cost 
 of any of the great, noble lives, — of a 
 Moses, an Isaiah, a Jesus ! Try to value 
 what Washington or Lincoln gave for his 
 country. Here are typical cases standing 
 for millions of humble and unthanked pa- 
 triots. As you add up this debit side, you 
 will often be appalled at the cost with 
 which life must be purchased. 
 
 There is a current doctrine that goes far 
 toward denying the law of cost altogether.
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 97 
 
 You will somGtimes be told that there is 
 no pain, unless you make it by your own 
 wrong thought. If, therefore, the heroes 
 and martyrs had only possessed the secret 
 of this pleasing philosophy, they might not 
 merely have smiled on their enemies, but 
 they would not have suffered a twinge of 
 pain under the most refined cruelty of Tor- 
 quemada or Nero I We are told that it 
 was no deep law that the patriot, the lover, 
 the reformer, the philanthropist, the Christ, 
 must always pay blood for blood, to win 
 the world's liberties, the sanctities of home, 
 the redemption of society, the triumph of 
 justice, the enfranchisement of the soul of 
 man. On the contrary, the true sons and 
 daughters of God need never bear a cross, 
 nor even sympathize with suffering. It is 
 a question whether they need to die. 
 
 This strange doctrine simply ignores 
 facts. Indeed, it is an enormous exaggera- 
 tion of a certain important truth, essential 
 to all valid religion, as to the empire of
 
 98 THE COMING PKOPLE. 
 
 the spirit over the body, of mind over 
 matter. There is no realm of human life 
 where you ignore the rule of cost, ex- 
 cept at your peril, or at the expense of 
 others who must pay your debts for you. 
 You cannot think away the broken bone, 
 the rotten cable, the faulty iron plate in 
 your ship's bottom, the knot in the stick 
 of timber, the plague-spots of filthy Bom- 
 bay. You must " atone " in every particu- 
 lar for the fault or the fracture. You must 
 pay the whole cost of repair, of cleansing 
 the slums of the suffering city, of repla- 
 cinsT the timber that cannot bear the stress 
 of the passing train. You must pay your 
 debts in honest money, earned by honest 
 effort, perchance in the sweat of your brow. 
 Shall we break up our Divine universe 
 into two kingdoms ? Shall we perhaps ad- 
 mit that the debit side of the world is under 
 an alien and evil power, and its law of cost 
 is the tribute to some mighty Satan ? If 
 we say this, we must give up our science
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 99 
 
 likewise, talk no more of tlie One and Eter- 
 nal, return by the way of man's ancient 
 superstitions, and people space with war- 
 ring powers. We must pull down our 
 observatories, and predict no more eclipses. 
 The great world is either framed of one 
 structure throughout, or else it is chaos. 
 Human life is either the child of the uni- 
 verse, or it is the sport of chance. 
 
 No! we live in a universe of inexorable 
 conditions. It is solemnly structural and 
 orderly throughout. There is beauty in it, 
 but there is also that which commands awe 
 and reverence. There is sternness and vigor 
 to match vastness and unity. Everywhere 
 are differences, shades, degrees, contrasts, 
 which no one can think out of existence. 
 We may even reverently hold that tliis 
 law of cost is in the nature of the Al- 
 mighty, and goes to make up his perfec- 
 tion. There is a sense in which God also 
 suffers ; and without this suffering his life, 
 his joy, and his love might not be com-
 
 100 THE COMIX a PEOPLE. 
 
 plete. At any rate, if wc do not believe 
 in the universe as it is, if Ave do not wish 
 to obey its conditions, if \\g want life on 
 other terms, if we choose not to pay our 
 share in its expense, if we propose to get 
 good from it and never to give, it is vain 
 to set our backs to fight against it. Here 
 it is with its hiws, the great hiw of cost 
 among them ; and here are we face to face 
 with its conditions. What do we pro^jose 
 to do? 
 
 We have so far looked at the law of cost 
 on only one side. But he would be a very 
 foolish man who insisted upon examining 
 the debit side of his books, and never asked 
 the question what his assets are. The grand 
 question of life is not what it costs, though 
 the cost were ten times more burdensome 
 than it is. The cardinal question is. Is life 
 worth the cost ? If we have won net gain ; 
 if the race of man on the whole sees new 
 gains in view wherewitli to redeem the ex- 
 pense ; if nobler kinds of gain already begin
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 101 
 
 to appear ; if the splendid harvest which 
 the gifted few have reaped promises to grow 
 and become universal, and to put all kinds 
 of famine away, the famine of faith and 
 love as truly as the famine of bread; if, 
 therefore, when the accounts are finally in, 
 the balance is right, — our Divine universe 
 is justified. 
 
 Let us make some inquiries, and try to 
 discover what the indications are touching 
 the actual working of our law of cost. 
 Let us ask one of our boys who comes 
 in from his game of ball what he thinks 
 about it. We will not ask the boy from 
 the winning side. We will put our ques- 
 tion to the boy who has been defeated. 
 Here he stands, tired, dusty, hungry. He 
 has paid the full cost for his fun. Is he 
 sorry that he played? Not in the least. 
 He has no complaint to make against the 
 universe. Maybe he is hurt ; will he 
 therefore give up playing ? No ; he is all 
 ready to try the joyous risks again.
 
 102 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 Take now, to the eyes of the mere pes- 
 simist, tlie most pitiable case on record. 
 Ask Jesus what he thinks of the law of 
 cost. Is it worth while to Ijc a poor man, 
 to consort with peasants, to be insulted 
 and mocked, to hang at last on a cross ? 
 The world has made an egregious mistake 
 if Jesus does not tell us, "Yes, I would 
 (lo this all over again for what it brought! " 
 Of all men who have lived, Jesus has no 
 complaint to urge against the universe. 
 
 But Jesus' case seems to some too con- 
 spicuous and exceptional. Well, then, I 
 maintain that the whole beauty of it is 
 that it is t}pical and universal. Let us 
 take the most common and humble in- 
 stance. Let us ask a mother, any one of 
 thousands of good women, inconspicuous 
 and unthanked, whether she grudges the 
 cost of her motlierhood. Let us even ask 
 her whom death has bereaved, whether 
 sweet memories and love and hope, all 
 marvellously blended, are not perpetually
 
 THE LAW OF COST. I'Ob 
 
 worth the price which she paid for them? 
 Plenty of women will confirm this wonder- 
 ful fact, although with tears still in their 
 eyes. 
 
 I have been speaking of those who stood 
 up to the majestic law, and stoutly paid 
 the full cost, who scorned to shirk the uni- 
 versal conditions. The record of human 
 experience goes one way. Those who obey 
 the seemingly inexorable natural law, and 
 pay their tribute to Duty, "stern daughter 
 of the voice of God," are those who pres- 
 ently assure her that — 
 
 "Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads. 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And the most ancient heavens through Thee are 
 fresh and strong." 
 
 We are reminded of those who are fail- 
 ures, of the Pilates and Judases, and the 
 nameless multitude of cheap, false, and 
 ineffectual lives. We have already seen 
 that these had their reward. They got
 
 104 Till': coMiya pkoi'le. 
 
 what they were willing to pay for. They 
 only did not gain what tlu'y did not try 
 for. They often thouglit themselves suc- 
 cessful. Shall we blame the great uni- 
 verse that. its laws, urging us all the way 
 of noble life, can never make cheap pros- 
 perity permanent or beautiful? God is 
 educating mankind to reality. "See," he 
 seems to say by all manner of object- 
 lessons, "how vain unreality is, how un- 
 substantial is selfishness ; on the contrary, 
 how enduring and gracious are truth and 
 love." 
 
 The fact is, the ci-edit side of the uni- 
 verse is glorious abeady with its figures 
 of gain. Here you have qualities, virtues, 
 beauties, ecstasies, the lives of divine men, 
 immeasurable values. Here often a single 
 splendid name, a Phidias, a Dante, a 
 Michel Angelo, a Zwingli, outshines wliole 
 generations. Already at the close of the 
 nineteenth century literature is growing 
 rich with the inspiring biographies of poets,
 
 THE LAW OF COST. 105 
 
 teachers, philanthropists, inventors, states- 
 men, discoverers, men of science, men of 
 faith; sometimes also plain and quiet peo- 
 ple, whom the world hardly knew, like 
 William and Lucj Smith and Mrs. Lyman 
 of Northampton, types of other lives 
 quite unrecognized and unpraised, but 
 equally high-minded and helpful, making 
 the world nobler where their light was 
 shed. 
 
 On the corner of Boston Common close 
 to the State House stands the Shaw Mon- 
 ument, commemorating the deeds of heroes. 
 But no public monument tells the story of 
 the man who, more than any one else, by 
 his untiring energy, his faith, his utterly 
 disinterested and modest service to his 
 Commonwealth and his country, brought 
 the famous black regiment together, — 
 George L. Stearns, the friend of Emerson, 
 the indefatigable helper of Governor An- 
 drew, the efficient arm behind John Brown 
 in Kansas, the earnest lover of liberty.
 
 106 TUE COMING PEUl^LE. 
 
 Let bis name stand for thousands of the 
 modest and true-hearted, the full power 
 and significance of whose lives is hardly 
 ever measured till after they are gone. 
 
 Is it not worth while that the creation 
 should "groan and travail in pain to- 
 gether," w^hen the buds and flowers of this 
 quite infinite fruitage begin to be seen I 
 Give us more of the same sort; lift com- 
 mon manhood and womanhood toward their 
 superb possibilities; show us in farms and 
 shops and in a million homes the awaken- 
 ing of the divine humanity; give us not 
 one Son of God only, but sons and daugh- 
 ters of God in every city, the very fact 
 which our great prophecy heralded, — and 
 all the weary aeons of past time are justi- 
 fied. What are mortal yeai-s or human toil 
 or blood measured against immortal beauty! 
 
 But could not God do all this with 
 better economy? Could he not just as 
 well save the trouble and cost, and be 
 generous and give his children life for
 
 TEE LAW OF COST. 107 
 
 nothing? Why should not an ominipo- 
 tent God give his creatures a universe free 
 from conditions ? Why possess infinite 
 wisdom and not contrive to expunge this 
 dreary debit side of creation. 
 
 Let us see first what son of God wants 
 life on insignificant terms. Let us expel 
 from the world all the austerity and solem- 
 nity. Let us be rid of all nerves that can 
 feel pain. Let us have done with con- 
 trasts, with storms, with night, with heat 
 or cold, with hunger and thirst. Let no 
 child ever cry for help or pity. Let no 
 friend's sorrow make a draught on our sym- 
 pathy. Shut out temptation, take away the 
 spurs that incite to effort and progress, blot 
 out the words that describe evil. Leave 
 what? Leave food and drink, ease, com- 
 fort, sleep, a monotone of existence. Do 
 you desire this f You have been removing 
 at every step the terms which constitute 
 life. You have no virtue, no aspiration, 
 no faith, hope, or love, nothing to distin-
 
 108 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 guish l)oaut3' as sucli, no iliythm, nothing 
 infinite. 
 
 Tliere is no lici;_;lit witliout depth to 
 match, there is no faith without doubt, 
 there is no hope wliere there is no fear, 
 there can be no love where no sympathy is 
 demanded for suffering. The Almighty 
 "Wisdom could not make such a universe 
 as we have imagined. The far-seeing Love 
 would not accej)t it. Even God must keep 
 his own conditions. God must obey the 
 laws which he imposes. The laws are the 
 expression of his love. That there is a 
 stern severity in nature infers the presence 
 of majestic pity also, and a beneficent pur- 
 pose. There is a suffering and sorrowing 
 God, as there is a God of love and joy. 
 The Christ-story here illustrates an eter- 
 nal and universal fact. Wliat is in one 
 life is in all lives, because all flow from the 
 life of God. The infinite Life is not less 
 full on account of this mighty fact.
 
 PROBLEM OF TUB PROSPEROUS. 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEEOUS. 
 
 Subject a column of water or a boiler 
 full of steam to tremendous pressure, and 
 you develop a marvellous elasticity latent 
 in every atom of the steam or the water. 
 So with the development of life. You 
 bring out its hidden and divine force and 
 elasticity under stress and pressure. It is 
 another form of the law of cost. 
 
 Thus, on the physical side, if you want 
 a hardy stock you put on the pressure 
 of conflict. No race of men was ever good 
 for anything who did not have to fight 
 for their lives, if not with other men, at 
 least with climate and nature. So true is 
 this that, as we have already seen, it is 
 not quite easy to allay the scepticism of
 
 110 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 those Avho wonder liow men will ever keep 
 their blood fresh in an age of universal 
 peace and plenty. 
 
 The rule is the same in the development 
 of the mind. The men of the earlier gen- 
 erations in America, battling against pov- 
 erty, with meagrely equipped colleges, with 
 few books, nevertheless got an education 
 quite comparable for effectiveness with that 
 of their fortunate grandchildren of to-day. 
 The secret was, that they worked under 
 pressure, without which in some form the 
 mind hardly puts forth its full capacity. 
 
 The precious moralities have come like- 
 wise. When have purity, temperance, in- 
 tegrity, and a noble public spirit taken 
 on momentum in the world ? In those 
 very times when the sui'face currents ran 
 strictly against them. Men and women 
 developed a jealous purity in an age of 
 obscenity and license in cities like Babylon, 
 Rome, and Carthage. The new virtue is 
 always making its way against the current
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEROUS. Ill 
 
 of circumstances. Men never loved liberty 
 so much as when the weight of the slave- 
 power pressed upon their souls. Never 
 fear that villany will do any harm to honor, 
 that corruption will break down justice. 
 When the evil weight accumulates, once 
 given the presence of manhood, the latent 
 elasticity is ready to prevail. Strangely 
 enough, faith in God has never failed in 
 evil times, when the faithful stood alone, 
 when martyrs went to the stake. The law 
 of faith is that it grows stout-hearted under 
 stress. 
 
 The problem of the prosperous now be- 
 gins to appear. The prosperous classes, 
 never before so numerous, are everywhere 
 trying to evade this strenuous law of effort 
 and pressure, through which, as we have 
 seen, life grows sturdy. They command 
 easy and luxurious physical conditions for 
 their children. Their children are required 
 to do nothingf which service can be hired 
 to do for them. Teachers are paid to learn
 
 112 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 their lessons for them. Extravagant pains 
 are lavislied on their pleasures. Religion 
 also must be made very easy, children must 
 be let off from religious observances M'hich 
 they do not happen to fancy. We have 
 the extraordinary si)ectacle of a genera- 
 tion which owes its success to its obedi- 
 ence to the stern stress of necessity, trying 
 with all its might to contrive to take away 
 from its children the very conditions that 
 made its own life hardy and virile. 
 
 Moreover, the circumstances of modern 
 society readily exempt the individual, if 
 he chooses, from his normal share of public 
 responsibility. In the old days the em- 
 ployer lived close to his men, for wliose 
 welfare he was obviously responsible. The 
 wealthy or educated citizen was a marked 
 man, to whom his community naturall}'- 
 looked for public service. Wealth and ed- 
 ucation thus created an obligation of leader- 
 ship. If there were particles of steel in the 
 body politic more carefully tempered than
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PBOSPEROUS. 113 
 
 the rest, it was in order that they should 
 act together in the cutting edge of the 
 tool. We have changed all that. Modern 
 business is organized on so colossal a 
 scale that millions of employees hardly see 
 the captains of their industry. Thousands 
 of persons draw incomes from factories, 
 mines, and railroads which they have never 
 visited. Boards of directors, sheltering 
 themselves behind their corporate capacity, 
 approve, or share the proceeds of, transac- 
 tions for which any individual member of 
 the vast corporation might be ashamed per- 
 sonally to avow himself responsible. 
 
 What is more startling, great communi- 
 ties of wealthy people, removing their 
 homes from the bustle and din of the 
 working world, build up stately rows of 
 palaces, or fill great parks with, their 
 splendid villas. There is a single town in 
 Massachusetts rich enough in men of ed- 
 ucation and resources to lead a score of 
 colonies such as established the Common-
 
 114 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 wealth in Oio beginning. Tlio fathers or 
 grandfathers of these men were natural 
 leaders, cheerfully carrying civil responsi- 
 bilities ill a hundred New England towns. 
 But this well-to-do class to-day, so largely 
 endowed with all the capacities to make re- 
 sponsible leaders for tlie city, the State, the 
 nation, are merely private citizens, often 
 too careless of their civil duties to take 
 the trouble to vote. Youths grow up in 
 the wealthy homes of Beacon Street and 
 Fifth Avenue on whom no serious bur- 
 dens rest, who believe that their chief func- 
 tion in life is to be ornamental, to travel 
 abroad, to sail yachts, to discover pleasure. 
 There was a Greek w^ord idiotes^ which 
 meant one who counted for nothing in 
 the state. Our word idiot comes from the 
 old root. We are rearing thousands of 
 such political idiots. It is as if we had 
 withdrawn the tempered particles of the 
 steel from the cutting edge of the tool, 
 and had planted them in the haft, where
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEROUS. 115 
 
 the costly temper could do the least pos- 
 sible good. 
 
 All this is bringing the natural conse- 
 quences of injured law. While it is not 
 necessary to urge that society or the nation 
 has actually deteriorated, while we chron- 
 icle a fair measure of improvement in 
 the course of the century, it is none the 
 less obvious that we confront very grave 
 social, political, and economic evils. As 
 our industrial machinery, becoming more 
 and more complicated, delicate, and at the 
 same time colossal in its proportions, re- 
 quires greater skill, patience, care, and 
 accuracy in its management ; as the steel 
 ship presents new problems greater than 
 the little coasting shallop had to meet, — so 
 the problems of modern society demand not 
 merely men as good as our fathers, but 
 even better and more thoroughly equipped 
 men. The more intricate social complica- 
 tions require, not only good individuals, but 
 more effective organization among them.
 
 11 G THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 It is not evident that nitic individualism, 
 irresponsible and unsocial, however well- 
 intentioned it may be, has had its day? 
 Or, if individualism is always good, the 
 signs of the times point to the need of a 
 higher and more social order of individual- 
 ism. Waste and mischief on a vast scale 
 already menace us. At a time when society 
 needs peculiarly faithful, honest, and w^ell- 
 directed service, we find our great cities 
 under the rule of "bosses," "rings," and 
 "machines;" we see our national govern- 
 ment in distinctly partisan hands, sur- 
 rounded by a corrupting atmosphere of 
 mercenary scandal. How many men in 
 our Congress can we fully trust? Whom 
 can we name whose one test-question at 
 every issue is, " What is for the best good 
 of the whole American people?" 
 
 We see likewise new forms of industrial 
 development, inevitable doubtless, but all 
 the more strenuously calling for splendid 
 and conscientious leadership. The great
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PBOSPEBOUS. 117 
 
 industries of tlie world, generally organized 
 into trusts, syndicates, department stores, 
 and combines, are as yet at the mercy of 
 the unscrupulous, of adventurers, of ego- 
 tists, whom no one knows how to call to 
 account. At one end of the scale is a mul- 
 titude of workmen, often altogether out of 
 employment, or again sadly embittered by 
 their suspicions of the selfishness of their 
 employers; while on the other hand is an 
 increasing number of prosperous and edu- 
 cated people, largely members of churches, 
 whose chief concern is not to meet their 
 responsibilities like men, and to bring about 
 better human conditions, so much as to 
 keep comfortable, maintain the level of 
 their salaries and incomes, and like the 
 selfish old king of Judea, in the face of 
 the impending Babylonian deluge, to have 
 peace at least in their time ! Such men 
 as these, with a master purpose to make 
 money and a light emphasis on human Avel- 
 fare, without adequate sense of the tremen-
 
 118 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 dous obligations of sociiil ;uul industrial 
 leadei"ship, without any passion for justice, 
 cannot be expected to-day to succeed in the 
 task of administering the powers of the 
 world and distributing its wealth. 
 
 Meantime tlie freedom from weights, 
 pressure, and responsibilities means no in- 
 crease of joyous life. Joy, in fact, mysteri- 
 ously depends upon the law of cost. What 
 comes for nothing brings no thrill of life. 
 The man whose face tells the story of the 
 happy life is he whose elastic soul most 
 often resp()nds to grand duties, and cames 
 willing burdens. Where do you find the 
 pessimists, who question whether life is 
 worth living ? They are not among the 
 toilers, they are not commonly the poor, 
 they are not the uneducated and unthink- 
 ing. The doubters and pessimists are in 
 the classes who owe most for their splendid 
 opportunities, and yet give the least in pro- 
 portion to their endowments. No wonder 
 that men and women who are trying to
 
 PROBLEM OF TUB PBOSPEBOUS. 119 
 
 evade a primal law do not find life greatly 
 worth living. 
 
 So much for the problem of the prosper- 
 ous. How can they possibly sail as idle 
 passengers on the grand ship of our modern 
 civilization, through fogs and storms requir- 
 ing the utmost skill, wisdom, and courage ? 
 "We cannot go back a hundred years to the 
 old-fashioned sailing-vessel, or keep our- 
 selves safe on land. Civilization can take 
 no backward course to Arcadian simplicity. 
 Shall we then, as some stoutly urge, choose 
 the venturesome path of social revolution, 
 and displace the prosperous from their easy 
 seats? We shall have occasion to discuss 
 this proposition in a later chapter. For 
 the present it is enough to say that social 
 revolution does not solve our first and main 
 problem. The problem is to find men of 
 intelligence, capacity, training, fitness, and 
 honor to manage our immense and costly 
 machinery. No revolutionary theory shows 
 us where to get capable leaders. When
 
 120 THE COMIXd PEOPLE. 
 
 those Avlio oiiglit to Lc leatlera evade tlie 
 obligations of leadership, the fact that we 
 2)iiiiish and degrade them does not help us 
 to provide this rare quality of humane, pa- 
 triotic, and high-minded leadership. Admit 
 that a liigher order of humane society ^viII 
 be evolved. All the more is the need of 
 great, earnest, wise, and devoted leaders 
 to effect the change. The average citizen 
 cares little for any mere issue between the 
 " ins " and the " outs." Ineflicient as the 
 " ins " are, he suspects that the " outs " 
 may be more hungry and wasteful. The 
 average citizen wants to see the grand busi- 
 ness of industry, government, and civiliza- 
 tion performed with security and efficiency. 
 He begins to perceive that selfish leaders 
 can fit oidy a narrow and selfish type of 
 society ; that irresponsible leaders can never 
 fit or serve anywhere ; that a civilized so- 
 ciety, a truly Christian nation, must some- 
 how produce civilized leaders and rulers, 
 gentle and brave, men of humanity, men of 
 faith.
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEROUS. 121 
 
 We are ready to see the answer to our 
 problem. Men must somehow obey the 
 vital law of pressure. By a new turn in 
 the spiral of evolution tlie old and bar- 
 barous pressure of outward necessity and 
 brute conflict is taken away. It is the 
 mark of civilization that men already 
 emerge into a comparative immunity from 
 the ancient stress of hunger and cold. We 
 see how to provide quite generously for the 
 necessities of vast populations. New in- 
 ventions put off indefinitely the Malthusian 
 terror of serious overcrowding. Over one 
 great area of the world we have largely got 
 rid of the old burdens of militarism, race- 
 feuds and national jealousy. But the law 
 still holds ; it only changes its form ; it 
 becomes a moral or spiritual necessity. Re- 
 lieved of the weight of pressure from with- 
 out, the man must take upon himself the 
 willing constraint of self-imposed responsi- 
 bility. He must become ethical, if he 
 would live and thrive. In short, educa-
 
 122 '////; COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 tion, resources, means, leisure, aptitudes, 
 — all constitute an increasing obligation 
 of service, and, if required, of public and 
 disinterested leadership. Is a man pros- 
 perous? That is, has he thrown off all 
 fear of hunger and cold and destitution ? 
 Let him know that he must needs take on 
 himself a whole new order of larger and 
 unselfish concerns, of cares for his neigli- 
 bors, for his workmen, for the poor, for the 
 state, for the welfare of humanity. Shame 
 on him if he evades the very burdens which 
 his happy position has brought upon his 
 shoulders ! Let him hear the ringing call 
 to his manhood from Emerson's " Boston 
 Hymn : " — 
 
 "And ye shall succor men; 
 'Tls nobleness to serve 
 Help tlieni who cannot help again; 
 Beware from right to swerve." 
 
 It is very encouraging to find how many 
 individuals there are wlio hold all that they 
 possess in trust for the welfare of mankind.
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEROUS. 123 
 
 A considerable class also, while they adopt 
 the Old World idea of their own individual 
 property rights, are ready to make valua- 
 ble concessions in acknowledgment of obli- 
 gations which they rather vaguely feel that 
 they owe to society. They generously en- 
 dow hospitals and colleges out of their 
 plethoric surplus. But the great aim of 
 the prosperous class is still everywhere to 
 enable their children to enjoy themselves. 
 The wonderful appliances of modern educa- 
 tion are thus misdirected. The law of pres- 
 sure and effort by which physical vigor, 
 intellectual power, character, personalit}'-, 
 joy, and life are developed is practically 
 denied at school and in college. Even the 
 church lays no real stress on it. We are 
 not, however, without conspicuous examples 
 of a type of education that is exactly fitted 
 to meet the present needs of society and 
 to fit the nobler nature of man. 
 
 Let me illustrate my meaning of what 
 all education ought clearly to do. A very
 
 124 THE fOMixa rnopLE. 
 
 distinguished educator, Gen. S. C. Arm- 
 strong, built up a great institution for 
 the blacks and tljc Indians at Hampton, 
 Va. The key-note of his teaching was the 
 responsibility of educated men and women. 
 Why were the few picked out of the mil- 
 lions of their brethren, and lifted to the 
 level of advanced civilization? Was it 
 that they might earn a better living than 
 others, that they might constitute an aris- 
 tocracy of superior persons, that their better 
 houses, skill, industry, and culture might 
 give them privileges over their people? 
 
 On the contrary, these select black boys 
 and girls were given this costly endowment, 
 that they might henceforth be more heavily 
 and directly responsible for their race ; that 
 if they earned more than others, they might 
 show others the ^^■ay to earn also; that if 
 they established true homes, they miglit 
 make such homes inspiring examples for 
 others to pattern after; that if they stood 
 above the rest, they might lift the whole
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEBOUS. 125 
 
 level to a permanently nobler humanity. 
 This was the Hampton idea of education. 
 Whenever a boy caught this master-idea, he 
 was destined henceforth to live under the 
 self-imposed pressure of a noble responsi- 
 bility for his race and the nation. He was 
 a man bought with a price. 
 
 Is it not evident that here is an idea that, 
 whenever seized, makes a man a citizen of 
 the universe? He has come under universal 
 laws and conditions. He has ceased to be a 
 mere egotist, a dilettante, a mercenary. If 
 black men and women can be possessed with 
 such an idea; if they can devote their larger 
 earnings, their better social position, their 
 superior skill and culture, for high and 
 generous ends ; if they can feel the great 
 humanitarian responsibilities of our age, and 
 stand at the front to meet its problems, — 
 what shall we say of the youth of the An- 
 glo-Saxon stock, with their still more costly 
 education, with their rich and ennobling 
 traditions of liberty, literature, laws, and
 
 126 THE cuMiya i'koi'LE. 
 
 religion? Who can luea.sure what they who 
 have inherited the wcakh of the ages owe 
 to tlie world? Or can it ever be said that 
 any one has received a university training 
 who, however much he knows of the details 
 and detached fragments of learning, has 
 not yet comprehended that fundamental con- 
 ception of a Divine universe which brings 
 these details and fragments into orderly, 
 beautiful, and harmonious relations with 
 the life of our common humanity? 
 
 Here is everything to stir the chivalrous 
 heart of youth. The same law of pressure 
 which in brutal times seemed a cruel bond- 
 age to necessity; which in the animal world 
 meant only the survival of tlie strongest; 
 which in the competitive struggle for bread 
 seemed to foster selfishness; which, when 
 only half understood, as in Mr. Kidd's book 
 on " Social Evolution," has been translated 
 so as to set the reason of man in revolt 
 against his religion, — is now lifted to the 
 level of the free and willing action of con-
 
 PROBLEM OF THE PROSPEROUS. 127 
 
 scious moral agents; it is transferred from 
 the realm of outward forces to the inner 
 and spiritual kingdom ; it now becomes the 
 pressure of human sympathy, of duty, of 
 social ideals. Already many appear as 
 typical men of the new era, thoughtful, 
 observant of facts, reverent of law, who 
 not only know the splendid secret, but bow 
 in enthusiastic willingness to accept the 
 weight and obligations of an educated and 
 civilized human life, the life of a son of 
 God! 
 
 We thus find that a deep necessity is at 
 work in human society, pressing men almost 
 in spite of themselves to fulfil the marvel- 
 lous prophecy of social good with which we 
 started. That modern society may hold to- 
 gether, that industries may be permanently 
 organized, that governments may work out 
 their legitimate ends, yes, that men of 
 means and brains may have solid happiness 
 and their children may maintain the honor 
 of their families, it becomes increasingly
 
 128 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 necessary that the rule of the work! shall 
 be, as Jesus foresaw, in the hands of the 
 gentle and friendly. The names of Mark 
 Hopkins, Samuel C. Armstrong, and Seth 
 Low in education, of Governor Andrew, 
 Sumner, and Carl Schurtz in politics, of 
 George Peabody, Peter Cooper, and Mrs. 
 Hemenway in generous beneficence, are ar- 
 rows pointing where the great and peren- 
 nial trade-winds blow.
 
 TUE IDEAL DEMOCEACY. 129 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 We are accustomed to hear the fine old 
 commonplace of our Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence that men are created "free and 
 equal." We are familiar with Scriptures 
 which declare that God made all men "of 
 one blood," and that we must call no man 
 "common or unclean." The modern de- 
 mocracy rests on these ideas. It is well to 
 stop for a moment, and ask ourselves if we 
 really believe these things, and why we so 
 easily think them to be true. 
 
 To common appearance men are not 
 equal. On the contrary, as they now are, 
 they are distinguished by startling differ- 
 ences. Who can really prove that all the 
 races of men proceed from a single pair of
 
 130 TUK COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 parents? Who knows lliat there are not 
 distinctly superior races, with immeasura- 
 ble capacities for improvement, set over 
 against inferior and comparatively unim- 
 provable races, some of which, like the In- 
 dians and South Sea Islanders, are destined 
 to die out ? The differences among individ- 
 ual men are quite startling. How many of 
 those whom you meet on the street can 
 truthfully count themselves the equals of 
 a Darwin, a Goethe, a Daniel Webster, of 
 Paul or Luther? 
 
 It is really a novel and audacious thing 
 that we are attempting in America, in call- 
 ing all men to the suffrage, in addressing 
 the beggar on the street with the same 
 title of respect tliat we use for the most 
 eminent citizen,^ in pronouncing Hottentots 
 and Negroes our brethren, in contemplating 
 the possibility of a fair distribution of the 
 good tilings of the world, with equal 
 
 1 Of course the cominou title Mr. is simply tlio more 
 ancient Master or Lord.
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 131 
 
 chances for the children of the rich and the 
 poor. 
 
 We cannot be surprised that not every- 
 one as yet really believes in these fine doc- 
 trines. We may forgive timid and con- 
 servative people, if they apprehend trouble 
 from an unlimited franchise held by mil- 
 lions of illiterate immigrants ; if cultured 
 parents are shy of free social intercourse 
 with the families of a degraded poor-white 
 neighborhood — not to speak of the blacks ; 
 if men of affairs hardly see common terms 
 of value between the mind of the great 
 inventor or the captain of industry and 
 the inefficient and unskilled workman. 
 Taking men as they are, there is not equal- 
 ity ; treating men as they show themselves, 
 you cannot treat them alike, respect them 
 alike, or pay them alike for equal values 
 received. There are men and women who 
 seem to deserve almost infinitely for their 
 services to society. There are those (they 
 may be the rich as well as the poor) who
 
 132 TIIK COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 have liarilly contributed a useful stroke of 
 M-ork. The democratic idea, and especially 
 all socialistic hopes, rest on no basis of self- 
 evident facts. Tlie obvious facts are the 
 differences between men, both in capacity 
 and value. 
 
 The truth is, the democracy, uith its 
 doctrine of equality, belongs in the realm 
 of ideal things, or, to put it very plainly, of 
 relio-ion. If we did not believe that this 
 is a Divine universe ; if we had no faith 
 in the ideal justice and in the supreme life 
 of God to whom all belong ; if we had not 
 the aspirations and hopes that especially 
 belong to religion ; if we were reduced to 
 the conception of a mere physical, material 
 ^orld, — w^e should neither have any ra- 
 tional ground to advocate our American 
 democracy, nor any heart to be willing to 
 live and die for it. Democracy and reli- 
 gion march together to victory, or else 
 they must go to the land of dreams. 
 The true democracy is not here now.
 
 TUE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 133 
 
 It is tlie government that ought to be. 
 It is the ideal state, where no longer each, 
 shall ask, when he votes. What is my 
 own selfish interest? but each shall hon- 
 estly vote for the welfare of all. The 
 ideal is of a multitude of friendly men, 
 not merely eager, as now, to obtain their 
 individual rights, but in earnest also to 
 perform their fair share of duties. The 
 democracy presupposes men of manly stat- 
 ure and character ; it educates men. It 
 could not have been in an era of barba- 
 rism, egotism, greed, selfishness. It did 
 not begin to be possible till at least some 
 men of the order of the idealists, the men 
 of humanity and religion, appeared. 
 
 The time-honored prayer says, " Thy 
 kingdom come." This does not mean that 
 any one to-day expects a miraculous ar- 
 rangement of human society, ushered in 
 by angels. It means rather that we have 
 the vision of a society which we are set 
 here to bring about. We are spelling out
 
 134 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 llio laws which \vill effect this cOs fast as 
 they are obeyed. When we repeat the 
 words of the prayer, we speak our purpose 
 to make the ideal thing real. 
 
 The question is not merely what mode 
 of government is to-day most economical 
 or efficient. We could imagine a benig- 
 nant despotism or oligarchy that might 
 safeguard life and property at less waste 
 than W'O expend in America. But we do 
 not carry on government merely to save 
 waste. The democracy might be even more 
 wasteful and blundering than it is now. 
 We believe in it, because of our faith in 
 a better government toward the making of 
 which blunders and waste are part of the 
 price to be paid. Tlic incomplete democ- 
 racy is the expression of our incomplete 
 efforts. 
 
 Thus, we believe in manhood suffrage, 
 and, if you please, in Avoman suffrage also, 
 not only as the goal of our endeavors, but 
 also because the problems of suffrage are
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 135 
 
 SO many arduous lessons set us for the 
 achievement of noble manhood and woman- 
 hood. The incidental blundering and waste 
 are justified, like the waste of lumber in the 
 manual training-school, if only we move 
 on toward real " government of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people." We 
 admit that we have not reached this sort 
 of government. It is what we purpose. 
 
 Why, then, do we call the beggar or the 
 tramp by the title of Mr., and give the 
 poorest man an equal vote? We pay trib- 
 ute to our faith in a coming social rSgime 
 in which all are masters and mistresses. 
 We trust the man for what he ought to 
 be. Hate, bitterness, pride, arrogance, cop- 
 scious superiority, vanish from us when- 
 ever we think of the ideal human society 
 to which every man belongs. " Belongs," 
 do we say ? Yes, if this is God's universe, 
 but not otherwise, even in our dreams. 
 
 The hard-headed business man sometimes 
 says, almost brutally, " Why give my men
 
 136 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 extra pay? They will waste it in drink. 
 "Why give them shorter hours of labor? 
 They do not know how to use leisure. 
 They are better off at work." 
 
 Grant that the working-man does not 
 know how to use his time or his money 
 any better than some rich men whom we 
 know. Why do wa still advocate fairer 
 wages and better hours? If we believed 
 in the man only as we see him now, and 
 in the present conditions of human society, 
 we should have no courage to struggle in 
 his behalf. But we believe in an ideal 
 industrial society, and therefore we fear 
 no advance step, though at times our feet 
 seem to stumble or slip. If this is a Di- 
 vine universe, the veiy blunders that we 
 make are our lessons in learning to stand 
 erect and to walk. 
 
 In this ideal or Divine democracy in 
 which w'e believe, there is no levelling 
 downward; there is no taking away of real 
 advantage or honorable superiority from
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 137 
 
 one set of men in order to even up the 
 holdings of others. The laws of the world 
 are forever against the success of a mate- 
 rialistic democracy, intent on things in- 
 stead of men. We believe in a democracy 
 that lifts men upward. Have the few at- 
 tained greater happiness, security, genuine 
 welfare? We labor together, we organize 
 society, we boldly widen and multiply the 
 functions of government, that all may have 
 the essential human advantages which a few 
 now possess. The true democracy must 
 give expression and fulfilment to all the 
 manhood which there is in all. 
 
 We frankly admit that earlier modes 
 of government, the individualistic tradi- 
 tions of which still survive, proceeded on 
 a different principle. Tliey were for the 
 few, and only incidentally for the many. 
 We do not wonder that men whose minds 
 are possessed with the history of such 
 governments are shy of our new demo- 
 cratic experiments. Like Herbert Spencer,
 
 138 TUB (JOl^IiyQ PEOPLE. 
 
 tliey warn us that government ought to 
 do the least possible for the people. We 
 accept the warnings of the past, but we 
 confront new human circumstances and a 
 new ideal of government. We are under 
 the pressure of a new set of facts. We 
 believe, as many do not yet really be- 
 lieve, in evolution. The day may have 
 passed for the appearance of higher physi- 
 cal types and species. The day cannot 
 have passed for the development of a 
 higher moral order. This is indeed the 
 stasre of evolution which we should natu- 
 rally look for next. As the normal man 
 passes up tlirough the tumultuous life of 
 childhood and youth into wise and self- 
 controlled maturity, through doubts to 
 broad and settled faith, so the race moves 
 from its childhood toward true civiliza- 
 tion — the era of the good spirit. Gov- 
 ernment, therefore, inevitably takes on new 
 meanings and enlarged uses. Government 
 moves for a different end from that which
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 139 
 
 men thought of in the days of Charle- 
 magne. 
 
 This doctrine of the ideal democracy 
 fits into and tallies with a very wonder- 
 ful conception of the possibilities of the 
 individual man. We say that in some real 
 sense a man is a child of the universe, 
 or a son of God. This means that we do 
 not much care through how many weary 
 ages man has been travelling upward, 
 or what the man is to-day. What inter- 
 ests us chiefly is the magnificent possi- 
 bilities before him. Our eye is on the 
 ideal or divine man. We love and respect 
 a man for infinitely more than for what 
 he is now. 
 
 As in a school, if we are told that a 
 certain child, born to a fortune, is des- 
 tined to hold a grand position, the more 
 dull and unpromising he is, the more we 
 are ready to do in order to make him 
 worthy of the great position which he is 
 to occupy ; so we feel when you show us
 
 140 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 a mail, tlioufrli dull and dejrraded. Tidl 
 us that tills mail in his rags is by hiith- 
 right the citizen of the Divine universe, 
 that unmeasured potentialities are wrapped 
 up in him, that the difference between the 
 average man on the street and the great 
 genius is not so great as the difference 
 between this man as he is and the ideal 
 man such as he is destined to become, 
 and we see now what the genuine men 
 of religion used to mean, when they spoke 
 of " the transcendent value of a single 
 human soul." Nothing less than this is 
 our faith. Nothing less than this superb 
 idea of the individual man gives our Amer- 
 ican democracy standing-room in the ra- 
 tional universe. 
 
 We are not afraid tliat the true democ- 
 racy will undertake to do too much for 
 its citizens. We have reason to fear the 
 power of men who hold office for them- 
 selves and for what they may get. We 
 doubtless have to deal with sucli men for
 
 TUE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 141 
 
 some time to come. But we look for- 
 ward to an enlightened type of citizen- 
 ship ; men will hold power in order to 
 confer benefit, to give, not to get. Every 
 individual of this type is an earnest that 
 others of like sort will appear. It is ab- 
 surd to suppose, if this is God's world, 
 that men must always be selfish barba- 
 rians. 
 
 We have here the secret of Christian- 
 ity. The simple, beautiful modern teach- 
 ing brings it out to the light, after it has 
 been buried in dogma for centuries. 
 
 Men had made of Christianity a sort of 
 spiritual aristocracy, well suited for the 
 mediaeval world. The great Church had 
 taught that Jesus' life was unique and 
 exceptional, out of line with all " common 
 and unclean" humanity. They had boasted 
 of Jesus' earthly descent, that he came of 
 the lineage of kings, thus removing him 
 from the common herd. They had taught 
 that, by the mystic laying on of priestly
 
 142 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 hands, supernatural powers were conveyed 
 to the few thus lifted above the brotlier- 
 hood of the many. 
 
 Now see the impressiveness of the new 
 teaching. Jesus' life is not exceptional, 
 but illustrative and typical. The more 
 just, transparent, lovable, it is made to ap- 
 pear, the better an object-lesson it becomes 
 of the possibilities in all human lives. It 
 was simply the normal human life, as it 
 ought to be. What Jesus was, what he 
 felt, what he believed and aspired after, 
 illustrated the ideal possibilities of every 
 human soul. There is not the slightest 
 evidence that this grand human life sprang 
 from a royal line at all. The beauty of 
 it is that it arose from the common peo- 
 ple, and showed forth Avhat divinity is 
 wrapped up, not in choice "blue blood," 
 but in the common red blood that flows in 
 us all. If there is one thing plain in the 
 New Testament, it is that all that class 
 of persons who think themselves of finer
 
 THE IDEAL BEMOCItACY. 143 
 
 clay than the rest would not have recog- 
 nized the real Jesus if they could have seen 
 him. This Galilean carpenter's son is not 
 the Christ whom exclusive persons cele- 
 brate. 
 
 The beginnings of Christianity also are 
 almost startling for the object-lessons that 
 they present of the possibilities of the or- 
 dinary and average man. Jesus did not 
 even choose the best, or he might at least 
 have had disciples who would not have run 
 away from him. He took his chances with 
 such men as you find on the streets, slow 
 and dull in mind, narrow in their sympa- 
 thies, unchivalric and quarrelsome. It is 
 as if he wanted to show what the leaven 
 of a great idea could do with average men. 
 
 Presently, though not till after the death 
 of their Master, these men catch the idea. 
 Lo! they, too, are sons of God, citizens of 
 his majestic universe, heirs of his own im- 
 mortality, under orders to serve his good- 
 will. Straightway these men are raised to
 
 144 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 anew power; they become brave and un- 
 selfish; they are leaders and organizei-s; a 
 great responsibility taken on their shoul- 
 ders brings out the vital elasticity within 
 them; tlioy become speakers and writers. 
 These things are only typical and illus- 
 trative. Human history is full of the rec- 
 ords of just such flowering forth of the 
 common stock of our humanity at tlie 
 quickening touch of a sublime idea. You 
 can dare to call no man "common or un- 
 clean." Wait, let a great thought, a faith, 
 a hope, a sense of the Divine universe, the 
 consciousness of his kinship with God, once 
 possess a man, and you can never measure 
 the unseen capacities within him. From 
 the story of Peter and James, plain fisher- 
 men, who would not have understood what 
 now goes on in the cathedrals called by 
 their names, or recognized the pontifical 
 and archiepiscopal robes and chariots of 
 their supposed successors, to the latest do- 
 ings of the Salvation Army, human experi-
 
 THE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 145 
 
 ence is forever gleaming out in sparks of 
 prophetic fire. 
 
 The fact is, we hardly realize yet how 
 much religion can do for us. Truthful- 
 ness, integrity, courage, kindliness, faith 
 both in God and man, and enthusiasm 
 flow right out of the heart of our com- 
 mon humanity, whenever any human soul 
 is seized with the idea of the Divine uni- 
 verse, and as long as that inspiring idea 
 holds sway. These qualities are apart from 
 and deeper than all superficial and conven- 
 tional culture and refinement, the agreea- 
 ble veneer of society. Say, rather, these 
 are the solid humane qualities, which most 
 aptly take on the pleasing polish of good 
 manners, and without which the most re- 
 fined manners are hypocrisy. They are the 
 qualities that always command love and 
 respect. 
 
 I may have seemed to admit that the 
 true democracy is only an ideal. Like 
 all ideal things, however, it proves most
 
 IIG THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 practical and ^vorkable as soon as you try 
 it. Curiously enough, our democratic form 
 of government, with all its blunderings, is 
 already better and safer tlian any otlier 
 government that has ever been tried. So 
 far as it fails, it is not because we liave 
 thoroughly trusted and tested it, but rather 
 because under t}ie name of the government 
 of the people we have suffered the rule of 
 the one or the few. It is wonderful how 
 in the crises of our American history, and 
 especially in the moral issues, as in the 
 contest with the slave-power, the appeal 
 to the people, and to all the people, has 
 been eminently justified. On the other 
 hand, it is startling to find how often the 
 few, the educated and the wealthy, have 
 developed a fatal proneness to get on the 
 wroncr side, and to act and vote from their 
 prejudices. Though, as a whole, the peo- 
 ple are certainly slow, yet, whenever you 
 will take the trouble to inform them, when- 
 ever you appeal to their sense of justice
 
 TUE IDEAL DEMOCRACY. 147 
 
 and their chivalry, the sturdy qualities that 
 mark the divine citizenship are energetic 
 among them. You can scarcely take up a 
 newspaper without reading of the instances 
 of courage, devotion, self-sacrifice, heroism, 
 — all going to show the splendid possibili- 
 ties shining out in common human lives, 
 and forever forbidding us from calling any 
 man common, unclean, or inferior. 
 
 Thus the facts match our splendid theory. 
 Treat men on their nobler side, look for their 
 best, be patient with them, rebuke them if 
 you must, not because they wrong you, but 
 because they wrong and shame their own 
 divine manhood ; begin with the children 
 in the kindergarten, and expect to find true 
 gentlemen and real ladies among them; 
 nay, more, think largely of yourself and 
 your work, not as your own, but as God's ; 
 never, by an act or gesture, cheapen, de- 
 mean, or dishonor your manhood, — and in 
 every case you tend to elicit the facts that 
 you seek; you are on the track of nature
 
 148 TnE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 and law ; you are making the better so- 
 ciety, tlie jnster economics, the more right- 
 eous government, which you have seen in 
 your vision. Lo! it appears aheady to be 
 safe to trust our ideals, to follow them, to 
 think, plan, act, vote, live, toward their 
 realization.
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 149 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 
 
 Outward changes, economical and polit- 
 ical, more or less marked, are always going 
 on in the forms and organization of society. 
 But to-day one can make a specially strong 
 argument that great and radical changes 
 are impending. No one can believe that 
 existino: conditions will continue in a world 
 where all things move and change. Waste, 
 extravagance, political corruption, fierce 
 mercantile rivalries, colossal monopolization 
 of wealth and of the industrial plant of the 
 world, masses of dreary poverty, — these are 
 natural subjects for profound patriotic and 
 humane concern. Is not the old social and 
 industrial machinery, the competitive or 
 wage system, showing signs of breaking 
 down beneath its load? The question is
 
 160 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 quite fair \vlirlher any system is just tliat 
 permits individuals to roll up iinmeuse for- 
 tunes as the result of lucky speculations, or 
 of the rise of land values about a great city, 
 that permits other individuals to inherit 
 almost unlimited money power, as men once 
 inherited duchies and kingdoms, while mil- 
 lions of workingmen, -with small wages, 
 live close to the danger-line of debt, or 
 even of cold and starvation, and are liable 
 to be thrown out of employment for months 
 at a time. 
 
 When in the face of natural wealth, 
 never so abundant, and forces of produc- 
 tion augmented indefinitely by science and 
 invention, so many almost fail to reap any 
 benefit from the resources mIucIi surely 
 belong to the race, it must at least be 
 confessed that our present system, both of 
 production and of distribution, is not intel- 
 ligently or humanely managed. Its results 
 do not represent an ideal democracy, a 
 brotherhood of man. No intelligent person
 
 POSSIBLE BEVOLUTION. 151 
 
 Las any right to be satisfied with such re- 
 sults. The Rockefellers and the Vander- 
 bilts themselves must charitably be supposed 
 to fall short of satisfaction with conditions 
 that menace the equilibrium of society. 
 No one can be surprised that men at the 
 depressed end of the economical scale tell 
 us flatly that we must have a new system 
 to match our new ideas of human liberty 
 and equality, to fit a religion that bases 
 itself on love to man. 
 
 Our new thoughts of the Divine uni- 
 verse tend to emphasize certain ancient 
 teachings, never before our day fairly ap- 
 preciated, as to the true relation of the 
 individual to the whole body to which he 
 belongs. Who creates wealth? Who makes 
 the great forces of nature? Who has 
 wrapped up fertility in the soil? Where 
 does inventive thought, the prolific parent 
 of every modern discovery, come from? 
 The individual by himself is helpless. All 
 tliat he possesses — his strength, his skill,
 
 152 77/7'; COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 Lis genius, liis power of organization — has 
 its valuo from llic j)laco in wlui-li lie stands 
 in liunian society. lias he the gift of 
 oratory? Its training depends on the liter- 
 ature and traditions of generations of the 
 past. Its use is nothing without audiences 
 of living men. Has the fortunate man the 
 control of a now invention? He did not 
 invent it alone. Thousands of investigators 
 and students made it possible for him. A 
 million men by their co-operation and use 
 give it mercantile value. 
 
 A man's gifts, by nature, by fortune, by 
 inheritance, by the combination of a thou- 
 sand subtle threads of influence, permit 
 him to draw a great income from the pro- 
 ducts of the world. How much of this in- 
 come is strictly and accurately his own, to 
 do with as he pleases? AVhat merely in- 
 dividualistic claim has he on a dollar's 
 worth of the property in the creating of 
 which he had the help of the world? Re- 
 lisfion declares that he is a trustee alike for
 
 POSSIBLE BEVOLVTION. 153 
 
 his gifts and his means. He has no right to 
 waste or selfishly to enjoy what is not his 
 alone. The facts of the universe pronounce 
 the same judgment. The laws concerning 
 property, however necessary and useful they 
 may he, are the conventions of society. 
 They establish legality, but they do not 
 constitute equity. "Whether it is expedient 
 or not to permit Mr. Astor or Mr. Goelet 
 to hold acres of the land of the city of 
 New York, the deeper fact holds, that the 
 Astors and Goelets did not create this vast 
 wealth, and have no right to lavish it as 
 they please. Why should society which 
 has taken back from dukes and princes 
 their claim to transmit by inheritance irre- 
 sponsible political power, continue to suffer 
 generations of Astors, great and small, to 
 hand down an equally irresponsible and un- 
 deserved money power? It is not strange 
 that many question the righteousness of a 
 system which annually turns over a con- 
 siderable percentage of the. income of the
 
 154 TUE COM ISO rEOPLE. 
 
 nation to men and women who have done 
 nothing useful to merit a luxurious suj)port. 
 It must be allowed that a very pleas- 
 ant and even plausible picture may be 
 painted of the new and better social sys- 
 tem which is to take the place of the pres- 
 ent regime. Mr. Bellamy's happy world, 
 where every man is assured a comfortable 
 living, and no temptation to treat men un- 
 fairly is left, will captivate many readers. 
 If all of us together may be trusted to 
 manage government better than the despot 
 or tlie oligarcliy managed it, why should 
 not all of us manage the problems of 
 wealth better for all than the selfish few 
 ever could manage them ? Is it well for 
 society that any individual shall hold in 
 his own name a power which stretches 
 over senates, and controls the sources of 
 production and the forces of nature, and 
 levies tribute on the highways and the 
 waterways of the earth? If a few must 
 manage the wealth of the world, should
 
 POSSIBLE BEVOLUTION. 155 
 
 men be permitted to select themselves for 
 this mighty responsibility? Should they 
 not rather be chosen, like presidents and 
 governors, by those whose united earnings 
 they manage, and to whom they should 
 hold themselves responsible for a benefi- 
 cent use of their power? If it is ever 
 just to compare any scheme as it actually 
 works with another scheme merely on 
 paper, we must confess that between the 
 Old World system of individual property 
 rights, exaggerated as it has grown to 
 be in favor of the rich, and the proposed 
 Socialism which guarantees every man 
 a place to work, the latter surely seems 
 humane, democratic, and Christian. 
 
 There are those who think that not only 
 a new and radically different scheme must 
 come in, but that it will come in with 
 the pangs, and even possibly the fire and 
 sword, of a revolution. They infer this 
 woful prediction from the course of his- 
 tory, which has been characterized by fre-
 
 156 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 qucnt revolutions. Tlic}' point to the 
 terrible era that terminated the old aristo- 
 cratic rSgime in France. Tlicy remember 
 our Civil War, with which we had to atone 
 for the crime of slavery. Tliey say it is an 
 old law that all crime must be washed out 
 in blood. Is it not national crime, they ask 
 to-day, that thousands of miners are forced 
 to live on a pittance? Why should not 
 such death-throes mark the outgoing of the 
 present mercantile system as have marked 
 other dying institutions of barbarism ? 
 
 There are also in the present situation 
 certain striking facts that may well make 
 any thoughtful person pause. One char- 
 acteristic of our ajie is the combination of 
 capital. But combinations of capital are 
 showing themselves more unscrupulous, 
 more shameless, and less susceptible to 
 public opinion, than the individuals who 
 constitute the combination. The coi*pora- 
 tions, besides having no souls, last longer 
 than the lives of the men who make them.
 
 POSSIBLE BEVOLUTION. 157 
 
 Men serve these corporations, lawyers plead 
 for them, presidents and directors silence 
 their consciences for them, somewhat as 
 officers fight for their country in an un- 
 righteous war, almost with an element of 
 chivalry. It is not necessary that all the 
 men in control should be bad, or even that 
 they should ever directly vote to perpetrate 
 an injustice. It is enough if a great trust, 
 a railroad, a school-book company, quietly 
 pockets and divides the proceeds of brazen 
 or conscienceless agents and officials. If 
 money is paid to secure legislation, if great 
 checks go into the hands of partisan bosses 
 ruling a metropolis or a State, if legislators 
 are tempted to use their knowledge and 
 votes for gambling on stock exchanges, de- 
 cent men hush their better instincts by the 
 subtle device that all this is "business." 
 
 Almost as if by an impersonal growth 
 of evil, we have fastened upon us a hydra- 
 headed tyranny, all the more pervasive, 
 tenacious, and poisonous for the reason that
 
 l08 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 no individual cares to stand as sponsor 
 for it. Here it is; it made itself. Grant 
 that it is not desirable, nevertheless it lias 
 in its embrace the choicest business ability 
 of the country. It uses the courts both 
 to defend itself, and to kill or wear out 
 its enemies ; it masses its powers at the 
 seats of legislation ; it uses and commands 
 metropolitan newspapers, and even the 
 telegraph wires, over which news to its 
 discredit may not run too freely. It 
 wields the obstructive forces of social, 
 legal, political, and even ecclesiastical con- 
 servatism. Thousands of men and women 
 drawing their income by its means are 
 interested in the perpetuation of its life. 
 Men of warm sympathies, who would scorn 
 any act of personal dishonor, are more 
 willing to receive their good dividends 
 than to ferret out and veto the wrongful 
 acts by which dividends are augmented. 
 Neither, if they wish to correct abuses, do 
 they know how to proceed, or whom to
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 159 
 
 blame ; they cannot even be certain that 
 the evil reports touching their chosen in- 
 vestments are true. 
 
 Such is aggregate and corporate capi- 
 talism, like a tremendous machine worked 
 by some new and mysterious force. Do 
 you wonder that many say that it must 
 be destroyed outright? It is not easy to 
 see how it can be adapted to gentle and 
 beneficent uses. Will not the men who 
 have made this machine, and whose living 
 comes from it, rally and fight to keep it? 
 They are among the ablest men in the 
 land, wielding untold resources and unlim- 
 ited credit. They persuade themselves 
 that they are maintaining their rights, and 
 defending the established order. Opposed 
 to them are the forces of discontent, jeal- 
 ousy, suspicion, bitterness ; there is greed 
 also and selfishness. Here is material for 
 a revolution. 
 
 Nevertheless, the time certainly ought 
 now to be ripe to do better than permit
 
 IGO THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 the terrible cost of social revolution. All 
 history, so far from establishing prece- 
 dents in favor of revolution, sets up a 
 long series of Avariiings against the use of 
 this method of attaining human ideals. 
 It is a method that belongs peculiarly to 
 the barbarous period. It always leaves a 
 brood of evils beliind. It is like invok- 
 ing the aid of a fever in order to drive 
 poison out of the body. The disease is at- 
 tended by a succession of relapses. Even 
 when the health is recovered, sickness is 
 the ignorant way for getting rid of un- 
 wholesome or poisonous conditions. Intel- 
 ligence would have prescribed sanitation 
 and diet, self-denial instead of indulgence, 
 obedience to the obvious laws of health. 
 So in the great body politic. Our vaunted 
 War of Independence would never have 
 been incurred if only a few men on both 
 sides of the sea had known what thou- 
 sands of men know to-day. We had to 
 fight to kill the slave-power, because we
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 161 
 
 had not enough civilization, not to say 
 Christianity, North and South, to cure the 
 national disease by more intelligent and 
 efficient remedies. We are still paying 
 the consequences of our crude and drastic 
 treatment. 
 
 The truth is, the word of our age is not 
 revolution, but evolution or growth. Rev- 
 olution was among the conceptions of men 
 who thought themselves to be in a dual 
 world, fighting the Devil and his inimical 
 forces. Hate, bitterness, caste, wars, rev- 
 olutions, torture, innumerable death pen- 
 alties, were men's childish methods of 
 overcoming evil with evil. The idea of the 
 divine universe sets these coarse and prim- 
 itive methods aside, like the saurian mon- 
 sters for which the world has no longer 
 use. They may survive here and there ; 
 doubtless to many who take short views 
 they still seem to be our needful com- 
 panions for all time; but already to the 
 clear vision of intelligence and humanity.
 
 1C2 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 they are become an anuinalous and merely 
 heathenish survival. 
 
 We in America are learning to choose 
 arbitration instead of war ; we are de- 
 manding conciliation in place of industrial 
 conflict. A mighty current of public opin- 
 ion and sympathy, to wliicli all classes 
 contribute, the rich and the educated as 
 well as the poor, runs now towards the 
 support of any body of oppressed and ill- 
 paid wage-earners who make stand for more 
 decent conditions. Experience accumulates 
 in England and America to prove that if 
 oppressed men will make the facts of in- 
 justice known, there were never so many 
 persons whose friendly sympathies will not 
 rest till peaceable remedy is secured. Care- 
 less as we often appear, and immersed in 
 our selfish concerns, we do not deliberately 
 propose to tolerate injustice, or to profit, 
 if it were ever possible to profit, by its 
 ill-gotten and perilous gains. Aggrieved 
 men, on the other hand, never before
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 1G3 
 
 showed themselves so willing, with a noble 
 self-control, to keep within those lines of 
 constituted order upon which the welfare 
 of all of us and their own eventual suc- 
 cess depend. 
 
 Moreover, so far as we seek a nobler 
 commonwealth, this is not a state of mere 
 plenty and comfort, of idle ease and fat 
 prosperity. It is not enough to give every 
 man a living at the cost of the people, with 
 the least possible labor. Is it not possible 
 that Mr. Bellamy's world lacks a fine ele- 
 ment of strenuousness and heroic endeavor? 
 Does it not look too much as if man had 
 already attained his Paradise and had noth- 
 ing more to struggle for? At any rate, 
 man's soul will never be satisfied by the 
 mere fact that he is well housed and fed. 
 There are cfreat inward and moral condi- 
 tions which it is much more important to 
 satisfy. 
 
 The world that we want to make is one 
 in which men's best selves, their divine
 
 IG-i THE COMIXa PEOPLE. 
 
 possibilities, are expressed. Tlio just and 
 orderly Utopian coramonwealtli of our 
 dreams is good only as it fits and ex- 
 presses a manhood of which it is worthy. 
 It must be a commonwealth in which bit- 
 terness and jealousy have not merely been 
 put to sleep in the arras of plenty, but have 
 been exorcised from men's hearts by good- 
 will; in which pautual respect and sym- 
 pathy, not legal constraints, hold society 
 together with their golden bonds ; in which 
 men have become disinterested, not by com- 
 pulsion, or by majority vote, or out of 
 vulgar solf-interest, but because unselfish 
 action in homes, in offices, in shops, in the 
 state, springs out of a willing, deliberate, 
 and enthusiastic purpose. 
 
 We can see no hope in the methods of 
 revolution. They are diametrically opposed 
 to the spirit of that true, humane, and 
 brotherly life which is essential to genuine 
 democracy and stable society. If we suffer 
 the rule of tlie selfish, we cannot rescue
 
 POSSIBLE REVOLUTION. 165 
 
 ourselves by a mere change of parties or 
 machinery, which still leaves selfishness in 
 command. The ideal commonwealth must 
 have the men of peace and good-will in 
 the halls and chairs of office. Selfishness 
 is forever splitting society into factions ; 
 selfishness and egotism cannot abide in 
 the true and stable commonwealth. The 
 selfishness of majorities is as perilous as 
 the selfishness of the few. 
 
 We have already seen that our ideal 
 commonwealth rests upon a faith in a Di- 
 vine universe. The commonwealth rests 
 also upon our faith that it is true to man's 
 nature, as he grows in manhood, both to 
 be free to do as he pleases, and also to 
 choose to be just and generous; to be free 
 enough to hold wealth and power in his 
 hands, and yet to be bound by an inner 
 compulsion to hold all for the common 
 good. If we can never produce such men, 
 all our dreams and ideals are futile, and 
 even revolution would be useless. If we
 
 166 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 are on the way to produce men of this type, 
 there is no need of revolution. The com- 
 ing man, as fast as wc produce him, will 
 give us all we need of readaptation, change, 
 and reform, by his own characteristic method 
 of orderly development, by social, indus- 
 trial, and political growth. To believe in 
 revolution is not to believe in man or in 
 his magnificent future. 
 
 Is it possible to find and state a princi- 
 ple by observing which we shall escape rev- 
 olution ; by which, as by Constantine's cross 
 in the shy, the coming man shall win a 
 bloodless and beautiful victory?
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 167 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 
 
 What would we not give to possess a 
 definite and absolute program for the re- 
 construction of society? How delightful 
 it would be if some good and wise pope, 
 or an angel from heaven, could promulgate 
 by a series of " ten commandments " what 
 we ought to do, by what precise methods 
 we might overcome the evils and abuses 
 of our government, correct the unright- 
 eous distribution of our wealth, cleanse 
 away the squalor of tenement-houses, solve 
 the ugly problem of " unemployment," and 
 bring about universal human welfare and 
 happiness. Procure for us a valid super- 
 natural edict, guaranteeing in advance the 
 wisdom of Mr. Bellamy's plan, or the
 
 168 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 method of the single tax, and with what 
 enthusiasm woukl we take all risks and 
 join the new party, or organize the new 
 church to convert the world to our cause. 
 
 As soon as any level-headed person be- 
 gins to ask definite questions, serious difli- 
 culties appear in the way of every new 
 scheme for the reconstruction of society. 
 In the first place, we have a singularly uni- 
 form verdict of experience against the pos- 
 sibility of anj^ specific panacea for human 
 ills. Again and again the cry has been 
 raised, ''Lo here," or "Lo there;" but, like 
 the fabled spring of perpetual youth, the 
 desired panacea has never been found. 
 Remedies, reforms, new machinery, institu- 
 tions, laws, forms, customs, have their place 
 and value. The old and corrupting custom 
 must no doubt give way to the new and 
 finer form. But it is a deep law of the 
 world that no outward arrangement, how- 
 ever admirable, can ever give man lasting 
 satisfaction or social health. Proclaim the
 
 TUE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 169 
 
 laws of the ideal republic to-morrow in 
 Tahiti or Venezuela, and you will still 
 have political resistance, labor, and pain. 
 For civilization is essentially from within. 
 Till the man is ripe, his institutions, his 
 industrial and economical arrangements, his 
 liberties, will forever remain imperfect. 
 
 There is no law more inexorable than 
 this. It is involved with the very warp 
 and woof of the great thought of evolution. 
 The expectation of a panacea, physical or 
 social, is only in a new form the old world 
 expectation of a miracle or intervention. 
 No really thoughtful mind, no good evolu- 
 tionist, imagines that the most charming 
 Bellamy plan could be made to fit a world 
 of angry Hungarian miners, of striking 
 cigar-makers, of grasping monopolists, of 
 Jay Goulds, Quays, and Platts, or that any 
 ingenious and elaborate outward contri- 
 vance would cure the fundamental evil of 
 human selfishness. The bare contempla- 
 tion of any scheme of social reconstruction
 
 170 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 presupposes a jroodly number of men and 
 women who, being inwardly reconstructed 
 themselves, are prepared to make brave 
 ventures in its behalf, and to encounter 
 resistance in order to carry it out. 
 
 The fact that men are very slow to see 
 is, that the evils that vex us belong to us, 
 and fit our present condition. The faulty 
 institutions, the bad laws, the injustices and 
 inequalities of distribution, match the in- 
 ward and moral condition of society. Are 
 there millionnaire robbers? It is because 
 the millions also are grasping and selfish ; 
 they desire to be millionnaires too. Are 
 the legislators wasteful and negligent? It 
 is because the millions of us waste and 
 spoil, and are careless of duty. The Ameri- 
 can people have not yet earned their pas- 
 sage into paradise. An uncivilized people 
 has no right to claim the results, titles, and 
 appurtenances of civilization faster than 
 they are earned and paid for. 
 
 Let us grant willingly, that outward
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 171 
 
 changes, working more exact justice, react 
 upon the character of the man who makes 
 them, that the improved machinery tends 
 to demand, and at last to produce, an im- 
 proved man. We are still in honest doubt 
 which among the various new schemes 
 now offered us to select and adopt as our 
 program. 
 
 Reformers often liken our present social 
 problems to the question of slavery. But 
 that was a simple and distinct moral is- 
 sue. The slaveholder himself could hardly 
 call his system ideal or righteous. The 
 general opinion of mankind branded it as 
 barbarous. There is hardly one of our 
 modern questions of this simple order. 
 
 Here is the temperance problem, for in- 
 stance. What sane person can be quite 
 sure that his own method of disposing of it 
 is the only right one, and that everything 
 else is wrong? But the temperance ques- 
 tion is only one issue among the compli- 
 cated social and economical problems before
 
 172 THE COML\G PEOPLE. 
 
 US. All tiiat we can agree to is that many 
 startling evils exist. We are all impatient 
 of the processes of an evolving world, con- 
 suming precious time. We want the stroke 
 of a miracle. 
 
 It is a curious fact that Anarchists and 
 State Socialists promise relief in opposite 
 directions. Both State Socialists and An- 
 archists compare the ideal commonwefrlth 
 which in their vision they see, freed from 
 imperfections, with the existing rSgime as 
 seen from the side of its faults. There is 
 no fallacy so frequent and treacherous as 
 this kind of comparison. Can it be seri- 
 ously supposed that men can ever enjoy 
 institutions better and more faultless than 
 the men are who manage them? Give us 
 perfect and civilized men, and we shall 
 have little or no need of laws, sheriffs, and 
 courts. Give us the right kind of men, and 
 we need have no fear of the tyranny of 
 majorities, or of the stagnating inertia of 
 a colossal bureaucracy.
 
 TBE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 173 
 
 Let us imagine wliat even the competi- 
 tive system miglit be in the hands of a 
 truly civilized people. Let the individual 
 be a social and beneficent man ; let all 
 earn and keep money as honestl}^ as some 
 already earn and use their money ; let the 
 man struggle, not to hold others back, but 
 to lift others to his own level ; let him 
 alter the emphasis of his competition — say, 
 rather, his emulation, from the side of get- 
 ting his dues to the other side, namely, of 
 paying his dues, — and who shall say that 
 this ideal of industrial freedom does not in- 
 clude all the social justice that the nicest 
 conscience requires? 
 
 It is evident that there is no distinct 
 program of social reform upon which we 
 can at present expect thoughtful and ear- 
 nest men to unite. So far as we can unite 
 at all, our field of vision must be broad and 
 inclusive. We must recognize the tendency 
 in human nature that runs toward individ- 
 ualism, and makes a certain class of able
 
 174 THE COMINC, I'EOI'LE. 
 
 men shy of the constraint of laws, institu- 
 tions, and systems. We must leave room 
 also for those who can see their way only a 
 short distance in advance, and therefore 
 have to be "opportunists," if this word 
 ma}' be taken in a noble sense. 
 
 This is very broad, but it is not indefi- 
 nite. We already largely agree that certain 
 specific evils must go. Certain supreme 
 ends must be attained. Justice must be 
 done at any cost. We must achieve a 
 social order, held together, not by force 
 or statute law, so much as by mutual re- 
 spect and sympathy. We must win room 
 for every man freely to work out his man- 
 hood. We must help all to be sharers as 
 largely as possible in the world's resources. 
 
 We see the distant goal, as one sees the 
 outlines of mountains upon the horizon. 
 Between us and the hills are unknown for- 
 ests and rivers. We do not dare to prom- 
 ise beforehand by what kind of bridges 
 we shall cross the rivers. So we march
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 175 
 
 toward our ideals of human virtue, happi- 
 ness, and well-being. Wherever the oppor- 
 tunity offers we go on and upward one 
 step at a time. We purpose to be at the 
 same time both idealists and practical men ; 
 this is to be " o]3portunists." 
 
 I have not said this with the intent to 
 chill any one's enthusiasm, least of all to 
 keep things as they are. The old church 
 tried to unite men in a plan for getting 
 to heaven. Our new church aims to unite 
 men in brinofinor about the conditions of 
 heaven here on this earth. We hold that 
 this earth is God's world, subject to the 
 bracing and imperative laws of the uni- 
 verse. We hold that the sovereignty of 
 the world is coming to be in the hands 
 of men who live as God's sons. What 
 we want is some simple motto or formula 
 by which, as in the days of the primitive 
 gospel, we may rally together and win vic- 
 tory. Is there such a motto of victory, 
 simple enough for plain people and chil-
 
 176 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 drcn, absolutely reasonable to the thinkers, 
 profoundly religious, imperative to the con- 
 seience, and persuasive to enthusiasm? 
 
 The motto which I propose is sometliing 
 like this : — 
 
 Show us whatever is good for manldncl^ 
 and we will try to bring it about. Tell us 
 whatever means will bring good^ and we are 
 pledged to use iliem. 
 
 If we can leave good behind us, we shall 
 have made our lives a success; if we can 
 enrich mankind through any form of human 
 service, "we shall have truly lived. To do 
 good is to express our nature. To express 
 our nature largely is to fulfd our manhood. 
 Ethics, the social instinct, religion, philos- 
 ojjliy, — all are satisfied when the human 
 life is allied heart and soul to the universe 
 forces of Good. Say, then. We are here at 
 every step of our way to do good, and you 
 have spoken our motto of victory. Per- 
 suade men to say this in earnest, and you 
 have established our new and humanitarian 
 church.
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 177 
 
 But we are careful not to bind and com- 
 pel any one. We may not all think the 
 same thing to be good. We will be mod- 
 est; we will treat others as generously as 
 we wish to be treated ourselves. We rec- 
 ognize that since our first parents' original 
 venture with the mythical tree in the Gar- 
 den of Eden, man must find the good by 
 experiment, by labor, sometimes by per- 
 sonal sacrifice, by error and failure also, 
 marking the wrong -svay henceforth as 
 "dangerous passing." Slowly the world 
 accumulates the costly products of its earn- 
 ings and experiences. Show us, O man ! 
 whatever is good, better, best, — and we 
 follow. 
 
 Let me not fail to make the single con- 
 dition quite plain. Men have tried to 
 discover what was good or pleasant for 
 themselves. They did not know that 
 "what is not good for the hive cannot 
 be good for the bee." This master princi- 
 ple is the foundation of our new church,
 
 178 THE COMING rEOPLE. 
 
 party, or natiou. It is a toUl change of the 
 old emphasis. We are not here for our- 
 selves, but for the good of all ; or we are 
 only here for our own good as it comes 
 through and \\\i\\ the grander social good 
 of the commonweallli. Is a certain act, 
 then, good oidy for me, and not for others ? 
 I will not do it. I will go hungry first. 
 Is it good for others, and does it threaten 
 not to be good for me? If it is really good 
 for the whole, I will trust, though I may not 
 see how, that it will be good for me also. 
 Is it good for the city? I will trust that 
 if I do the best for my city, it will be well 
 for my friends and my family too. Is it 
 best for the nation ? I will trust that it 
 will be well for my State or my party. Is 
 it necessary for the good of mankind, for all 
 the nations? Then I must vote that my 
 nation shall help accomplish it. Show us 
 only what is truly best for all, and I am 
 here to do it. The universe is pledged to 
 sustain that which is best. I would not
 
 TUB MOTTO OF VICTORY. 179 
 
 dare or wish to fight against it. If indeed 
 the good, social, moral act were not ordered 
 and upheld by God, there would not be any 
 universe. 
 
 The word Christian serves well to sym- 
 bolize the highest actual form, as well as 
 the most exalted ideal, of the development 
 of divine manhood. To be a Christian is, 
 in broad and universal terms, to belong to 
 the new, beneficent, and victorious order of 
 man, doubtless after the fashion or type of 
 Jesus. The old-fashioned and merely con- 
 ventional Christian was here to save his 
 own soul. Show him what was good for 
 himself, and he vowed to do it. We pro- 
 pose a totally different standard. It is a 
 standard that few as yet throughout the 
 long history of religion have comprehended, 
 that fewer yet have been willing heartily to 
 adopt. We will call no one a Christian in 
 modern terms who is not pledged, as Jesus 
 was, to the prompt, willing, gladsome per- 
 formance of social duty. To refuse to serve
 
 180 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 the good (jf all disfiaiicluses a man from 
 the citizenship of the universe. 
 
 Let us briefly see what our motto will do 
 when ap[)lied. Try it with the vexed ques- 
 tion of temperance. Shall we use wine or 
 not? Not all good men are yet ready to 
 make the same answer. But the key to 
 the answer which society is seeking is one 
 and the same. We will not use wine if 
 it makes our brother to offend. We mean 
 this in no narrow sense. We mean, if on 
 the whole the use of wine seems to harm 
 human society, and to degrade tlie man- 
 hood of our people, we will give up its 
 use. Whichever answer we make, we are 
 bound to join hands with others in any just 
 measures to stop the evils of the alcohol 
 habit. Nay, more, if we use wine, we are 
 the more bound, if possible, by our sym- 
 pathies with those who have been wrecked 
 in steering the same course with ourselves, 
 not to let those evils go unabated. 
 
 Here is the great economic question of
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTOBT. 181 
 
 how best to distribute the burdens of gov- 
 ernment througli righteous taxation. We 
 may or may not believe in " the single 
 tax." But we are at one with all honest 
 citizens in our wish not to bear one cent 
 less than our share of the common burdens. 
 We would rather pay too much than too 
 little. We want no system that tempts 
 men to become shirks. Let us convert 
 men to be Christians after this practical 
 pattern, let us teach them the universe- 
 principle embodied in our motto, and it 
 will not take lonor to discover more rifrht- 
 eous methods of taxation. Let us not be 
 afraid to do whatever is just. Let us 
 make it evident that our proposed reforms 
 represent, not our selfishness, but our gen- 
 erous intent. 
 
 Many persons look with alarm and jeal- 
 ousy on the fortunes that individuals have 
 amassed in a single lifetime. Our laws 
 have allowed extraordinary prizes as the 
 reward of skill, energy, ingenuity, and the
 
 182 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 faculty of organization in business. Tlio 
 laws have also worked so as to permit 
 enormous fortunes to be made by specula- 
 tion and dishonesty. Grant for the present 
 that these huge winnings are incidental to 
 a system that has fostered enterprise, and 
 has on the whole enriched the whole coun- 
 try. Sagacious men ought to see that the 
 time may have come for substantially mod- 
 ifying the amount of tribute that enter- 
 prise and ability are allowed to levy upon 
 the product of the world. 
 
 There were never before so many men, 
 thinkers, teachers, poets, artists, inventors, 
 who stand ready to use their powers for 
 the good of all. The best men make no 
 high demands for reward and pay. We 
 do not think so ill of the men who pos- 
 sess ability for business as to suppose that 
 they will not use their skill and energy 
 unless fabulous prizes are held out to them. 
 Ask the successful man whether it is fair 
 that he should still claim to keep all that
 
 TEE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 183 
 
 he can get. Let him own that his claim to 
 unlimited possession is at best merely legal. 
 Appeal to his chivalrous nature to see that 
 generosity and the truest justice are one. 
 
 The number of those who hold consid- 
 erable property by inheritance is rapidly 
 growing. A large percentage of the total 
 income of the country thus goes to the 
 support of men and women who have never 
 labored with hand or brain. By law and 
 ancient custom we have established, in fact, 
 a privileged class. Persuade the men and 
 women who enjoy inherited fortunes that 
 humanity, duty, and religion alike require 
 them to accept our comprehensive motto, 
 and what will they do? They will surely 
 be ready to consider temperately whether 
 their present privileges are not excessive 
 and contrary to the public interest. They 
 will never have the face to resist measures 
 which promise, even at their own personal 
 loss, to insure the larger well-being of all 
 the people. If, on the whole, the privilege
 
 184 THE COMING rEOPLE. 
 
 of such iinliiiiikMl iiiliciitmice is continued, 
 they will rccof^nii/.c their enormous obliga- 
 tion to use their fortunes for the public 
 interest. What a mockery the profession 
 of the Christian religion is in the mouths 
 of men who arc not willing to do whatever 
 appears best for the good of their fellows ! 
 What astounding audacity it is for any 
 class of men to insist upon their right to be 
 supported out of the wealth which they 
 have done nothing to earn ! 
 
 We are all socialists to-day with respect 
 to our public schools, our municipal water 
 supply, our postal service, and many other 
 things which we do quite successfully to- 
 gether. No one can say that we may not 
 wisely go farther in this socialistic direc- 
 tion. Why should not the state control 
 forests and mines? Why should not the 
 city own and manage its street-railways? 
 As plans of this sort are from time to time 
 prepared, they are always met by the 
 clumsy forces of prejudice and selfish in-
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 185 
 
 terest. They are not even fairly discussed 
 on their merits. Let us bring up the new 
 generation to be fair-minded and magnani- 
 mous. Let us not fear to try experiments 
 together in the name of the public weal. 
 Let us, at least, be able to show other 
 than selfish causes why the city, the State, 
 or the nation may not assume new and 
 larger functions. Neither, if we believe in 
 God, let us be altogether afraid to trust 
 the people. 
 
 On the other hand, let us not be scared 
 by the word "anarchist," as if it must al- 
 ways mean a red-handed assassin. Let us 
 interpret the motto of our religion so that 
 the anarchist also, if he is a true man, 
 may adopt its principle. We propose to 
 do whatever the public good commands. 
 We believe that the good of all includes 
 the good of each. The anarchist proposes 
 to obey this principle as a volunteer, rather 
 than by compulsion of majoiity votes and 
 laws. Show him that what the public does
 
 186 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 is good, and lie will fietly contribute his 
 share. Let the anarchist persuade us, if 
 he can, that men may be trusted to do 
 wliat is best, without any force except the 
 mild sway of public opinion. 
 
 I have purposely chosen for my illustra- 
 tions very difficult subjects, upon which at 
 present good men differ. 
 
 Civilization has been called " the art of 
 living together." I have wished to show 
 that the great need in living the civilized 
 life is a certain attitude or temper. The 
 attitude of fairness, the temper of good- 
 will, brings men together into the ideal 
 society or commonwealth. 
 
 All experience goes to prove that, as soon 
 as men desire the same righteous ends, their 
 differences presently work out toward har- 
 mony. Even their experiments and errors 
 of judgment become the common means 
 of showintr one another what all now wish 
 to know; namely, what is best for all. 
 Egotism, conceit, pride, avarice, selfishness,
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 187 
 
 twist the real and tedious knots in all 
 problems. The knots are untied as soon 
 as men ask, — What is good for us all ? and 
 are willing, when shown the way, to do 
 simply that which is right. 
 
 The beauty and wisdom of this universal 
 formula is shown by the fact that under its 
 rule men are being naturally fitted, edu- 
 cated, and even compelled toward those 
 very institutions and systems which will 
 eventually compose a noble civilization. 
 It is certain at present that neither the 
 money kings of Wall Street, with their short 
 views and bad moral perspective, nor the 
 politicians at Harrisburg, Albany, or Wash- 
 ington, vain and ambitious, nor the labor- 
 leaders, often factious and greedy, offer as 
 yet that supreme devotion and capacity 
 needful to guide the steps of mankind into 
 the happy valley of Utopia. They do not 
 even know the way there themselves. 
 
 But grant for a moment that the com- 
 ing world is to be distinctly socialistic,
 
 188 Ti!K coMiyr. pkople. 
 
 and then give us men and women among 
 rich and })Oor, in the laidcs of the edu- 
 cated, among the tliinkers and philosophers, 
 among the statesmen, among the leaders of 
 labor, tlie captains of industry, and the mas- 
 ters of capital, committed to the princiiile 
 of our moLto, willing to go freely wherever 
 you show them that the good of man re- 
 quires, — do you not see that we are pre- 
 paring men devoted, unselfish, intelligent, 
 to be our guides, to show us the way as fast 
 as the multitude of men are able to follow ? 
 Convert men first to the social principle, 
 and all the rest will take care of itself. 
 The changes first to be made are inward 
 and moral ; the outward and mechanical 
 system will adjust itself afterwards, as tlie 
 work of the artist fashions itself when once 
 the idea takes shape in his mind. 
 
 This proposed inward conversion is no 
 chimera, outside the lines of actual liuman 
 experience. On the contraiy, our noble 
 formula appeals as gospel to the chivalrous
 
 THE MOTTO OF VICTORY. 189 
 
 nature in all of us. Show us how to enrich 
 human well-being, and the man is not re- 
 spectable who refuses to listen. Persuade 
 us that any course of conduct is right, and 
 all that is best in us rushes forward to carry 
 the right into action. Reason, conscience, 
 the sympathies, urge us. 
 
 Never before were there so many on this 
 planet whose hearts respond to our motto. 
 Never were there so many waiting to join 
 the one church that puts all differences 
 aside, and only demands of its disciples 
 that they do whatever the voice of the 
 Good clearly bids. Who shall say that 
 the springtime may not already be here 
 for the new church and its new order of 
 chivalry ? Who does not see that after 
 the long winter, when ice and snow were 
 the fashion, the welcome blossoms appear? 
 Who shall predict the possibilities when an 
 intelligent generation shall train its chil- 
 dren to the brave, social, chivalrous uni- 
 verse-life, to share and to give, to serve 
 and to love?
 
 190 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HAPPV LIFE. 
 
 The hope of the ideal or happy common- 
 wealth, as we have already seen, is insepa- 
 rably bound uj) with our faith in the divine 
 universe, that is, with our faith in God. 
 But the happy commonwealth can have no 
 reality apart from the individuals wlio make 
 it up. The problem is, how to secure the 
 largest possible life for individuals. Perfect 
 the individual, and society and the state 
 will soon be organized aright. 
 
 I wish to sum up all that I have said 
 about better social conditions into the sim- 
 plest terms of religion. I wish to show 
 that the coming people who will work out 
 the ideal democracy and the happy society 
 must be essentially religious. The happy
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 191 
 
 life for each will be the religious life. It 
 grows out of the actual experience of re- 
 ligion. It does not depend upon the imme- 
 diate and successful realization of all our 
 dreams and visions. As the crystal may as- 
 sume perfect form and beauty before the 
 whole mass has as yet become crystalline, 
 so the individual may take his own orderly 
 place in the Divine universe, without wait- 
 ing till all his fellows shall be ready to do 
 the same. It is, indeed, by the orderly 
 movement of individuals in obedience to 
 ideal laws that all human society will at 
 last be effectually brought into structural 
 order. The happy life, whenever seen, 
 wins others to adopt it. 
 
 Every one has observed certain persons 
 whose religion gives them almost uniform 
 happiness and serenity. Such persons be- 
 long to no single denomination. They may 
 hold different creeds. Some of their opin- 
 ions may seem to us strange or irrational. 
 Evidently their satisfaction does not depend
 
 192 THE c()Mix<; I'Eovle. 
 
 upon the peculiar dogmas that separate men 
 from one another. On the contrary, be- 
 neath all peculiarities, the happy life, wlier- 
 ever we see it, rests upon the ancient and 
 universal foundations of religion. There is 
 no possible monopoly of the great facts and 
 thouofhts of the -world. Genuine Metho- 
 dists, earnest Roman Catholics, friendly 
 Quakers, honest Unitarians, Christian Sci- 
 entists, and Salvationists, so far as their re- 
 ligion makes them happy, are at one. If I 
 may use an old pietistic phrase, they have 
 all "experienced religion." 
 
 We are accustomed to say that we be- 
 lieve in God. Few really doubt his exis- 
 tence. But thorough-going and consistent 
 belief in God is much less common than 
 many suppose. The experience of religion 
 is still rather rare in the world. 
 
 There are two stages in any kind of 
 belief. The first stage is where we merely 
 hear it. Having no grounds for disbelief, 
 we accept a great many things on the testi-
 
 TUE UAPPY LIFE. 193 
 
 mony of others. We are asked, for in- 
 stance, " Do you know anything about 
 Westminster Abbey?" and we all say, 
 " Yes, certainly." But our knowledge does 
 not give satisfaction ; it may even go with 
 some sort of discontent, or a vague long- 
 ing to know more. But suppose we have 
 actually stood in that massive historic 
 shrine — the resting-place of the mighty 
 dead, the statesmen, the poets, the heroes. 
 We have listened at one of the great mu- 
 sical services, when the rich associations of 
 the centuries of English history have swept 
 over our souls. As we have looked down 
 the long beautiful aisles, and have lifted 
 our eyes to the great vaulted roof, a tide of 
 feeling approaching ecstasy has possessed 
 us. Then let us come home, and let some 
 one ask us, " Do you know anything about 
 Westminster Abbey ? " and we say, " We 
 have been there." 
 
 So with the great matters of religion, and 
 especially with the thought of God. We
 
 194 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 begin in childhood with hardly more than 
 the name of God. Besides a sort of dim 
 awe, the name at fust carries no feeling 
 with it, much less, satisfaction and delight. 
 But let us rise some day to tliat higher 
 stage of comprehension and realization, 
 W"hen we see what it means to say God. 
 And what does it mean? It means not 
 only our thought of beauty, wisdom, order, 
 and unity in the world, but also a sense of 
 prevailing goodness, of an infinite benefi- 
 cence at the heart of the universe, of a real 
 care and love over us, in us, sustaining us, 
 as real as the air and the sunshine, more 
 subtle than air and light. 
 
 One may have slowly grown to this 
 thought of the eternal goodness, like the 
 good James Freeman Clarke, without ever 
 a doubt. It may come to the sceptic even 
 from his doubts. As a boy, reared in some 
 lovely village among the hills, who leaves 
 his home to wander around the world, only 
 finds out how lovel}^ it is after he returns
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 195 
 
 to it a gray-haired man, so men often wan- 
 der long in a wilderness of aimless thought, 
 before they find out how beautiful and sat- 
 isfying is the way of religion. 
 
 To the man of sceptical mind two ter- 
 rible possibilities are open, like ways that 
 lead to death. Through one way, as he 
 looks, the forms of evil, of tempestuous, de- 
 stroying powers, seem to possess the world. 
 This is the view of an evil universe. It 
 is what we call pessimism. Through the 
 second way of doubt one sees only the face 
 of the sphinx, the infinite mystery. This 
 is the way of agnosticism. The sceptical 
 mind tries both of these ways. It exam- 
 ines whether they are true. Do the facts 
 of life urge one in either of these ways? 
 Can one follow them consistently and live? 
 The more thoroughly they are studied, the 
 more hopelessly paralyzed they both leave 
 the mind. They do not satisfy the intel- 
 lect, they starve the affections, they baffle 
 the moral sense.
 
 196 THE CONING PEOPLE. 
 
 The mind, weiuy uutl listless, turns back 
 to tlie solemn and gladsome way of reli- 
 giou. Let this appear at first a mere possi- 
 bility, a grand Perhaps ; nevertheless, the 
 thought of infinite goodness at the heart 
 of the world comes like the quiet shining 
 of the stai-s after the tempest. It fits heart 
 and thought, it fits the whole nature of 
 man. It satisfies as only reality can satisfy. 
 Sunshine falls on the world as often as 
 we turn toward the majestic thought of 
 God. 
 
 This means that fear and anxiety are 
 taken away from us. The Divine Life 
 sustains us, and we are akin to it. Real 
 care, real sympathy, pity, and love are over 
 us. Once grant that Beneficence is the 
 sovereign power, and in all the great uni- 
 verse there is nothing really to fear for 
 ourselves or for those we love. As Paul 
 said, " If God be for us, who can be against 
 us?" 
 
 It docs not make much difference through
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 197 
 
 what form of faitli we come to the reali- 
 zation of God. The one important thing 
 is that we catch, the idea, that it become 
 more and more real. It has doubtless come 
 throuofh the forms and ceremonies of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. It came with 
 great purity and significance to the Metho- 
 dist Wesley ; it came to the old Hebrew 
 Psalmists with the wonderful words, " The 
 Lord is ray shepherd," and "I will lift up 
 mine eyes unto the hills." It came with 
 power and persuasiveness to the great clear 
 intellect of Theodore Parker. It ever car- 
 ries with it joy and rest. It gives har- 
 mony and satisfaction. That faith is the 
 best which brings the thought of God most 
 simply, and freest of all the tangle of doc- 
 trine and controversy. Blessed forever are 
 those to whom this experience has come. 
 
 We go further than this. As travellers 
 coming into an unknown harbor, on taking 
 the pilot aboard, at once feel confidence, 
 without having as yet the slightest idea,
 
 198 77/ L' COMiyO PEOPLE. 
 
 as they look at the reefs aiul ledges bar- 
 ring tlieir passage, how the pilot will con- 
 duct their ship into port; so men often 
 catch a happy sense of the beneficent 
 Power over them, without any definite idea 
 of tlie divine and rational universe to 
 which they belong. The thought of God, 
 like the presence of the pilot, meets an in- 
 stinct of faith; but it needs to be supple- 
 mented and filled out with intellisrence. 
 
 Let me illustrate a second great thought 
 of religion that goes naturally with the 
 thought of God, and specially appeals to 
 and meets the reason. We can imagine 
 a stranger looking on a few years ago when 
 the workmen were beginning the Congres- 
 sional Library in Washington. They were 
 laying the foundations ; the ground was 
 covered with the earth from the excavation. 
 One would have been sure that some gi-eat 
 public work was going on, but no one would 
 have taken much pleasure or satisfaction in 
 it. On the contrary, one might have been
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 199 
 
 impressed with the noise and confusion in 
 the midst of which the worlc went on. 
 
 Let some one now invite tlie stranger 
 to come into tlie architect's office, and see 
 the plans. He is sliown the drawings em- 
 bodying the beautiful thought of the archi- 
 tect. He sees the ground plan, and the 
 different elevations ; he sees in pictured 
 form how the front is to look, and the 
 grand portal, and the splendidly decorated 
 stairways and halls. He is made to under- 
 stand the ideal meaning of the work ; 
 through all the present chaos and noise 
 he already contemplates the completed 
 building. He has become a sharer in the 
 architect's thought. 
 
 So God permits his children to view the 
 great universe plan. We are actually be- 
 ginning to see, if we choose, as men never 
 could see before, how this majestic work 
 fits together. We are accustomed already 
 to the thought of the lines and curves, 
 the numbers and the proportions, whereby
 
 200 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 the visible world is made to be the expres- 
 sion of a vast system of ideas. We know 
 how tlic particles of matter, like the frost 
 crystals on the window-i)anes, group them- 
 selves together after exquisite patterns. 
 We have been told how plants grow and 
 put forth their leaves in mathematical 
 relations. 
 
 We are not well accustomed as yet to 
 the thouErht that similar wonderful lines 
 of order go through the social, moral, and 
 political life of man, binding history to- 
 gether into a universe-plan, and building 
 human society into a sublime temple of 
 God. The old law-givers, long ago tra- 
 cing out those W'Ords which we call the 
 Ten Commandments, caught a view of 
 the Divine Architect's i3lan. They saw 
 the moral lines and proportions accord- 
 ing to which human society is built. The 
 great Hebrew teachers w^ho discerned that 
 all kinds of injustice and cruelty are ever- 
 lastingly doomed, that only such w^ork lasts
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 201 
 
 as is built on righteousness and humanity, 
 — those men looked on the Architect's plan. 
 
 The great Teacher who grouped the 
 Beatitudes together, teaching for all time 
 that mercy, justice, purity, truth, and love 
 rule the world, saw, as God sees, the mar- 
 vellous plan. The forefathers who built 
 our institutions, and gave their lives for 
 laws and principles, our modern prophets, 
 also, who saw that slavery could not endure 
 in God's world, while freedom is eternal, — 
 these men entered into the Architect's plan; 
 they saw what the thought of God is. The 
 men to-day, in ever larger numbers, who 
 are dreaming dreams of a better social con- 
 dition, who foresee the time when men 
 shall treat each other as brothers, these men 
 see the Architect's great work, his portals, 
 his stairways, his beautiful halls, in the 
 coming temple of humanity. 
 
 God invites his children to the sight of 
 the plan of his world. No soul ever looks 
 on the magnificent lines and proportions
 
 202 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 of tlie ideal temple without a sense of 
 joy and satisfaction. Our minds as 'well 
 as our hearts are made to answer to this 
 comprehensive plan of God. Our miiuls 
 and hearts are made forever to be dis- 
 contented with anything that conies short 
 of this univei-se-plan. Let any one try 
 for himself, and find out the solid intel- 
 lectual delight, the sense of unity, the 
 restfulness, the enthusiasm also, with which 
 God's universe possesses us, so often as we 
 contemplate the beautiful lines of truth, 
 justice, mercy, pity, peace, and love, on 
 which he forever builds. 
 
 Let us go further than this. We may 
 suppose that it is not a stranger wlio in- 
 vites us into the Architect's office. It is the 
 great Architect himself; he is our Father. 
 We will suppose that he not only shows 
 us the wonderful plans, but he has a 
 distinct proposition to offer. He says, " 1 
 want you to leave your private business, 
 whatever it may be, and come into my
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 203 
 
 employ. I will direct you what to do. I 
 will make you a sharer and co-worker in 
 this majestic building." It may be that 
 before we were unemployed, or we were 
 doing cheap, inferior, insignificant work ; 
 we were building on foundations that would 
 surely be swept away. Henceforth we shall 
 build on the everlasting foundations, where 
 no honest labor can ever be wasted. 
 
 " Yes," some say, " we see how this may 
 be with the lawgivers and legislators, the 
 men who built our institutions and liber- 
 ties, the great masters, the prophets, the 
 teachers, and the poets. We do not see so 
 easily how God takes all men into his em- 
 ploy." 
 
 But our gospel is for all, or it is no 
 gospel. Here, for instance, is the tired 
 wife and mother, the housekeeper, to whom 
 work often seems drudgery and routine. 
 The great Architect says to her, " Come and 
 work with me. Build on the lines of my 
 beautiful temple." And this true wife and
 
 204 THE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 mother, tlie housekeeper, building on the 
 lines of trullifulncss, of justice, of tender- 
 ness, of sympathy, is building after God's 
 eternal designs. It may be that she has 
 only to carve a single stone that few will 
 see ; but if she carves by the exquisite pat- 
 tern, if she fashions a real home, if she 
 shapes a noble character in her boy or girl, 
 do you not see that such stones go into 
 their places in the everlasting shrine? 
 
 God says the same to the teacher. The 
 happy teacher builds not for himself. lie 
 is not called to work for pay or promotion, 
 lie is under Divine orders as truly as the 
 men in old times who heard the splendid 
 words, "Thus saith the Lord." The ideal 
 things are indeed the words of God. The 
 happy teacher builds on the lines of truth- 
 fulness, fidelity, earnestness, justice, accu- 
 racy, God's everlasting foundations. He is 
 a co-worker and sharer with God. 
 
 The great Architect says the same thing 
 to the man of affairs, to the merchant, or
 
 THE BAPPY LIFE. 205 
 
 the manufacturer. The man seems some- 
 times to be struggling in merciless compe- 
 tition with his rivals. If this is so, and the 
 work is built on no structural lines, then 
 indeed is the man wretched. His mean 
 and despicable actions, like "wood, hay, 
 straw, and stubble," disappear before God's 
 test of fire. But let the merchant be work- 
 ing as Peter Cooper worked, as large-hearted 
 men whom we know are working to-day, on 
 the everlasting lines of equity, of kindli- 
 ness, of truth, of reality, of beneficence, 
 and his work endures. Human society is 
 nobler forever because he has lived. 
 
 To the happy service of a sharer and 
 co-worker with God, the Master Builder 
 calls every one of our youth as they come 
 forth from our schools and colleges. They 
 have the glorious opportunity of living the 
 Divine life here and now. They are offered 
 the citizenship, not of America merely, but 
 of the universe. No one of them needs 
 to be a failure. For their largest possible
 
 206 TUE COMING PEOPLE. 
 
 product in fulelit}', in devotion, in sterlinj^ 
 good temper, the world makes incessant 
 demand. For the men of the oi-der of Sir 
 Philip Sidney and Ciiarles L. Brace, for 
 the women of the sjjirit of Dorothy Dix 
 and Florence Nightingale, in high stations 
 and in humble places alike, the world calls 
 for volunteers by the thousand. 
 
 However old we may be in years, life 
 lies not behind, but before us. None of 
 us has more than begun to realize wliat 
 the great truths of religion will do for us. 
 To believe in God, and to trust that this 
 is his world, to catch the Divine plans for 
 the ideal character, for the true liome, for 
 the noble friendship, for the honest trade 
 or business, for the genuine church, for the 
 beautiful commonwealth, for nations living 
 together in peace, is to lead the happy life. 
 To see God's ideals is to see God ; to live 
 in the presence of the ideal things is to 
 live in the presence of God. 
 
 To lead the happy life is more than to
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 207 
 
 believe in God, or to contemplate his shin- 
 ing ideals. Much more important and prac- 
 tical, the happy life consists in acting so as 
 to make the ideal things real. Better not 
 to profess any religion or name God at 
 all, and yet to live and act as if this were 
 a Divine world, than merely to dream of 
 the kingdom of heaven, while doing noth- 
 ing to bring it about. It is possible, on the 
 other hand, to experience religion, that is, 
 to know the satisfaction of the happy life, 
 and not to know that it is religion. To 
 trust, to hope for the best, to act for the 
 best, to love and serve, — these conditions, 
 which sum up all religion and philosophy, 
 constitute the happy life. 
 
 It is here that the happy life wrought 
 out by each individual becomes a contribu- 
 tion to the good of all. It has been sup- 
 posed that the interest of the individual 
 was different from the interest of society. 
 The good man must sacrifice himself for 
 the well-being of others. This may often
 
 208 TlIK COMING I'EOPLE. 
 
 still seem to be true. To do right will 
 long appear to many to be a brave ven- 
 ture. But to him who sees, as God sees, 
 the end in the beginning, the good of each 
 is identical with the good of all. There 
 is no conflict of interests. 
 
 On the side of the mysteries and im- 
 mensities of being, it is deep personal hap- 
 piness to trust and to hope, like a son of 
 God. But happiness like this is also con- 
 tagious, and sweetens a whole neighbor- 
 hood or community. On the side of our 
 manifold human relations, it is equal hap- 
 piness to love and to serve, as if indeed all 
 men were children of God like ourselves. 
 The happy life is the social life. The per- 
 fected individual makes the perfect society 
 toward which we strive. 
 
 These things suit our natures on every 
 side. They urge us to perfect self-expres- 
 sion. In such self-expression, of all there 
 is in us, of our sense of beauty, of wisdom, 
 of order, harmony, justice, love, humanity,
 
 THE HAPPY LIFE. 209 
 
 there is growing joy, contentment, peace, 
 satisfaction, worthy of God's sons. This is 
 the eternal, or universe-life. As Whittier, 
 the poet of liberty, sang; — 
 
 " Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more 
 For olden time and holier shore ; 
 God's love and blessing then and there 
 Are now and here and everywhere."
 
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