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 THE 
 
 Religion of a Gentleman 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. DOLE 
 
 Author of 
 
 HHE COMING PEOPLE," " THE THEOLOGY OF CIVILI- 
 ZATION," " LUXURY AND SACRIFICE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 BY THOMAS y. CKOWELL & COMPANY.
 
 STACK 
 ANNEX 
 6V 
 
 To all young men, to the students in the 
 colleges of America, and especially in Har- 
 vard College, my own Alma Mater, this little 
 book is dedicated, in the earnest hope that 
 the thoughts which have brought intellect- 
 ual freedom, joy, and moral inspiration to 
 its author may carry similar help and ser- 
 vice to others.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ALMOST since I was a boy it has been 
 the wish of my life that I might be able 
 to make the statement of religion in such 
 a way as to commend the subject and make 
 it attractive to the young. It has been my 
 faith that religion must be capable of the 
 most interesting, persuasive, and reasonable 
 treatment. Religion did not, however, ap- 
 peal to me in this way at first. On the 
 contrary, in my case, as is no doubt true 
 with many to-day, the subject seemed some- 
 what distant and even repellent. Religious 
 teaching has too often been made to take 
 on the hue of melancholy and even the 
 shadow of death. It has seemed to threaten 
 not merely to deprive us of pleasure (this 
 might be borne) but also to deprive us of 
 life and activity, and to shut us up in a 
 narrow and spectral region.
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 I early found in myself an instinctive 
 hunger for life here in this world; for all 
 which this life offers; for a large, normal, 
 wholesome, active, satisfying life. The 
 Greek spirit, and not the Puritan only, 
 was in me. I loved reason, order, harmony, 
 and unity. I could not bear to have to 
 make a special plea for my religion, to 
 defend it, to apologize for it, to entertain 
 apprehensions that it might some day be 
 overwhelmed by shrewd questions or by 
 some new scientific or historical discovery. 
 I could not bear to think of a divided 
 universe in which science and religion were 
 doomed to live apart. 
 
 I had been taught to tell the truth and 
 obey the call of duty. I could never respect 
 a religion which offered men an easy entrance 
 to paradise, while at the same time it 
 allowed them to live in falsehood, self-indul- 
 gence, and selfishness. The words of an 
 ancient teaching had settled deep into my 
 mind : Ye shall judge them by their fruits. 
 It did not seem to me that the fruits of
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 the customary religion, as set forth in the 
 churches of Christendom, were as yet re- 
 spectable. 
 
 I looked out on a world of sectarian divi- 
 sions. I had been used in early childhood 
 to hear judgments passed which condemned 
 multitudes to endless suffering, which con- 
 demned noble and high-minded men for an 
 error of opinion, which ruled out of the 
 communion of the church some of the best 
 and sweetest friends whom I knew, because 
 they could not honestly take on their lips 
 certain conventional words or phrases. The 
 true church, I was bound to believe, must 
 open its doors wide enough to take in all 
 sincere and genuine souls. It must be a 
 church for all humanity. Where was the 
 church which set a premium upon honesty, 
 which practised thorough-going hospitality ? 
 
 On the one hand I was overwhelmed with 
 an ineradicable conviction that religion is 
 the most profound of all human interests, 
 which no intelligent being can afford to rule 
 out of his thoughts. I was drawn to it
 
 Viii PREFACE. 
 
 accordingly, as if by a sort of universal 
 gravitation. On the other hand, like one 
 who sees objects in a fog, I dreaded religion 
 as a disturbing spectre, threatening to make 
 me something other than my real self, and 
 menacing my identity. 
 
 It became necessary both for my mental 
 sanity and my peace of mind to reconstruct 
 my religion. The love of reality, the sense 
 of an ethical imperative, and a faith in right- 
 eousness immanent in human life, regnant 
 throughout the universe, guided my path- 
 way. The impressive volume and variety 
 of the records of human experience con- 
 tributed aid and comfort. In some aspects 
 the religion to which I have worked my 
 way seems new and fresh, as well as ex- 
 tremely interesting and inspiring. In other 
 aspects it is as old as the soul of man. 
 There is no great doctrine which the great 
 teachers have enunciated which does not 
 prove to enter into it, and even to be 
 essential to it. I seem to hold the key to 
 interpret their noblest thought. But their
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 teachings come to us illuminated by the 
 wonderful facts of modern science and 
 reenforced by the modern study of history. 
 If I once dreaded lest religion should com- 
 pel me to act against my nature, lest it 
 should destroy vital instincts, cut down the 
 joy of life, and restrict my sympathies 
 and interests, I now love my religion be- 
 cause it offers fullness of life. 
 
 It must be that young minds are con- 
 stantly obliged to pass through something 
 like the same transition which I have de- 
 scribed, from the traditional religion of their 
 childhood, accepted simply upon authority, 
 to the freely chosen religion of maturity. I 
 should be very glad if my experience might 
 serve to make their path more plain. 
 
 It is possible that some readers will not 
 care for Chapter III. I have attempted to 
 make the course of my reasoning as simple 
 as possible. But if any so prefer I am 
 quite willing that they should pass on to 
 the next chapter. Perhaps later they will 
 choose to turn back and will not then find
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 this chapter too difficult. It is a pity not 
 to know something of the foundation of 
 thought upon which a valid religion must 
 rest. 
 
 It may be said by some that I am too 
 confident in the tone of my optimism. I 
 answer that it is my religion which com- 
 pels me to optimism. Moreover, I am not 
 writing for jaded and somewhat sophisti- 
 cated readers, through the veil of whose 
 habitual cynicism I must warily pass before 
 I can hope to hold sincere speech with them. 
 I am writing with the desire of interest- 
 ing the young, and especially that class 
 of youth, generous, intelligent, and ener- 
 getic, who are destined to be the leaders 
 of their generation, and whose characteristic 
 qualities, therefore, make them naturally 
 hopeful and buoyant. I am writing for 
 those who possess health and life and the 
 capacity for enthusiasm. I conceive it to 
 be my business to tell honestly what the 
 checkered experiences of the world have 
 taught me. My lesson is not doubt, but
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 confidence ; it is not suspicion, but friend- 
 liness and hope. 
 
 I have not, however, ruled out the facts 
 which sometimes drive men to doubt and 
 despair. I have had to face them early 
 and often. I have endeavored to suggest 
 many times in these pages, and particularly 
 in the later chapters, the great and weighty 
 considerations which more and more satisfy 
 my mind as a clew and guide in meeting 
 the perplexing problems of human exist- 
 ence. If any readers care to pursue these 
 questions further, I have tried in The 
 Theology of Civilization to outline more 
 fully the profound philosophy which under- 
 lies this little book. It is a philosophy 
 in which I am happy to find myself in 
 substantial accord with many of the most 
 progressive, earnest, and cultivated minds 
 of this generation, as well as with some 
 of the greatest leaders of thought in the 
 past. In fact we are ready to-day to com- 
 bine the best results of ancient and oriental 
 thinking with the more active and practi-
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 cal workings of the western and modern 
 mind. 
 
 I have made free and frequent use of 
 the familiar Christian ideas and traditions. 
 A few readers may question whether I 
 have not over-emphasized the importance of 
 Jesus' story and teachings ; others may pos- 
 sibly complain that I have used this material 
 too unconventionally. I have simply used 
 it because on the whole it has suited my 
 purpose. Whatever one's theory about the 
 life of Jesus may be, the fact remains that 
 no life better illustrates the mystery and 
 the divineness of human personality ; the 
 story of no other life is so familiar to 
 multitudes of men f no life therefore serves 
 more effectually to set forth the grand 
 ethical and spiritual ends for which we all 
 live. 
 
 Moreover Jesus went to his brave death 
 while he was still a young man. His 
 appeal to the chivalrous spirit of youth has 
 always, therefore, been peculiarly strong 
 and effective. We ought to be able by
 
 i 
 PREFACE. Xlii 
 
 this time to perceive that this appeal is 
 not to mere idle, meaningless, unpractical 
 sacrifice, but rather to the largest and most 
 effectual use of life. 
 
 There is danger in the story of Jesus 
 if men only worship him as a God. There 
 is no danger to those who find in his story 
 the everlasting law of truth, duty, and love, 
 who thenceforth march on to obey this 
 threefold law, which binds all spiritual in- 
 telligences in the universe. I have taken 
 the utmost pains everywhere to show that 
 whatever element of character contributed 
 to make Jesus' life beautiful or worthy of 
 reverence must be equally beautiful and 
 worshipful, wherever it is seen, in modern 
 as well as in ancient times. Jesus is the 
 great democrat and liberator. God forbid 
 that his name be made the means of any 
 intellectual or spiritual tyranny. No one 
 understands his life or his place in history 
 who has not learned to recognize and to love 
 the good men and women of our own time 
 the loving and lovable, the honest and
 
 x iv PREFACE. 
 
 truthful souls who dwell in our own streets. 
 I have used the name of Jesus on purpose 
 to link together the noble lives of the new 
 age with all the old masters. There can be 
 no inspiring religion which does not teach 
 the profound doctrine of the incarnation 
 of the present and living God in human 
 form. The universal religion which man 
 seeks to-day demands a universal incarna- 
 tion. It aims to lift all humanity to the 
 level of the sons of God. 
 
 There was never such a call as now 
 for the right kind of leadership. The old 
 leadership was in the art of war, in Machi- 
 avellian state craft, and in rival empires. 
 The age of such leadership is passing away. 
 In science and inventions, in the exploita- 
 tion of material resources, in trades and in- 
 dustries, in the application of the forces of 
 nature, the Nineteenth Century has raised 
 up its able and chosen leaders the peers of 
 the old-time warriors and princes. It was 
 the great century for engineers and chem- 
 ists, for the builders of railways and facto-
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 ries. But there is a higher kind of leader- 
 ship than that which organizes physical 
 force and distributes material. Through all 
 times the highest of all leadership has re- 
 mained the same ; it has been in the realm 
 of art, and thought, in disinterestedness and 
 humanity. The names of emperors have 
 faded; the names of the lovers and helpers 
 of men have remained bright. 
 
 The new need is for this eternal form 
 of leadership. It is in the development 
 and application of moral and spiritual 
 forces. The dull world still waits to be 
 rightly educated. Not Spain and Cuba only, 
 but England and the United States wait 
 for high-minded and clear-sighted teachers. 
 The world waits for those who shall win 
 for it industrial and social freedom. Men 
 have fought and competed long enough. 
 Who will wisely show them how to cooper- 
 ate ? The world cries earnestly for those 
 who shall show it how to use and enjoy its 
 wealth. It waits for the great leaders who 
 shall cleanse away its vile slums and re-
 
 XVi PREFACE. 
 
 create its cities in beauty. It waits for 
 mighty statesmen who shall bind the jealous 
 nations into a commonwealth of mankind. 
 It longs for those who shall teach it the 
 secret of happiness. It is growing tired of 
 coarse, gross, selfish, partial material forms 
 of civilization. It waits for real and com- 
 plete civilization ; it waits for leaders who 
 shall embody in art, in literature, in institu- 
 tions, in industry, in business, throughout 
 all human society the beautiful and com- 
 manding law of love.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. WHO is THE GENTLEMAN ? . . . . 1 
 
 II. A CIVILIZED RELIGION 17 
 
 III. A BIT OF ARGUMENT 30 
 
 IV. SPIRIT WHAT IT is 46 
 
 V. WHAT IT is TO LOVE GOD .... 61 
 
 VI. PRAYER AND REASON 80 
 
 VII. WHAT FREEDOM is 98 
 
 VIII. WHAT IT is TO BE GOOD .... 116 
 
 IX. THE GREAT RENUNCIATION .... 134 
 
 X. THE SOLDIERLY LIFE 148 
 
 XI. A PRACTICAL QUESTION 166 
 
 XII. WHAT is THE USE ? 183 
 
 XIII. MEMENTO MORI 197 
 
 XIV. OUR RULE OF LIFE 215 
 
 xvii
 
 THE 
 RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 
 
 WHO has not pictures in his mind of the 
 old-world gentleman ? He wears the dress 
 of a distinct class ; he is probably mounted 
 upon a horse, carries a sword, and is 
 attended by a servant ; common people do 
 reverence to him as he passes. He believes 
 and others also believe that his family 
 is of finer clay than the ordinary sort. 
 The women of his order are ladies, entitled, 
 therefore, to a regard quite above women 
 in general. 
 
 Are we right in using the words " gentle- 
 man " and " lady " in America ? Are they 
 not indeed survivals of an aristocratic social
 
 2 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 and political system which we in the United 
 States have renounced? The very words 
 have too often become degraded in snobbish 
 use to imply less humanity than their simple 
 and humbler cousins man and woman. If in 
 a democracy one man is as good as another, 
 and every one is to be treated as a gentle- 
 man by virtue of his human birth, why 
 should we not discard meaningless terms, 
 which seem, so far as they are seriously 
 used, to deny the principles of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence ? 
 
 Nevertheless, there are real differences 
 and distinctions even in a democracy. No 
 one believes that all men are equal in worth. 
 What good Democrat of our forefathers' 
 time would have been bold enough to assert 
 that he was himself half as important to the 
 nation as "Washington, or Madison, or 
 Jefferson ? You would easily have found a 
 thousand men willing to die together, if 
 their death could have saved the one life of 
 Lincoln. There are men serving to-day 
 jurists, statesmen, teachers, ministers, cap-
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 3 
 
 tains of industry, poets with whom very 
 few of their contemporaries would be con- 
 ceited enough to claim equality. When 
 young Sherman Hoar died it was as if a 
 tall tree had fallen in the forest. Whatever 
 truth we wish to convey in our Declaration 
 of Independence (and there is a great truth 
 concealed in its ringing words) we certainly 
 do not mean to say that one man is as good 
 or important or valuable as another. No 
 one believes this. The real differences be- 
 tween men in fact are probably far more 
 and not less than the common estimation of 
 values. 
 
 I purpose to make a plea for the continued 
 use of the word " gentleman." I wish to 
 show that it describes a type of manhood 
 that is still rare in the world. It is a type 
 without the existence and clear recognition 
 of which our splendid experiment of democ- 
 racy would fail. It is, indeed, a type of 
 character, for the production of which I hold 
 that our democratic institutions have their 
 chief use and significance. I am not satis-
 
 4 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 fied with saying that our government is a 
 means for securing " life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness." The ideal end which 
 we pursue is a certain superior form of hap- 
 piness. It is not the happiness which might 
 content savage men ; it is the peculiar kind 
 of happiness which belongs to those who 
 have become ladies and gentlemen. 
 
 We are bound, however, if we go on using 
 these old words, with their aristocratic flavor 
 about them, at once to make it plain that 
 we use them as good democrats. We must 
 commend them even to those who can 
 hardly yet rightly claim to be ladies or gen- 
 tlemen themselves. I am confident that we 
 can not only justify this frank use of a true 
 class distinction in the republic, but that we 
 are making this distinction for the welfare 
 of all. 
 
 We must first be sure to discard certain 
 tenacious prejudices that even in the old 
 times obscured the ideal of a gentleman. 
 There were childish people, for example, 
 who always judged a man by the clothes that
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 5 
 
 he wore. They associated a certain style of 
 dress with the gentleman, as distinguished 
 from the peasant or workman. We are 
 used in America to finding gentlemen in 
 overalls, working in shops, driving wagons 
 or ploughs, running locomotives, or stand- 
 ing at the helm on shipboard. We may 
 know real ladies who take in washing. 
 Our aristocrats show their good sense in 
 wearing whatever befits their work. Bring 
 the prince out of his disguise, and all men 
 will recognize him. 
 
 It can hardly need to be said that the 
 possession of money has nothing to do with 
 the real character of the gentleman. Who 
 really thinks this in our modern world? 
 What if a man has made his millions, and 
 lives in a palace and runs a steam yacht? 
 Let him be coarse in his tastes, overbearing 
 in his manners, tyrannical to his workmen, 
 and we hear the world presently say : " Yes ! 
 he is rich, but he is no gentleman." As 
 for women, no amount of furniture, osten- 
 tation, or glitter of jewels will cover the
 
 6 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 subtle distinction between the sham and the 
 real lady. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that money 
 has something to do with the making of the 
 gentleman. What if the child, born in the 
 slums of a city, must go to work in a shop, 
 while the more favored lad just around the 
 corner is sent to the best schools on his way 
 to the university ? What if a boy has never 
 even been introduced to the stories of the 
 heroes, or has never seen a better man than the 
 nearest saloon keeper? There is a poverty, 
 let us own, sometimes in the heart of great 
 cities, sometimes on the prairies, or again in 
 the New England hill towns, so meagre that 
 its victims do not know what the life of a 
 true gentleman is. The republic has failed 
 of its task if boys grow up in it practically 
 cut off from the chances to become gentle- 
 men. 
 
 Can we admit that a man's birth or family 
 has anything whatever to do in conferring 
 our new and democratic title of gentleman ? 
 Let us not be too hasty here in answering
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 7 
 
 " No." Is it not of real value to a child to 
 bear a family name, distinguished for a num- 
 ber of generations, we will not say for 
 mere wealth, but for refinement, education, 
 sturdy character, and public spirit? Who 
 would not be at least slightly pleased if he 
 knew that his forefathers had fought or 
 suffered on the side of early English liberty, 
 or with William of Orange in Holland ; that 
 some of them had been friends of Washing- 
 ton; that their fellow-citizens had always 
 trusted them, as the people of Delaware 
 trusted the Bayards ? If a man happens to 
 be mean, small, and egotistic this kind of 
 family inheritance may make him rather 
 ridiculous, but it is a constant call and 
 demand upon a man not to be small and 
 mean. So far, then, from wishing to cut 
 boys off from noble and truly gentlemanly 
 family traditions, we would like to see -all 
 children reared in such traditions. We 
 would like if possible to have every child 
 able to say : " My father was a gentleman." 
 We ought' now to see at once what the
 
 8 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 essential qualities are which in every age 
 have conferred the rank of gentleman. It 
 was not for nothing that the old-world gen- 
 tleman was represented as a horseman or 
 chevalier. Why did the one man ride, while 
 the thousand went afoot? At the worst, 
 because he was idle, and selfish, perhaps a 
 robber of other men's industry. But so far 
 as this was so, he was a false knight. At his 
 best he was a helper and defender. His 
 proper business was to protect the poor. He 
 was supposed to be a sort of public servant. 
 This was the only excuse for his existence 
 as a rider, while others went on foot. We 
 are coming out of the anomalous mediaeval 
 barbarism into a period of industrial develop- 
 ment. We do not need hard riders and fighters. 
 But we need more than ever (and not merely 
 one in a thousand) men who love the people, 
 committed to the public good, helpers and 
 defenders of the interests of mankind. Shall 
 we not agree in saying that in the modern 
 and democratic sense of the word the gentle- 
 man is a man of generosity, of a social con-
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 9 
 
 science, of disinterestedness and of public 
 spirit. 
 
 Burke is quoted as saying that "our 
 civilization for ages has depended upon two 
 principles the spirit of religion and the 
 spirit of a gentleman." He means precisely 
 what we have been saying; namely, that all 
 human advancement depends upon at least 
 a certain healthy proportion in each genera- 
 tion of those who are devoted to the public 
 good. There is no doubt that our great re- 
 public in this second century of its life, and 
 under the enormous responsibilities for the 
 world that it carries, demands a vastly in- 
 creased supply of men and women of this 
 type. 
 
 A second great and characteristic mark of 
 the gentleman always has been that he is a 
 man of the world. The phrase has a bad 
 sense describing one who " at Rome does as 
 the Romans do." In other words, when he 
 goes among barbarians he puts on their war- 
 paint and drops to the barbarous life. We 
 use the phrase now in its better sense. The
 
 10 THE EELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 true " man of the world " is a citizen of the 
 universe ; he is a man of cosmopolitan sym- 
 pathies ; wherever he goes he is master, not 
 servant, of the situation, being able to adjust 
 himself to circumstances and to make him- 
 self at home. If he lives with savages he is 
 still the gentleman, their friend to help them, 
 their defender to lead them, never a par- 
 taker of their vices. Thus Livingstone and 
 Stanley traversed the dark continent in the 
 spirit of gentlemen. Thus Francis Parkman 
 studied the problems of our native Indian 
 life, none the less a gentleman, though sick 
 almost to death in the squalid savage 
 
 We in America aim at this world-citizen- 
 ship. Whatever happens anywhere interests 
 us. Whatever is human is ours. Men of 
 many races come to our shores, and we 
 assimilate them as countrymen. We are 
 preeminently a nation of travellers ; we 
 spend more than a hundred millions a year 
 in visiting other peoples. Every journey 
 abroad weaves another thread into the net-
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN f 11 
 
 work of international and cosmopolitan 
 fellow-feeling. Nowhere are the desire and 
 demand so strong as in the United States 
 for a grand system of arbitration to ensure 
 peace and good will in the world. It is the 
 working of Burke's " spirit of the gentle- 
 man," the civilized man, the citizen of the 
 universe. 
 
 It is a fine art to attain our modern ideal 
 of a true man of the world. It is an educa- 
 tion not merely of books, but of all kinds of 
 life experiences. The typical American is 
 learning every day to get on with " all kinds 
 and conditions of men." To be civilized 
 means essentially to be able to live in humane 
 relations with other men, to be patient with 
 their faults and limitations, to sympathize 
 with their disadvantages or misfortunes, to 
 understand their diverse forms of thought 
 or opinion, to discover whatever manly 
 worth is in them, to be ready to cooperate 
 with them, to get their best work out of 
 them, to promote their highest industrial, 
 social, and political efficiency. It is not
 
 12 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 necessary that a man should be an official, 
 an army officer, a head of a department in 
 the civil service, the mayor of a city, in 
 order to do this work of a civilized and civ- 
 ilizing man. It is the work of the gentle- 
 man, in whatever estate he lives. The best 
 type of farmer is doing it ; the thorough and 
 skilful foreman or factory superintendent 
 does it. Yes ! The common laborer who has 
 once entered into the conception of what 
 human labor means does the same thing. 
 He is no longer a mere mechanical cog in a 
 wheel ; he is a willing, friendly, vital mem- 
 ber of the great body of human and con- 
 structive activity. 
 
 There is nothing, so interesting and refin- 
 ing as this continuous process of nice adjust- 
 ment, by which we all learn to live the life of 
 civilized men. Does a man's manhood seem 
 to be menaced by the narrow routine of his 
 task setting type, reading proof, polishing 
 the head of a pin ? But here is the moral, 
 social, spiritual side of his life, upon which 
 he has to touch other lives, for better, for
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 13 
 
 worse. There is no limit to the development 
 of the gentlemanly instincts and ladylike 
 instincts on this higher side. Did not the 
 famous Spinoza earn his scanty living by 
 polishing lenses? Did not the excellent 
 Lucy Larcom tend a loom in a Lowell mill ? 
 
 Some one may think that we ought before 
 this to have spoken of the characteristic 
 manners of the gentleman. But fine man- 
 ners are not like a mask or garb that can be 
 put on and off ; they are the expression of a 
 spirit or character. They are the delicate 
 response of a kindly nature to the pres- 
 ence of other men. They are partly conven- 
 tional, inasmuch as they represent a sort of 
 universal human experience, wherein kindly 
 men have learned to show friendliness and 
 due respect to one another. The manners 
 of Pekin may differ from the conventions at 
 Chicago or London, but the true man of the 
 world, that is, the man of wide human sym- 
 pathy, is easily at home in Pekin or Yoko- 
 hama or London. 
 
 Young girls come up from the country to
 
 14 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 visit friends in the metropolis. Do they 
 bring intelligence and kind hearts? They 
 are never long at a loss how to behave in any 
 society. We have seen men born with the 
 degrading heritage of slavery, who have 
 taken place with the first gentlemen of the 
 land ; whereas at the advent of selfishness 
 the spirit of the gentleman doubtless goes 
 out of the most carefully selected family 
 stock. With every outburst of selfishness, 
 arrogance, or conceit, with every subtle 
 thought of self-conscious pride, the gentle- 
 man disappears. With every high-minded 
 impulse, with every noble or patriotic re- 
 solve, with every act or word for the public 
 weal, with all quickening sympathies, the 
 gentleman comes back to life. His manners 
 express himself. Jesus was born among the 
 people. Does any one doubt that he knew 
 how to behave with manly dignity in the 
 chief Pharisees' houses? 
 
 There is a difference between the old and 
 our new use of the word " gentleman." In 
 the old days it was a title that a man as-
 
 WHO IS THE GENTLEMAN? 15 
 
 sumed for himself ; he claimed the rank as 
 of right ; it was a title by which he liked to 
 compare himself with others as a superior 
 being. This practice unfortunately still 
 survives. We use the same title on the 
 contrary as an ideal ; we do not claim it, as 
 we would not claim to be called " good." 
 It is what we wish to be ; namely, noble, 
 dignified, generous, in the list of the bene- 
 factors. We like to find those to whom we 
 can heartily apply the word to describe 
 them. We rejoice in the youth whom 
 we see pressing into this rank. If others 
 could ever honestly say of us " He is a 
 gentleman," we should be grateful. In fact, 
 the higher our ideal of the true use of the 
 name, the less do we venture to press our 
 right to it. 
 
 We may, perhaps, see now what the 
 secret is of the truth that our fathers stated 
 in the words of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. We have seen that they could 
 not mean that every man is equally gifted 
 with strength, intellect, genius, or life. But
 
 16 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 they discerned the deeper fact, that it is in 
 every man, if he wishes, to be a gentleman. 
 They affirmed that there is no difference of 
 clay that raises one family, color, or race as 
 masters, while the rest must serve ; that 
 makes a few noble and the others oiily 
 
 Our national experience goes far already 
 to make just this splendid declaration. The 
 peer of Washington comes out of the poverty 
 of a backwoodsman's cabin. Out of a cease- 
 less line of new emigrants the nation is 
 always recruiting its merchants, its states- 
 men, its masters of industry, its inventors, 
 and its educators. Where can you draw the 
 line and deny the. democratic right of the 
 humblest to press into the list of this peer- 
 age? Who loves man, who serves man, 
 whose sympathies over-arch the world, he 
 is our gentleman. For what else do all our 
 institutions exist, unless to rear and foster 
 men and women of this sort ?
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 
 
 LET us imagine the best type of man, 
 thoroughly equipped for modern life. He 
 has a rich and harmonious nature ; he is 
 frank, truthful, friendly, high-minded, cour- 
 teous, of manly dignity, modest withal, with 
 noble aims. He has enjoyed a broad and 
 thorough education, he has travelled enough, 
 or seen enough of life to have learned to make 
 himself at home among poor men and rich 
 alike, to use " things," but not to become their 
 slave ; to appreciate the value and impor- 
 tance of the various kinds of work, from the 
 humblest to the most exalted, by which hu- 
 man society goes on. He is the kind of man 
 any one of us would like to be, the ideal that 
 a girl might choose for her lover, that a mother 
 would propose for her sons. Here he stands 
 at the threshold of life. Will such a com-
 
 18 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 plete man of the world, so broadly educated, 
 have any religion in these modern times ? 
 
 It is interesting to observe, as we trace the 
 historical development of the idea of the 
 gentleman, that the best specimens of the 
 " old school " were decidedly religious men. 
 Spenser and Milton and Sidney are examples. 
 They were men of conscience, honor, and 
 loyalty. They held themselves to belong to 
 a constituted order of righteousness, which 
 they could not escape, which they had no 
 wish to evade. They lived not merely in a 
 world of fleeting phenomena, but also in 
 the more solid and enduring realm of laws, 
 principles, and ideals. To their thought right, 
 truth, duty were not in this earth alone ; 
 they were in the heavens and eternal. Show 
 the true gentleman then what duty bade and 
 he must do it, cost what it might. All that 
 he had, all that he possessed he held in trust 
 for his king, for his country, for his religion, 
 for his God. When did ever the gentleman 
 draw the prudent line, and count the cost, 
 and prescribe, " Thus far and no farther," to
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 19 
 
 his fidelity? What gentleman ever had his 
 price at which his soul could be bought for 
 honors, titles, lands, or gold ? 
 
 We are not claiming that this old-fash- 
 ioned religion was carefully thought out. 
 We are not stating in what form it expressed 
 itself. It existed in different creeds. Sir 
 Thomas More, the Catholic, was as ready 
 to die for it as Admiral Coligny, the Hu- 
 guenot. Saladin is as true a type of it, in 
 Lessing's " Nathan the Wise," as the Jew or 
 the Christian. Each in his own way held a 
 faith that at the worst, as Lowell says : 
 " Within the dim unknown, 
 Sitteth God behind the shadow, 
 Keeping watch above his own." 
 
 We start at once with a strong presump- 
 tion that religion somehow goes to the 
 making of a gentleman. If the spirit of 
 religion, as Burke says, has been a part of 
 civilization, this was because religion made 
 a part of the life of the leaders of civiliza- 
 tion, that is, the most civilized men. No 
 one surely would wish to be obliged to try
 
 20 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 the experiment of a type of civilization in 
 which this profound element, which has 
 always run through the past like a golden 
 thread, should be quite cast out from the 
 lives of the leaders of the world. Is there 
 then any kind of religion which we may 
 agree would befit our highest type of man ? 
 What kind of religion would he like, if relig- 
 ions could be made to order? Let us see 
 if he would ask anything inherently un- 
 reasonable or self-contradictory. 
 
 In the first place, our best type of man 
 would wish his religion to grow out of, and 
 not to be alien to, the nobler forms of the 
 religion of the past. He would not wish to 
 be compelled to break with all the traditions 
 of earlier men ; he would not like to be 
 obliged to brand the faith of his fathers as 
 altogether false ; he would not wish to make 
 light of his mother's prayers. Brought up 
 a Christian, he would not wish to become 
 unchristian. Brought up a Jew, he would 
 never be quite happy to renounce his Juda- 
 ism. Born a Buddhist or a Confucian, he
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 21 
 
 would wish never to turn his back upon 
 the teachings of the saints of his national 
 religion. 
 
 Again, as a true man of the world, the 
 gentleman would wish a religion that offered 
 him a large fellowship with men in other 
 churches and even with men of other gener- 
 ations. He could hardly be content with a 
 religion that cut him off from sympathy 
 with any of the best men of his time. 
 Much less could he be content with a relig- 
 ion that declared all other religions to be 
 wrong and false and their followers to be 
 without hope. How can a man of hu- 
 manity, who has read history, who, in 
 actual journeys or by the flight of his im- 
 agination, has visited different lands, seen 
 the world's great historic temples and 
 churches, and known many men of many 
 minds, how can such a man help wish- 
 ing to understand the common elements 
 and aspirations that show themselves in all 
 the great religions under which men have 
 attained any degree of real civilization ?
 
 22 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Such a man must desire a religion that 
 shall interpret all the faiths of the world, 
 and give him initiation into their sacred 
 mysteries. 
 
 Thirdly, the best demand of our time is 
 for a very simple religion. Tell us, earnest 
 men ask, what are those deeper elemental 
 facts of religion which creeds have so often 
 struggled crudely to embody. This appeal 
 was in Mr. Huxley's thought when he turned 
 back in admiration to the words of an un- 
 known Hebrew teacher, and repeated after 
 him, almost in the manner of a disciple, 
 " What doth the Lord require of thee but 
 to deal justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy -God?" It is the same 
 appeal for a simple religion that drives men 
 back to the great teacher of Nazareth. 
 " Give us the religion of Jesus," men say. 
 " What do we need more than the religion 
 of the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule ? " 
 You will hear the same appeal for sim- 
 plicity from the foremost men in Japan 
 and India.
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 23 
 
 This is not saying that a simple religion 
 denies all use of forms, ceremonies, or cult. 
 This is not to deny that the man of the 
 simplest religion may worship in a beautiful 
 church, or take the words of an elaborate 
 service. This is not to deny that he can 
 write his faith in thirty-nine or even more 
 numerous articles, provided only that the 
 articles are sincere. Religion is in this re- 
 spect like a work of art, a picture, a sym- 
 phony, a cathedral. Its genius does not 
 forbid ornament and variety. But its great- 
 ness is in its grand, simple, and total effect, 
 toward which all ornamentation contributes. 
 Our highest demand of religion is for a 
 faith so simple that any one can understand 
 what it means. Has religion ever possessed 
 men's hearts except at those times when it 
 could be told in the simple terms of a 
 gospel? 
 
 A fourth demand that the best men will 
 surely make is that their religion shall pre- 
 serve and cultivate the sentiment of rever- 
 ence. As Goethe has beautifully shown,
 
 24 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN". 
 
 reverence in its three forms modesty in 
 view of what is above us and greater than 
 we are, due respect for those who are our 
 peers or our own kind, and tender regard for 
 all lower modes of life is the great har- 
 monizing and civilizing influence. 
 
 It has been a special function of the nobler 
 religions to develop reverence. The Hebrew 
 Psalms, the poetry of Sophocles, the massive 
 dignity of the Pyramids, the grand arches of 
 the Gothic cathedrals, the sublime " Passion 
 Music " all express the elevating move- 
 ment of reverence. In the eyes of Reverence 
 nothing in Nature is to be called common 
 or unclean. In the eyes of reverent souls 
 every humblest human struggle upwards, 
 every childish prayer, every simplest act of 
 love takes on dignity and beauty. In every 
 checkered page of human history there is 
 significance and worth. To the reverent 
 the great lives of the heroes and masters 
 shine forth like the perennial stars. To the 
 reverent the world is encompassed in light. 
 Let religion give us something to worship,
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 25 
 
 the best men cry. Let it continue to lift 
 our eyes to the hills. Let it discover not 
 less, but more that is worshipful in the 
 world, in history, and in our present-day 
 life. 
 
 It follows that our highest modern re- 
 ligion, in order to be acceptable to large- 
 hearted men, must be preeminently a religion 
 of ideals. The poets and the prophets must 
 have their place in it. It must commend 
 itself to the artists. It must be put to 
 music and sung. The word of the ancient 
 prophecy should prove true, that u your sons 
 and your daughters shall prophesy, your old 
 men shall dream dreams, your young men 
 shall see visions." What is religion, unless 
 it shows men the visions of. the things that 
 ought to be, aye ! that are already in the 
 infinite thought of God? 
 
 Must we now, in the acts and thoughts 
 of our religion, go out of the wholesome 
 realm of nature into a ghostly region, where 
 flesh and blood may not enter, where un- 
 real things are wont to happen outside the
 
 26 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 reign of law? Is religion, then, another 
 species of life into which the soul must pass, 
 as if by a spell of magic, leaving the natural 
 order of the world behind ? It is certainly 
 an instinct of health in us that resents every 
 non-natural conception of religion. It is by 
 this instinct of health that young men shrink 
 from the life of the priest, as long as the 
 priest is supposed to undertake supernatural 
 functions. We want religion, but we do not 
 want magic or superstition. We want a 
 religion for men, not for "spirits." The 
 religious man ought to be the real man at 
 his best. The saints and the heroes are not 
 different classes of men, the one of natural 
 and the other of somewhat supernatural 
 origin. The true saints are the heroes. They 
 are all of God, and their warm red blood is 
 of His ordering. In plain words, we want 
 a religion that shall relate us closely and 
 firmly to this world with its actual duties, 
 cares, affections, sorrows, and delights. Here 
 is where life lies, for better, for worse. Is it 
 possible here to live a divine kind of life ?
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 27 
 
 Is it possible here to find God ? May the 
 spirit of heaven be here ? We are learn- 
 ing that through all space the elements are 
 the same, the same laws work and the forces 
 are one. Is not the life of God, then, here 
 and now? We reach out after a religion 
 that shall say Yes to these questions. 
 
 This is to say also that the kind of religion 
 that we are looking for must be practical 
 and distinctly ethical. There is one pertinent 
 question about all religion : Does it make 
 men better? Does it work out into righteous, 
 truthful, honorable, and generous character ? 
 If it does not mean a higher form of human 
 life the all-round and civilized man will 
 vote it a fraud. If he is predisposed to be 
 religious it is because, in his thinking, 
 religion and righteousness are involved 
 together. Moreover, when we say right- 
 eousness to-day, we mean not only personal 
 but social righteousness. There must be a 
 quality in our modern religion that shall 
 stir men to perform very definite duties to 
 society and to the world.
 
 28 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 In addition to all this we want a religion 
 that shall quiet and steady us in perplexity, 
 rest and refresh us in weariness, comfort us 
 in trouble, hearten us in our work, deepen 
 the flow of our natural affections, give hope 
 and enthusiasm to the business of life, and 
 render us fearless of death. 
 
 Shall we add one more to this majestic 
 list of our demands for the kind of religion 
 that we want? We must add another 
 demand. We are bound to claim that our 
 religion shall be reasonable. It must rest in 
 a good and profound philosophy. We can- 
 not put up with a religion that runs away 
 from investigation, that forbids us to ask 
 questions, or discourages thoughtfulness. 
 Our religion must be consistent and har- 
 monious with the rest of our thinking. It 
 must tally with our science. It must go 
 with history and not against it. 
 
 We have described such a religion as we 
 should like to possess. We have shown 
 what sort of religion would befit the highest 
 type of man whom we can imagine. Is there
 
 A CIVILIZED RELIGION. 29 
 
 any religion that answers to this description 
 in all its beautiful outlines? We purpose 
 to show that there is such a religion, exactly 
 fitting the most civilized man.
 
 30 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 
 
 WHAT splendid and wonderful law is it 
 in man's mind that commands him to ask of 
 every proposition, however beautiful, com- 
 fortable, and desirable it may seem, Is it 
 true ? Yes ! that requires him to face blank 
 hopelessness, death, and annihilation rather 
 than to embrace an easy and pleasant lie ! 
 As much, then, as we desire the solace, satis- 
 faction, peace, and uplift of genuine religion, 
 under so much the more inexorable bonds 
 are we held to be sure that our religion 
 agrees with reality. 
 
 Serious and perplexing questions meet us 
 as soon as we begin to think. We want to 
 know why we are here in this world and 
 what our destiny is ; what sort of a world it 
 is, good, bad, or indifferent ; what mighty 
 Power makes and maintains it ; what kind
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 31 
 
 of Power it is ; whether it cares for men and 
 loves them ; and if this is so, what must we 
 do to come into accord, and especially to act 
 in accord with the great Power, or Life, out 
 of which we spring. Religion is the attempt 
 or venture of man to answer these profound 
 and urgent questions. 
 
 We frankly approach the subject of re- 
 ligion in a somewhat new way. Men once 
 thought of religion as a distant and quite 
 mysterious realm about which only a few 
 gifted souls ever had authentic tidings. Re- 
 ligion, in this view, was confessedly unveri- 
 fiable, except so far as men could trust the 
 testimony that a few seers and prophets 
 had received in visions and dreams, or per- 
 haps by the direct word of the deity. But 
 we do not now think of religion as confined to 
 a mysterious realm, or to the world of the un- 
 known. Our question is, what shall we think 
 of this world where we are, with its shifting 
 phenomena, its alternating sunshine and star- 
 light, its imperishable atoms and their rigo- 
 rous laws of combination, its actual human
 
 32 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 toil and tragedy, its sorrows and joys, its 
 failures and its heroisms, yes, with its all- 
 encompassing mysteries, how shall we in- 
 terpret its entirety ? What does the quality, 
 texture, and structure of that which we see 
 teach us with respect to the nature of the 
 whole which no man can yet see ? In some 
 form or other the voice of religion asserts 
 that the magnificent whole is good, and not 
 bad or indifferent. 
 
 The great word in our modern and more 
 mature thought of religion is unity or 
 harmony. Each science fits together its 
 group of facts. Science is the study of the 
 relations by which things are bound together. 
 A new scientific fact is simply the percep- 
 tion of a new relation. Thus each new ele- 
 ment, as it is discovered, fits into a kinship 
 of elements, where before there had been a 
 gap. As each several science relates its 
 facts into a group, constructing a sort of 
 poem or symphony from which nothing can 
 well be omitted, so all the groups or sciences 
 are presently seen to be related together.
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 33 
 
 No one can be understood by itself. Botany 
 is the cousin to zoology ; both rest on min- 
 eralogy and geology. All the elements out 
 of which, in this earth, growing grass or flesh 
 and bone and blood are produced, are the 
 same elements that shine at a white heat in 
 the sun, while every shifting sun-spot plays 
 its part in our terrestrial climate. 
 
 In all this realm that we call Nature, 
 what is it to find a truth ? It is to discover 
 what fits or matches, and makes harmony. 
 The unrelated thing is not yet a truth till its 
 relationship is found out. As soon as the 
 scientific eye sees, with regard to the new 
 flower or tree, the new chemical element, 
 the new planet, that this matches with all 
 other things known ; as soon as the astrono- 
 mer finds that the hitherto supposed dis- 
 turbance in his calculations is in fact 
 demanded by the law of gravitation, that it 
 heralds the presence of an unknown asteroid, 
 the area of truth, that is, harmonized 
 knowledge, is widened. 
 
 We begin with the idea of nature as one.
 
 34 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 We find that throughout nature the charac- 
 teristic of everything natural is that it fits 
 together with all the rest. Each thing has 
 its place. Order is the law. But who can 
 stop with this majestic fact ? Can the out- 
 ward nature be a unity, while the moral life 
 of man, with all the profound and signifi- 
 cant facts that constitute him as man, is 
 only a confused and hopeless riddle ? Must 
 we stand in wonder at one moment at the 
 marvelous correlation of the machinery and 
 the forces of the world, and then at the 
 next moment be struck aghast at the dis- 
 orderly results of the working of this Titanic 
 system in the one realm where its working 
 concerns us, namely, in human life and his- 
 tory ? Must we see order in one place and 
 chaos in the other ? What is this supposed 
 unity of nature worth if it stops at the very 
 line where life and thought become actual 
 to us? 
 
 Here is the trouble with agnosticism. 
 The agnostic makes things fit and harmonize 
 in the world of fleeting phenomena. He fits
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 35 
 
 together successfully the pieces of the puzzle. 
 But he fails yet to see that the completed 
 whole makes a picture or map, and indeed 
 has its chief use in teaching the learner, 
 not the mechanical relations of the pieces of 
 pasteboard, but rather the ideal relations of 
 the parts to the whole of the picture. 
 
 What is it indeed that imposes upon the 
 scientific student the confidence that his 
 world will fit together, that is, will be found 
 true ? It is not nature alone that compels 
 this magnificent faith upon him. On the 
 contrary, the outer world at first appears to 
 be full of discords and contending powers. 
 It is the nature of his own mind that de- 
 mands structure, order, and unity every- 
 where. The inner nature by its own con- 
 structive necessity presses forward to expect 
 and to find an orderly nature without. 
 
 The inner nature of the mind does not 
 alone demand order and structure. Intel- 
 lectual necessities no less real and deep im- 
 pose an expectation of worth, significance, 
 use, design. Yes ! of moral order and unity,
 
 36 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 corresponding to the colossal organization 
 of forces. That is not true which does not 
 match, and fit, and harmonize. A bad world, 
 a vain world, an insignificant world, a non- 
 moral world is an unnatural, that is, an untrue 
 world. Who does not feel the force of this 
 consideration ? Shall we find an orderly 
 and significant place in our world for every 
 grain of sand and atom of oxygen, and 
 then at last conclude with an insignificant 
 universe? Must all the lives of all the 
 heroes, the Beatitudes and those who have 
 exemplified them, the Christ-life reincar- 
 nated however often, sweet friendship and 
 exalted patriotism shine forth into void 
 space, have no answer, and perish like a 
 breath ? 
 
 The demand in us for truth is the demand 
 not for mere facts our data only but 
 for the fitting together of the facts into a 
 worthy and significant whole. A bad, futile, 
 unethical, or godless world is not thinkable, 
 we say. It does not make sense. Assume 
 such a world and you have assumed chaos
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 37 
 
 and anarchy, that is, untruth. Truth implies 
 moral relation and fits only with a good 
 universe. Think then the thought of the 
 good God the divine universe and 
 truth now has found its meaning, its har- 
 mony, its unity, as when you have fitted the 
 right piece into your map. 
 
 We do not cease to ask, What did the 
 seers and prophets of the old time see and 
 say ? We listen to all that they say. What 
 did they think of man's destiny ? How did 
 they feel toward the Power that brought 
 men here, and whose servants men are ? 
 Did the great religious leaders of the race 
 believe this a good world ? Was it a good 
 God who ordered their fate ? What did men 
 write in their psalms? What have the 
 noblest poets said ? What did the lonely 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah believe of the triumph of 
 righteousness in the world of war and 
 oppression on which they looked out ? How 
 did Jesus sum up human duty and the 
 radiant faith of his life? What witnesses 
 through hundreds of years have added their
 
 38 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 testimony, bought with effort, blood, and 
 tears, often sealed with death, to the mag- 
 nificent conception of a righteous and 
 beneficent God? 
 
 We listen to the voices of a grand pro- 
 cession of men and women who in our vision 
 seem to pass by. The noblest minds of 
 mankind are there. Plato and Socrates are 
 in their midst; Epictetus, the slave, and 
 Marcus Aurelius, the emperor ; Hypatia and 
 Augustine are there, with unknown names 
 from the far East, Buddhist and Confucian 
 saints. The reformers are there, brave here- 
 tics, men in advance of their times, Servetus 
 and Swedenborg and Parker. Does the line 
 grow thin, as the -men and women of the 
 very latest generation, our own fathers and 
 mothers and friends, our own contemporaries, 
 at last pass in review ? What shall we say 
 of the century in which Martineau and 
 Emerson have discoursed and written; in 
 which Tennyson, Whittier, and the Brown- 
 ings have sung ; in which Wilberforce, Garri- 
 son, and Shaftsbury have struck the fetters
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 39 
 
 from the oppressed; in which Lincoln and 
 Gladstone have held empire; in which 
 Arnold and Mark Hopkins and Jowett have 
 been among the educators ; in which Living- 
 stone's name is only the glorious first among 
 the explorers and pioneers of civilization ! 
 
 Shall we study the habits of insects and 
 microbes, and not study the thoughts, the 
 ideals, the faiths, and the hopes of this 
 mighty procession of thinkers, seers, and 
 doers ? We hear what they say ; we gather 
 up the net result of their teaching. All 
 dissonances among them vanish in the 
 volume of their grand affirmation and 
 agreement. Their teaching is one in respect 
 to certain central facts, such as these : that 
 the religious life is real and valid ; that the 
 Power over us is righteous and altogether 
 lovable ; that no one ever trusted Him and 
 found Him to fail ; that " He is closer to us 
 than breathing, and nearer than hands and 
 feet ; " that in some real sense, as the ancient 
 Greek poet wrote, " we are His offspring," 
 and, as Jesus taught, He is our Father ; that
 
 40 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 His service and the doing of His beneficent 
 will is life eternal, in which there is no fear 
 of death. 
 
 We do not accept these wonderful state- 
 ments because they have been revealed to 
 us at the mouths of holy men. We who 
 are the 'children of Christian traditions do 
 not accept them because Jesus has be- 
 queathed them to us. We do something 
 better and worthier : we do what Jesus and 
 all these others bade us do ; we do what we 
 are accustomed to do in respect to every 
 theory or proposition of science. " See for 
 yourselves," all the great leaders and teachers 
 seem to command us. " Open your eyes to 
 life and reality. Ask yourselves whether 
 the things which we see and say are not true." 
 
 " True ! " We mean here the same that we 
 meant before. That is true which fits, which 
 harmonizes, which, as we say, " makes sense." 
 That is not true which is unrelated, discord- 
 ant, outside of the unity. Religion is that 
 which makes unity and binds all things to- 
 gether. It is that which brings the outward
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 41 
 
 world and the inner life of man, nature and 
 history, and human society, into the terms 
 of a harmony. It is this, or it fails. It is 
 not enough that it should preside over a 
 separate realm apart from our natural life, 
 only at times breaking through to announce 
 itself. It must assume the presidency of the 
 whole realm of being. Nature itself must 
 be the orderly mode of its manifestation. In 
 plain words, religion is the divine order of 
 the universe. Either God is not, or else, as 
 we hold, and as all the teachers assure us, 
 He is God of all. 
 
 The figure of the map and its pieces, like 
 most parables, was imperfect. The master 
 thought of God is not another piece, added 
 to the rest in order to make the whole com- 
 plete. It is rather the completed whole 
 which all the pieces combine to make. They 
 all combine to affirm God, as our own 
 natures cry out together for God. In 
 hints and broken pictures the great thought 
 had always been with us. Now at last we have 
 the vision in its beauty and oneness. Try
 
 42 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 anything else or anything less, and straight- 
 way the whole fabric of a universe falls 
 asunder. It must be a divine universe or it 
 is not thinkable or true to the mind of man. 
 The beneficent and living God must be 
 wholly in it, or else we are but shadow 
 men and the children of shadows, and all 
 our science and thinking are brought to con- 
 fusion. Unless this is God's world, nothing 
 in it can be trusted. 
 
 The old test for a truth among Jews, Mo- 
 hammedans, Christians, was : Who uttered 
 it ? What inspired teacher vouched for it ? 
 How did he name it? By what signs or 
 evidence did he make it sure? The new 
 and larger test is-, What genuine fact or 
 experience did the prophet or teacher try 
 to set forth? What star did he see? If 
 star it was it is still in God's heavens ; it 
 is no matter by what name its first dis- 
 coverer called it. Do we see it to-day? 
 Where then shall we map it down among 
 our constellations ? 
 
 The method of religion to which we are
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 43 
 
 now brought opens up complete expla- 
 nation for the strange diversities and con- 
 tradictions in the history of the religious 
 development of the world. How could 
 there be so many rival religions ? How 
 could any one be true while so many were 
 false? What one out of all the changing 
 churches, denominations, and sects should 
 we trust? We have the clue to answer 
 these perplexing questions. 
 
 A civilized religion demands civilized 
 men as its teachers. A civilized religion 
 waits for a civilized age. Only the high 
 mountain-tops will catch the sunshine while 
 it is yet early dawn. The world of Con- 
 stantine was not ripe for the religion of think- 
 ing and loving men, for the religion of a 
 righteous commonwealth ; men were still ex- 
 perimenting with idolatries and superstitions. 
 The ages waited long for a unifying science, 
 for the framers of a true democracy ; mean- 
 while men were split into warring and dog- 
 matic sects. 
 
 The century of Napoleon, of Disraeli, and
 
 44 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 of Bismarck, a century into the middle of 
 which human slavery lasted in America, the 
 century that saw at its close two Anglo-Saxon 
 nations each at war beyond seas, could not 
 be asked to think out the grounds of its re- 
 ligion or to apply to religion its own recently 
 discovered doctrine of evolution. The nine- 
 teenth century was bound to be a period of 
 confused and conflicting thought, of secta- 
 rianism and skepticism. The very rapidity 
 of material progress withdrew the interest of 
 multitudes from the subjects of moral and 
 spiritual advancement. It will not always be 
 so. A civilized religion fit to make civilized 
 men, free of superstition, exclusiveness, and 
 bigotry, grounded, in reason, illustrated by 
 science, is now slowly and surely coming to 
 the front ; it has been made manifest here 
 and there in many a noble life ; it has hardly 
 yet taken on organized form. The new call 
 is for those who shall proclaim it in its 
 beauty and power? Again and again the 
 true gentleman has appeared ; we know 
 his likeness. But the age of the gentleman 
 is still to come.
 
 A BIT OF ARGUMENT. 45 
 
 One thing more and this chapter will be 
 concluded. There is one test of truth at 
 which we have only hinted. We have seen 
 that truth means fitness or harmony in 
 thought. The true finds its place and matches 
 with other trutlis in the realm of thought. 
 The true also fits in the realm of conduct. 
 How does our religion work? How does 
 the man get on who bears into the actual 
 turmoil of life the thought of a good God 
 and a divine universe ? Here is the prac- 
 tical test of a civilized religion. Will it 
 apply and match with reality? Can one 
 take it out of the shrine and not fear to use 
 it upon the streets ? Will it prove to be a 
 new, intense, practical, and civilizing force ? 
 This is what we hold. It must be so, if re- 
 ligion is valid at all. If this is God's world 
 it must be well and only well and well at all 
 times to believe so, and to behave so, and not 
 to fear the consequences of this mighty faith. 
 We hope that every chapter of this book will 
 now converge and grow together to make 
 this fact clear beyond cavil or question.
 
 46 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SPIKIT WHAT IT IS. 
 
 IT is the purpose of this chapter to show 
 what we mean by saying that God is spirit. 
 It will be seen that there is nothing in 
 which we believe so profoundly as we be- 
 lieve in spirit. 
 
 Fortunately, our first approach to this sub- 
 ject is easy. Any child may understand 
 that the most real things are invisible. 
 We look out, for instance, upon the ocean 
 heaving with the rising tide, lifting ships 
 like toys, pouring through a hundred creeks, 
 and forcing back the torrent of great rivers. 
 We see the forms of motion, the vast volume 
 of moving waters, the slight works of man. 
 What is it that we do not see and for which 
 we have only a name ? It is the force that 
 plays over the seas and lifts their tidal waves. 
 It is the infinite force that binds earth and
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 47 
 
 moon and planets and central sun together 
 and keeps them all spinning in their place 
 among the starry systems. We all believe 
 in this force ; we call it gravitation. It 
 stretches out its hand to us from the in- 
 visible realm. When we say spirit, we 
 mean the infinite and invisible force that 
 shows itself in gravitation. 
 
 We stand upon the street and see the 
 crowded electric car pass by. We see the 
 form of human machinery, we see the faces 
 of passengers. But no one sees what plays 
 through the machine and moves the weight 
 of hundreds of such cars. The closer we 
 get to the reality the more it hides itself. 
 And yet it is around us like the air ; it plays 
 about the planets as it plays about our little 
 machines. The one fact that we believe in as 
 fully as we believe in cars and wires and men 
 is this unseen mystery that we call elec- 
 tricity. When we speak of it, what else are 
 we thinking of but of spirit, the unseen re- 
 ality, of which this mode of force is another 
 manifestation ? That is spirit, we say, which
 
 48 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 discloses itself in infinite force. In other 
 words, the realm of spirit is the realm of 
 power or energy. 
 
 Here is the mystery of light as it blazes at 
 noon.-d.ay, as it flashes at night from point 
 to point along our coasts, as it sparkles from 
 a myriad stars. The mystery runs unseen 
 along a stretch of throbbing wire and leaps 
 into our sight from a tiny point of carbon. 
 It flies through the cold spaces from the sun 
 till it irradiates each little particle of our 
 atmosphere. We see only what it does. It 
 we never see. But we believe in nothing so 
 completely as we believe in this mystery of 
 the light. When we think of this wonder 
 of the light we are close to the realm of the 
 unseen and eternal. That which makes the 
 light is spirit. 
 
 Perhaps we fancy that we know something 
 of the world of matter. What then is mat- 
 ter ? We try to catch and analyze its unseen 
 atoms, but they always elude us. They re- 
 solve themselves into numbers and propor- 
 tions. All that we can do with them is to
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 49 
 
 express them in terms of thought. We 
 know that they have certain relations with 
 one another. Together they construct a 
 thinkable universe. The most characteristic 
 fact about it is that it is thinkable. Its very 
 reality is that it meets the demands and 
 takes on the terms of our thought. It cor- 
 responds to our mathematics. Which is 
 it indeed, a real world or an ideal world ? 
 Let us say that it is real, because it is 
 ideal, that is, thinkable. Conceive its atoms, 
 if you like, as so many whirling centres of 
 force; let the atoms themselves be there- 
 fore invisible ; let them only obey fixed 
 laws and move in orderly and constant 
 relations, and the world of matter is thus 
 at least as explicable and thinkable as if 
 you thought of it as made up of so many 
 little inert bits of hard and visible sub- 
 stance. There is nothing more real and sub- 
 stantial than force is. 
 
 It looks, then, as if, when we try to get at 
 matter itself, we only succeed in making 
 another approach to spirit, the unseen and
 
 50 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 eternal. It looks as if we might well say : 
 That which plays through all forms of matter, 
 and constitutes matter, is spirit. Let us say 
 that spirit is the reality, and matter is its 
 form, or dress. Let us say that the world 
 of matter is only the manifestation of spirit. 
 It is the vast parable or picture book, through 
 which spirit reveals itself and writes its 
 messages. If we believe in matter at all, 
 how can we help believing in that which 
 expresses itself in and through matter? 
 And this is spirit. 
 
 We are upon a line of thought where we 
 are straightway carried further. What is it 
 that matter is forever doing throughout the 
 whole realm of visible things ? It is always 
 running in lines and curves and arranging 
 itself in patterns. It is a marvelous geometer : 
 it is an infinite artist ; it cannot appear in 
 the clouds without making pictures ; it can- 
 not leap into frost work without drawing 
 beautiful designs ; it is crystalline in the 
 heart of the rocks ; it moves in proportion 
 and rhythm in the leaves of trees > it delights
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 51 
 
 in colors ; it is ready everywhere to spring 
 into harmony at the call of the musician. 
 The musical intervals are in nature ; the 
 material is at hand suited to work into all 
 manner of musical instruments. A principle 
 of rhythm is in the deep law of wave move- 
 ment through which all forces proceed. 
 
 What is this mystery, unseen indeed, yet 
 in and through all things, that transforms 
 and over-rules chaos, that shows itself in 
 numbers and beautiful forms, in flowers and 
 gems, in subtle harmonies, in far-reaching 
 and majestic order ? This too is spirit, the 
 One, the builder, the architect of the uni- 
 verse. There is no fact that we believe 
 in more solidly than we believe in this 
 unseen and eternal author and designer of 
 beauty ? It is everywhere one and the same. 
 The laws, the lines and curves, the patterns, 
 the rhythm and the harmony, here and in the 
 Pleiades, all go to make one universe and 
 symphony. Some sort of design is in the 
 warp and woof of all the structure. 
 
 May we go a step further and call spirit
 
 52 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 righteous or good ? Surely it is hard not to 
 take this step. How can we say anything 
 except "good" of that which is orderly, 
 which constructs beauty, which makes har- 
 monies and unity, and the wonder of life ? 
 Goodness is only another and higher species 
 of power. 
 
 There is another side of life where we 
 have now to look for the working of spirit. 
 We must take up the human aspect of the 
 world. What is it that characterizes man 
 and gives him worth? Here for instance 
 is a friend : what constitutes him a friend ? 
 Is it his dress, form, figure, or features? 
 Evidently we respect and love not what we 
 see, but that which -is behind his dress, and 
 form, and face. Not the eyes, but that 
 which looks through the eyes urges the 
 lover or husband to say, "In thy face I 
 see the Eternal." What shall we call this 
 unseen reality which is the " I," or self ? 
 There is no word that better expresses it 
 than when we say, It is spirit. Surely there 
 is nothing that we believe in more solidly.
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 53 
 
 What am I ? My body is only form. I say 
 of it, it is " mine," as I speak of my cloth- 
 ing. I am that which thinks, and lives, 
 and is conscious. I am spirit. By the same 
 token I find that other men also are spirit. 
 This fact holds good not of the dead, but 
 of the living. Or, if the noble dead are still 
 spirit, it is because they are not really dead. 
 There are many who are greatly impressed 
 with the sensitive machinery of nerves and 
 brain cells through which the marvelous tele- 
 phone connection of the universe is brought 
 home to us. There is no life or conscious- 
 ness, they say, without this material machin- 
 ery. We need care little by what name this 
 delicate machinery is called, whether material 
 or physiological. The significant fact about 
 it is, that it serves spirit, and is indeed all 
 translatable into the terms of spirit. The 
 pulsations that come ticking over the wires 
 under the sea are pulsations of thought; 
 they tick in ideas ; they carry human feeling 
 to stir feeling, either of joy or sympathy. 
 So with the nerves of consciousness ; so of the
 
 54 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 rhythm and pulsation through which we feel 
 not heat and cold only, but color and beauty, 
 praise or blame, the subtle knowledge of 
 good and evil. The nerves themselves are 
 only the telegraph lines of the realm of in- 
 telligence, feeling, spirit. 
 
 It is rather the fashion of modern men to 
 express their modesty in view of the vast- 
 riess of the universe, its colossal distances, 
 its millions of years. What is this little 
 planet, and the pigmies upon its surface ? 
 The modesty is well, but the more startling 
 side of the problem is not stated in this plea 
 of human littleness. The familiar nursery 
 verses are nearer to the fact : 
 
 " Ah, you are so great, and I am so small, 
 I tremble to think of you, world, at all. 
 And yet when I said my prayers to-day, 
 A whisper inside me seemed to say, 
 You are more than the earth, though you are such a 
 
 dot; 
 You can love and think, and the world cannot." 
 
 How is it that we know anything about 
 the distances of the stellar spaces or the
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 55 
 
 years of geologic time ? How is it that we 
 can send our imagination journeying back to 
 the primitive world of the tree ferns and the 
 Saurian reptiles ? How is it that these few 
 pounds of matter can receive an impression 
 of a universe dominated by laws of order ? 
 It is that man is not merely nitrogen and 
 other elements. He is spirit, of one sub- 
 stance with that which builds the world. 
 
 Let us be as modest as we please for our- 
 selves. But let us recall some of the names 
 of the great thinkers who have taught us 
 our modesty Galileo, Copernicus, New- 
 ton, La Place. Where shall we begin or 
 stop the enumeration of the men who have 
 actually " thought the thoughts of God after 
 him " ? Here is mind, that is, spirit in man, 
 answering to the universal mind or spirit. 
 There is no limit, in the case cf the great 
 geometers and astronomers, to the scope of 
 this answering thought. As the element 
 of the infinite lies in the mind of God, so 
 the same infinite element seems to answer 
 back from the mind of man, as often as he
 
 56 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 thinks at his best. This is only to say that 
 spirit is one in God and in man. 
 
 We feel the force of the same or kindred 
 facts when we come into touch with the 
 poets, the artists, the builders of the great 
 cathedrals, the architects of the Parthe- 
 non, the makers of music. Who can be a 
 materialist when he reads his Homer or 
 Shakespeare or Burns ? Who is a material- 
 ist in Westminster Abbey? Who can hear 
 Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Bach's " Pas- 
 sion Music,' ' and not be assured that the 
 glorious melody flows out of the realm of 
 spirit? God, the elemental life, utters him- 
 self through every glorious work of human 
 genius. Fitly have men called such work 
 inspiration, that is, the breathing of spirit. 
 
 What else or less can we say, when we 
 now begin to interpret the world and all 
 human life into moral terms ? We believe 
 in justice, in truth, in mercy, in generosity. 
 We stand in the company of the heroes ; we 
 hear the messages of the genuine saints ; we 
 read the twenty-third Psalm, or " Crossing
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 57 
 
 the Bar." We hear the voices of those who 
 in all times and nations have done righteous- 
 ness ; we say Amen to Jesus in any one of the 
 Beatitudes. Let us continue to be modest, 
 but we must henceforth confess that we have 
 seen spirit, at least in the men and* women 
 who have said these stirring words and 
 done beautiful deeds, and thus set forth 
 Goodness triumphant. There is nothing that 
 we more stoutly believe in than spirit in 
 those moments when our souls believe in 
 goodness. 
 
 As Matthew Arnold, cool critic that he 
 was, says, at the thought of his father : 
 
 " And through thee I believe 
 In the noble and great who are gone. 
 
 Souls tempered with fire, 
 Fervent, heroic, and good, 
 Helpers and friends of mankind. 
 Servants of God ! or sons 
 Shall I not call you? because 
 Not as servants ye know 
 Your Father's innermost mind." 
 
 The fact is that in the noblest human life
 
 58 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 we see spirit in its highest manifestation. 
 We witness power, beauty, order, justice, 
 goodness in their divine unity. This is our 
 modern form of the old doctrine of the 
 incarnation. They used to say that God 
 had been seen in a single life. We say that 
 God has been and is in many lives. Who 
 of us has not known some one so loyal, 
 brave, devoted, and just as to have impressed 
 us with this fact of the divine life or spirit 
 in man, answering back to the infinite life 
 of God? We have known young lives fear- 
 less and true-hearted, knights of the modern 
 times, who demonstrated what spirit is. 
 They came from God. How else came they ? 
 Some of them may have left us, but they 
 surely went to God. 
 
 " E'en as he trod that day to God, so walked he from 
 
 his birth 
 
 In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean 
 mirth." 
 
 See now what we must say of spirit. We 
 approached it first on the side of outward 
 nature, and we found spirit to be the under-
 
 SPIRIT WHAT IT IS. 59 
 
 lying unseen reality eveiy where. It is force, 
 intelligence order, law, beauty; it is that 
 which constructs and makes all things one. 
 We approach the same reality as it expresses 
 itself more completely in the forms of life, 
 and specially in the life of man. It is that 
 which loves and is lovable ; it is that which 
 is beneficent and does good ; it is kind to 
 man, and " entering into holy souls makes 
 them friends of God and prophets " nay, 
 rather, sons of God. Spirit in its highest 
 manifestations is love or goodness. 
 
 Does the objector stand waiting to ask, 
 Where is spirit, when we see ugliness and 
 evil and hate ? The answer is not so diffi- 
 cult as many try to make it appear. We 
 believe in infinite power none the less 
 because on occasion our puny arms cannot 
 carry their load, and our little engines are 
 unable to generate sufficient force to breast 
 the stormy sea. And we likewise believe in 
 the infinite Light, shining through space, 
 none the less, because through the hours of 
 night, darkness shrouds our homes. So we
 
 60 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 who have looked on the forms of ugliness 
 in which beauty did not yet disclose itself 
 learn to love eternal beauty all the more. 
 So we who have been unjust and selfish 
 long for the fullness of love in which no 
 evil or selfish thought can live. 
 
 We do not say that the picture is good to 
 the near-sighted man who fixes his eye on 
 one spot on the blackness of a cloud ; 
 we say that the picture is good to him who 
 sees it as a whole. We do not say that the 
 great drama is good to him who sees only a 
 single act. We do not say that a single 
 aspect of nature is good. We say that the 
 infinite spirit behind nature is good, lovable, 
 adorable. Nothing else is credible or think- 
 able. Life is not livable except in this 
 thought.
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 
 
 THE most religious people of antiquity 
 summed up all religion in a single law in 
 two parts. The first part was, Thou shalt 
 love God. The second part was, Thou shalt 
 love man, thy neighbor, as thyself. Jesus 
 made this very ancient law the centre of his- 
 teaching. Is anything higher or more uni- 
 versal ? 
 
 It is common for men to think that this 
 law, especially in its first clause, is vague 
 and difficult. " We can love our fellow- 
 men, since we can see them," it is said, 
 " but we cannot easily love God whom we 
 have never seen. Much less can we love 
 God to order, as if love could be com- 
 pelled ! " This difficulty is more imaginary 
 than real. In fact, with most men the hard- 
 est thing is to love their neighbors. We
 
 62 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 will not say that it is hard to love our 
 neighbors as ourselves ; it is not always 
 easy to love them at all. Go upon the 
 crowded street on any average day, and tell 
 us how many men you meet whom you 
 really love ? You look into their faces and 
 you see coarseness, greed, animalism, sel- 
 fishness. Do they love you ? They often 
 elbow you and push you aside. True ! 
 Some hard-featured men may be lovable in 
 their own homes. But they do not certainly 
 show you their lovable side. No ! It is 
 really easier to love God, though we do not 
 see him, than it is to love men as we fre- 
 quently see them. 
 
 As matter of fact, the love of God is one 
 of the earliest experiences both with primi- 
 tive people and with children. The child 
 easily gets an idea which savages, like the 
 American Indian, seem to have entertained 
 in all parts of the world, of a good Power 
 or Spirit, somewhat to be feared indeed, but 
 also to be loved. The good Powers will 
 watch over the obedient and shield them
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 63 
 
 from evil. The idea of the child may be 
 very vague and crude, but it is real. It 
 begets trust and love and hope the ele- 
 ments of all religion. The feeling of many 
 a child toward the unseen deity may be as 
 warm as his feeling toward his own parents. 
 Shadowy as his knowledge of God is, 
 changeable as is his sentiment toward God, 
 who shall say that his knowledge of his 
 nurse or his mother is any less shadowy, or 
 his sentiment toward them any less change- 
 able ? If any love rests upon reality, if any 
 love is more substantial than nerve motion, 
 the child's beginnings of love to God must 
 be real. The child's emotion goes out, as 
 all love must go, toward kindness or good- 
 
 As children come to the age of thought- 
 fulness, and begin to ask questions, they are 
 compelled to adjust themselves to a larger 
 thought of God. They have probably 
 begun with thinking of God as located in 
 a place in the sky. They have thought of 
 a great person in a body, like their father,
 
 64 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 only grander. They must think now of an 
 omnipresent Life, of invisible spirit, like 
 their own spirit, behind body and form. 
 This is not a hard thought. Man has not 
 lost God or lost religion because he thinks 
 and questions. Who ever had more buoyant 
 trust in God than the ancient and anony- 
 mous poet-philosopher who wrote, " Whither 
 shall I go from thy presence ? " 
 
 The young thinker begins to doubt be- 
 cause he cannot see God. Let us pursue 
 his doubt, and search out what it means. 
 Take any moment when love acts, and see 
 what starts your love. It is instinctively set 
 in motion, is it not, by some spark or ex- 
 pression of goodness, by a look, a smile, an 
 act, a word, a message, telegraphed, as it 
 were, from the person whom we love to our- 
 selves ? Love flashes out of the unseen, 
 through the wires and machinery of our 
 senses, to the invisible self or spirit within 
 us. We may see the face and form of our 
 friend, or he may be on the other side of the 
 planet. As we have shown in the former
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 65 
 
 chapter, that which thinks and loves is 
 spirit. We never really see it, but only its 
 expressions and manifestations. That which 
 we love also is spirit. We have never seen 
 Lincoln or William the Silent. As we read 
 their words, as we catch the idea of their lives, 
 as touching or kindling stories come of their 
 humanity or their heroism, we love them as 
 if no barrier of time or space separated us 
 from them. Is it unreal sentiment when 
 thousands of men and women to-day would 
 spring to welcome the peasant prophet of Gal- 
 ilee? No ! This is true love for the beauty 
 of goodness. Not having seen, men love. 
 For love belongs to the realm, not of matter 
 and visible things, but of spirit, the im- 
 manent reality. 
 
 It is noteworthy that in the case of most 
 persons love proceeds by flashes of con- 
 sciousness and at intervals. There are few 
 in whom it flows all the time and constantly. 
 As one walks at night through the streets of 
 a city, the bright points where the lamps 
 blaze alternate with comparative darkness.
 
 66 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 So with men's love there are dark spaces, 
 and then suddenly at the sight of a true 
 friend's face, the grasp of a hand, the open- 
 ing of a letter, the stirring of a memory, 
 love comes uppermost and seems to fill the 
 life. 
 
 Our daily intercourse with our friends 
 thus goes on with only occasional glimpses 
 through the veil of outward form into the 
 realm of spirit. What we mostly see is the 
 commonplace and routine aspect of men's 
 lives. The generous, the heroic, the lovable 
 may be close to us, and yet may not shine 
 through to our slow perception for days at a 
 time. It is different, however, when any 
 good friend passes -quite away from our pres- 
 ence. There is a process of idealization 
 call it rather realization in which the com- 
 monplace vanishes, and the true worth of the 
 life, translated into terms of spirit, lifts it- 
 self into view. As when we stand off from 
 the city at night, seeing it across the water, 
 the dark spaces lose themselves and only 
 light appears, light from many a window,
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. (M 
 
 and light reflected back from the sky, so 
 as we stand off from any great and good 
 life the net effect at last is only of bright- 
 ness, love, the action of goodness. The net 
 effect arises out of points and gleams, but 
 these points and gleams coalesce and make 
 the whole. 
 
 We are appealing now to subtle but very 
 real facts of experience. The wonderful 
 thing in this kind of experience is, that there 
 is an element of the infinite in that which 
 moves our love. What else is the meaning 
 of the look in the eye that stirs the depths 
 of our souls, of the thrill in the touch of a 
 hand at which all that is best in us answers 
 in loyalty? It is as if we looked through 
 the eyes of a good man or woman into the 
 infinite depths of personality. It is as if we 
 felt in the warmth of the true man's hand 
 the touch of an infinite faithfulness. In all 
 true love, the idea of the infinite, so far from 
 being an objection and difficulty, is the sub- 
 stantial groundwork upon which love pro- 
 ceeds. We never yet have wholly loved
 
 68 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 any one, parent or friend, husband or wife 
 or child, hero or saint, unless we believe 
 that this love which meets ours is without 
 boundaries, would go to all lengths for our 
 sakes, is indeed refreshed from the infinite 
 sources. We cannot love the mere finite 
 body or the outward show of things. Our 
 own love too is beyond measure or price. 
 Our love goes behind the show and surface 
 to the invisible reality, seeking the real and 
 the infinite. This is the nature of love 
 the most mysterious and indefinable of all 
 realities. 
 
 Our subject was the love of God. We 
 are not wandering from it. We are at 
 the heart of our subject. The nature of 
 love is that it stirs at every expression of 
 goodness. We love our friends at every 
 glimpse which we catch of their lovable 
 nature. Words, tears, smiles, beautiful 
 deeds reveal the unseen depths of their 
 friendliness. Through what we see, we love 
 and believe in what we cannot see. So we 
 love God, for all love is one. We love him
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 69 
 
 through every expression of goodness in 
 the universe. To adore, admire, and love 
 the beauty of goodness is natural to us. 
 We, being of the nature of spirit ourselves, 
 love spirit wherever it shines and gleams. 
 
 There are hours when we come very close 
 to this instinctive love in the presence of 
 nature. There are summer days when the 
 smile of God seems to be over the sea. 
 There are winter nights when every crystal 
 of the snowfields reflects the moonlight, and 
 the aurora dances in the clear sky. Thoughts 
 of solemn, restful joy rise in us at this 
 beauty of the world. We love that for 
 which it stands. 
 
 Little children and coarse men in the nar- 
 row alleys of the city love the flowers in the 
 tiny window gardens. What is it that they 
 love? It is an expression of the infinite 
 beauty. The story is told of soldiers in the 
 civil war who found a motherless baby, and 
 tended him, and adopted him into their com- 
 pany, and would have laid down their lives 
 for him. What did they see in the baby's
 
 70 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 face ? Was it only the flesh and the help- 
 lessness ? No ; the child was the symbol of 
 innocence, beauty, tenderness, humanity. 
 He reminded the rough men of their own 
 childhood, of their homes, of their mothers, 
 of unseen goodness. Loving the baby, 
 were they not truly loving a manifestation 
 of God? 
 
 A good woman goes to live in the wildest 
 mining-camp. What is it in her that the 
 men respect, so that the camp is less brutal 
 for her presence ? Is it not that in a good 
 and pure woman's presence there is the ex- 
 pression of the eternal goodness ? Men love 
 genuine goodness whenever it fairly shines 
 into their faces. 
 
 The story is told of the famous Elizabeth 
 Frye that when she first asked permission 
 to speak to the brutalized prisoners at High- 
 gate the authorities did not dare to permit 
 her to go without an escort. But when she 
 insisted that she must go alone her friendly 
 manner and the tone of her voice quieted 
 every wicked soul. These degraded people
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 71 
 
 did not love men, for men seemed to them 
 selfish and cruel, but they loved God as soon 
 as they caught sight of a sign of his reality. 
 
 There is a story of a Sikh soldier, who 
 alone out of a British garrison escaped mas- 
 sacre, and, wounded almost to death, floated 
 all day in a boat under the broiling sun, 
 bearing the news of the disaster so as to 
 warn his comrades in the next fort down the 
 river. His stout will to save his friends 
 kept him alive till he had done his errand. 
 We who have only heard the story love 
 such a man as this. We do not see the 
 heroic man, but we love the unseen Life 
 which tells us another story of itself. 
 
 We read of brave men venturing their 
 lives to rescue shipwrecked crews and we 
 instinctively love and admire them. We do 
 not love them because we are commanded to 
 love. We love because love is the law of 
 our natures. Thus crystals and gems, flow- 
 ers and stars, are a sign and expression of 
 the reality and nature of God. But the 
 heroes and saints especially stand for his
 
 72 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 goodness. They all show together what 
 spirit is. There is a sort of irresistible 
 affinity among them, which everywhere 
 draws spirit to spirit and constitutes the 
 divine unity. 
 
 What now is the time-honored story of 
 Jesus ? Men may say that they care nothing 
 for religion ; they think that they deny God 
 and are infidels. They do not love their 
 fellows as themselves; they even harbor 
 hate and bitterness in their hearts. But tell 
 them the simple story of a carpenter's son, 
 who cared nothing for wealth or fame or 
 anything that he could get, and only cared 
 to be true, and walked the earth in friend- 
 liness to every one, and died as he had 
 lived without a curse or a murmur; make 
 this life real to men, and who does not give 
 him his love? We all say, God send us 
 men like that ! 
 
 Does any one still say : " This love is only 
 the love of men like ourselves " ? No ! It is 
 the pure love of God. The little child, the 
 pure woman in the mining-camp, Mrs. Frye
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 73 
 
 in the prison, the brave life-savers, sailors, 
 and soldiers, the great fathers of our country, 
 Jesus teaching the people or dying on the 
 cross, these lovable men and women did not 
 make themselves. They are points of light, 
 gleams in our world of the ineffable glory, 
 in one word, children of God. Why do we 
 love them except because they show us what 
 God is ? They and he are of one nature. 
 The divine Life surely is in and behind 
 all beautiful things. All goodness reveals 
 him. Loving the good wherever we see it, 
 we love God. 
 
 The ancient word is, " The pure in heart 
 shall see God." Does it mean that in some 
 other sphere they shall look 011 a great white 
 throne and on the face of one sitting there? 
 No! It means that God is here and now, 
 that his light is about us, that revelations 
 and manifestations and incarnations of his 
 goodness are abroad in his universe, that 
 whoever keeps his heart clean, travel where 
 he may through the universe, shall discover 
 his goodness shining by day and blazing by
 
 74 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 night. To the pure in heart the message of 
 the goodness of God is continual. 
 
 Every true parent knows that these things 
 are so. Whoever loves the child in fact 
 loves the parent. The child goes across the 
 world to live in China or India. Men love 
 him who never saw the father's face. Never- 
 theless, as sure as the son is like the father 
 in nature, the love for the one is the same as 
 the love for the other. The people who love 
 the son would love the father as soon as they 
 saw him. Yes ! They have seen him al- 
 ready in the person of his child. 
 
 The everlasting question of evil arises. 
 Here is a child's life ; it is full of untamed 
 passion ; it blazes up in disheartening out- 
 bursts of self will. It is, indeed, the raw 
 material of personality. Does the mother 
 love the child any the less because he is only 
 a child? So the ugliness, the immaturity, 
 the unhappiness, the sins of the world, as of 
 the child, prove what ? They simply testify 
 that spirit, not in its limitations, but in its 
 completeness and fullness of life, is the one
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 75 
 
 reality without which the growing world, 
 like the growing child, can never be sat- 
 isfied. We who cannot be content with a 
 mere part or a fragment of the life of God, 
 are made to long for gleams and revelations 
 of the love that constitutes the whole. 
 
 Thus the fact of suffering, rightly under- 
 stood, proclaims an essential hunger for 
 perfectness, that is, for spirit, for God. 
 Wherever our spirits, akin to God, catch 
 sight of his goodness, we love him, being 
 satisfied. Wherever we fail to see him we 
 suffer need. It is surely a spiritual universe 
 in which this happens. 
 
 I have said that the most precious thing in 
 the world is the manifestation of spirit, as 
 goodness. But who ever loved goodness 
 less for the fact that it shines out of scenes 
 of toil, hardship, or even suffering ? The 
 Christ story is eternal. It is always being 
 reenacted. It is in every home where love 
 is. Grant that this is a world where toil and 
 pain are. The truth is that every soul who 
 loves goodness at all, loves goodness the
 
 76 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 more, and not the less, that it can conquer 
 pain and defy death. What devil's advocate 
 has any fault to find with a world in which 
 every kind of material is put together so 
 as to show forth goodness, and actually to 
 compel us to love goodness as we love 
 nothing else? 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rougli ; 
 Each sting that bids not sit nor stand, but go ! " 
 
 There is a final question which presses. 
 If we are spirit ourselves, if we love God 
 by nature, why should any one ever need to 
 compel love into the harsh form of a law or 
 make a commandment of it? It is such 
 a law as breathing is for the body. We 
 cannot live without breathing. But when 
 any one merely says, " You must breathe," 
 he does not understand the vital emphasis 
 of the law of breath. Even the dying man 
 still breathes, not being able to keep the air 
 away. The real emphasis is that we must 
 breathe fully, till every lung cell in our body
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 77 
 
 is satisfied, and every drop of our blood tin- 
 gles with oxygen. So likewise, we must 
 love God, not merely when goodness is 
 forced upon us, and we cannot help loving 
 it, but as the old verse says, " With all our 
 heart and soul and mind and strength." 
 
 The child loves his mother ; this is his 
 nature. The fault that we find with him is 
 that his love is inconstant. It is merely an 
 emotion ; it is not yet related to thought, 
 will, design. It lets him disobey ; it even 
 lets him break his mother's heart. We de- 
 mand that the child's love shall grow and 
 possess his nature, and become as constant 
 as the stars. Else, without earnestness and 
 purpose, no woman can ever rest her heart 
 upon him, no child of his can ever trust 
 him. 
 
 So we say of the universal love that binds 
 us to God. Every one has the beginning of 
 it. But it wants constancy and fixedness. 
 With multitudes of people Avho call them- 
 selves " Christians " it is a vague emotion. 
 Where is the constant will, set on righteous-
 
 78 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ness ? Where is the quick mind, keen to 
 find God everywhere ? Where is the warm, 
 loyal sympathy rushing to helpful deeds? 
 Where is the mighty moral standard, trying 
 all conduct by the holy ideals ? Where are 
 the fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, 
 and the rest? 
 
 The material that goes into the making of 
 glass is dull opaque sand. When the light 
 happens to fall upon the tiny surfaces of the 
 sand it is reflected back as if light and the 
 sand already had a sort of natural affinity for 
 each other. Mix the sand now with other 
 elements and then fuse it at a white heat, 
 and the opaqueness passes out of it; it 
 henceforth becomes possessed with the light, 
 transparent to its rays, a tiling of beauty for- 
 ever. So the life of man, seen in the mass, 
 is only so much material. And yet, dull as 
 it looks, it has always and by nature affinity 
 with goodness. Stir it now in the crucible 
 of experience, bring the elemental forces 
 to bear upon it, raise it to a certain heat and 
 glow, and lo ! heart and soul and mind and
 
 WHAT IT IS TO LOVE GOD. 79 
 
 strength and will pass over together into the 
 eternal service of goodness. The life be- 
 comes possessed with goodness, transparent 
 to let love flow through it, fixed, devoted, 
 and luminous. Thus spirit in man answers 
 to God. Its law and life is to love.
 
 80 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 
 
 VISITORS from the east to England and 
 America sometimes tell us that they see 
 extremely little to remind them that they 
 are among a religious people. They do not 
 see men at their prayers. The old custom 
 of family worship is rarely found. The 
 ordinary Sunday service at church, however 
 well attended, hardly indicates a very prayer- 
 ful nation. What- are the English and 
 American church members mostly interested 
 in ? Not in religion, but in the eager, rest- 
 less pursuit of wealth. No doubt there is 
 very much more genuine religion than any 
 superficial observer discovers. The fact 
 remains, however, that the Protestant people 
 are passing through a remarkable transition 
 in their religious thought and habits. Mean-
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 81 
 
 time the usages and institutions of religion 
 appear to suffer. 
 
 The old-world idea of prayer is familiar. 
 There seemed to men to be two realms, mys- 
 teriously bordering on one another, the 
 realm of nature and the realm of the super- 
 natural. In one lay man's practical life with 
 its labor ; in the other was religion. Natural 
 causes worked in the one; occult forces 
 of spirit worked in the other. In medita- 
 tion and prayer, man, lifted out of his 
 ordinary life, might see visions and dream 
 dreams of another world. By prayer man 
 in his sore need might reach through the 
 veil of mystery and take hold upon new 
 forces. The good God, moved by prayer, 
 would set aside the visible, tangible machin- 
 ery of " Second Causes " in order to meet 
 the need of his worshippers. Such is the 
 childish conception of prayer, held still by 
 multitudes, whose nurses and mothers have 
 taught them so. Cannot God do every- 
 thing? they ask. Why may he not be per- 
 suaded to give us what we ask ? How can
 
 82 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 he love us unless he is willing sometimes 
 to indulge us ? 
 
 Nevertheless, as soon as men begin to 
 think straight, that is, to think the thoughts 
 of civilized men, the childish conception of 
 prayer fades away. We come to adopt a 
 larger and more wonderful thought of our 
 world, and of the magnitude and orderly in- 
 terplay of its forces. Here, for example, is 
 the great ship crippled by storm, rocked in 
 the trough of the sea, rushing with its 
 freight of human life to its doom. The 
 well-known conditions that keep a ship safe 
 in the face of the storm are wanting. The 
 steering gear does not act, the main shaft is 
 broken, the fires under the boilers have gone 
 out, the iron plates are strained and let in 
 the water. What modern man really be- 
 lieves, in the absence of all the conditions 
 which constitute the safety of a ship, that 
 the prayers of the whole nation, turned upon 
 the wreck, would now bring her into port, 
 or arrest the force of the blizzard midway in 
 its course ?
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 83 
 
 Down in Havana yellow fever was epi- 
 demic. It lay about in the foul streets, in 
 filthy houses, and in the stagnant harbor. 
 There were certain well-known, let us say 
 divinely constituted hygienic conditions, 
 which, if observed, would give the diseased 
 city immunity from its perennial plague, and 
 save every northern port from menace. 
 What modern man believes, as long as the 
 Cuban people neglected these known hy- 
 gienic conditions, that prayers in all the 
 churches could drive out the yellow fever 
 from Havana ? 
 
 We modern men would not choose, if we 
 could, to live in a world where prayer might 
 be expected to work miracles for us. It 
 would be a magician's world, and not God's 
 world. We had rather face the conditions 
 of our world like men, buy wisdom and pay 
 its splendid cost, be taught to construct 
 stancher ships, and to build more beautiful 
 and healthful cities, than live in an Alice's 
 wonderland of haphazard and confusion. 
 We cannot believe in any species of magical
 
 84 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 value in prayer. This is not a universe in 
 which men can play fast and loose with its in- 
 tricate and far-reaching conditions of order. 
 
 Does it follow that man must cease to 
 pray ? Must he become agnostic, and 
 doubt whether any God exists who cares for 
 man, or with whom man may come into 
 communion ? It would indeed be startling 
 if the grown man's thinking, instead of 
 being grander than the child's, had actually 
 to be less significant. 
 
 We come face to face with the supreme 
 and fundamental postulate of a thoughtful 
 religion. God is Spirit ; he is the benefi- 
 cent life at the heart of all things ; he is 
 not merely will, as even Schopenhauer hints, 
 but he is good will. All nature is his 
 parable or picture-book to carry his message. 
 All forces are the expression of the one 
 force, wielded for love's sake. All laws are 
 the lines in which life sent from him, mani- 
 festing him, moves on its way of expanding 
 growth. 
 
 At the other pole of our thought is man,
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 85 
 
 also spirit, like God, with marvelous possi- 
 bilities wrapped up in him, as all must 
 admit: with the spark of infinite aspiration, 
 with a quenchless desire to serve and to 
 love, born to hunger and thirst after right- 
 eousness, content only with goodness, rest- 
 less till he finds rest in God. Such is man, 
 played upon and swayed by the universe 
 forces, confronted with its manifold picture 
 language, in actual touch with its life, with- 
 out which he would perish. 
 
 Why should we not expect to find actual 
 relation and communion between man and 
 God, the universe life ? See how reason- 
 able, beautiful, and satisfying this thought 
 is. As the man sends the flow of his life 
 to every little nerve and cell of his body, 
 and gives his blood to keep each tiny part 
 sound and well, so, only on the vastly 
 higher scale of intelligent consciousness, 
 God gives of his own life to his children. 
 
 So much for God's part. What shall we 
 say of man ? What is the attitude or the 
 mood in which man shall be at his best
 
 86 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 to receive, to understand the message, to 
 draw on the divine forces, to accomplish, 
 to answer back, life to life ? Will it make 
 no difference in what attitude man stands ? 
 
 There is a mirror which, burnished and 
 turned toward the sun, receives and reflects 
 every ray of light that its surface can hold. 
 Will it make no difference whether or not 
 you cover the mirror with dust, or turn it 
 away from the sun, or even lock it up hi a 
 dark drawer ? 
 
 There is a great dynamo down in the 
 power house. The inexhaustible forces are 
 behind it, filling it with electrical energy. 
 Great wires carry the power through your 
 street. Will it make no difference whether 
 or not the electric lamp that stands on your 
 table is adjusted to the forces playing so 
 near it? It is necessary to make the connec- 
 tion with the great wire in the street, and 
 to turn on the power. So we say with the 
 life of man. There is a certain moral and 
 spiritual adjustment, the conditions of which 
 are easily understood, which if observed,
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 87 
 
 put the man at his best, that is, in touch 
 with the forces of God. 
 
 One of the conditions of the adjustment 
 of which we speak is intelligence. The 
 mirror must be burnished. The man's eyes, 
 cleared of prejudice, must be open to the 
 facts. Another condition is modesty. The 
 man at his best must be free of conceit and 
 egotism. Is it not in the proverbs of every 
 people that pride goes before a fall ? Again, 
 a man must be obedient ; a man at his best 
 always purposes to do whatever duty com- 
 mands. The greatest condition of all is 
 good-mil, unselfishness, love. Stir us with 
 a glow of sympathy, bring us for even an 
 hour into line with the noble and the disin- 
 terested, and we stand here at our best, face 
 to face with God. 
 
 Combine now the fine bul; simple condi- 
 tions of spiritual adjustment a reasonable 
 intelligence, modesty or a reverent uplook, 
 the obedient will, and the will to do good 
 and see what you have done with a man 
 thus adjusted in spirit. The mirror now
 
 88 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 takes up and gives back all the sun's rays. 
 The electric forces of the universe blaze 
 through the little lamp upon your table. 
 The man in this wholly healthful and 
 natural state thinks at his best, counsels 
 most wisely, acts with his highest efficiency, 
 is most at rest within himself and yet most 
 alive. Spirit, the life of God, is in him and 
 through him. " As the hand is to the man," 
 to use a quaint expression of an old writer, 
 so now the man is to God. This is prayer ; 
 this is communion. The man is where the 
 forces of the universe meet. They flow in 
 upon him ; they flow through him and be- 
 yond him, giving life as they flow. Here is 
 perfect circulation of the divine life. Man 
 has only to keep open the flow, to receive 
 freely of God's inspiration, to pass on what- 
 ever is good in thought or impulse, and 
 to translate all into good words and deeds. 
 The artless, prattling child thinks of God 
 after a child's fashion and prays like a child. 
 It must be different with the grown man. 
 To cooperate with the divine forces, with
 
 PRAYER AND REASON. 89 
 
 the divine thought, with the divine love, is 
 the man's conception of prayer. Prattling 
 has now grown to become fellowship. John 
 Fiske or Maeterlinck will teach you this as 
 well or better than Fenelon or St. Augus- 
 tine. 
 
 We are dealing here with well observed 
 facts. We are not trying in prayer to get 
 away from our present life into a super- 
 natural realm. We are in the realm of law 
 and nature, albeit of divine nature through- 
 out. We appeal to familiar experience. 
 Who are the men who have lived the largest 
 and most effective lives, have wrought right- 
 eousness, brought in civilization, and set the 
 ideals of religion ? Who have been the great 
 inventors, artists, poets, and patriots ? What 
 was the secret of their inspiration and power ? 
 Have they ever originated an idea or created 
 a principle? Have they not rather simply 
 stood where the divine power and wisdom 
 flowed, and listened and heeded and then 
 spoken, acted, accomplished, reflected the 
 God-given light ?
 
 90 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 When certain ministers came to Lincoln 
 and wanted prayers offered that God would 
 favor " our side " in the war, he was not con- 
 cerned, he replied, that God should take our 
 side. What he wanted was to find and take 
 God's side. The children think to bend 
 God's will to their own. The grown man, 
 like Lincoln, seeks only to adjust his will 
 to God's will. He is thus where the forces 
 of the universe move to his service. 
 
 Jesus' life is typical here. Did he teach 
 with authority? Did his life glow with 
 sympathy ? Did his love go out to conquer 
 the world ? Then this was because of his 
 attitude, sane, normal, and vital. He did 
 not need to go out of the world into another 
 region in order to pray. He lived the pray- 
 erful life wherever he was, as if in the pres- 
 ence of God. He might truly have said 
 with one of our modern singers : 
 
 " My heart i8 resting, O my God ! 
 
 I will give thanks and sing ; 
 My heart is at the secret source 
 Of every precious thing."
 
 PRATER AND REASON. 91 
 
 The law of prayer underlies conscious- 
 ness. The adjustment of which we speak 
 may exist, and often does exist, without the 
 consciousness of effort, and without naming 
 the fact prayer. As health may run in the 
 well body, so the power and the life of God 
 may move in the loving will without the 
 need that the man shall say to himself " I 
 am well," or " I have God's peace in my 
 soul." 
 
 But it is the glory of man that his life 
 rises to moments of joyous consciousness, 
 when he not only lives but also knows that 
 he lives. These are the times when here and 
 now we have a sense of being immortal. In 
 the visions of intelligence, in the performance 
 of duties, when we love with all our hearts, 
 we share the life of God. 
 
 Whose experience does not answer to 
 these facts ? Here is the busy man of af- 
 faire, tired of the cares, the toil, the strain of 
 the day's work. It is night, and he is about 
 to give himself to rest. What if he pauses 
 a few moments before he lies down ? What
 
 92 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 if he brings his mind into fresh adjustment 
 with his love and his aspirations ? He puts 
 aside his egotism and his selfishness, as a 
 little child in its mother's arms puts away its 
 tears. His sympathies move in tenderness for 
 absent friends. His thoughts in the silence 
 go out through the starlit spaces. His mind 
 catches the sense of the vaster life in which 
 all things dear to him are held together. In 
 this quest of spirit his vision is quickened ; 
 he sees how to set right the errors or mis- 
 takes of the day. He catches bright thoughts 
 of what he may do for the sake of his home, 
 his children, his friends, his city. He is 
 now at the source of power. He is close, 
 also, not merely to sounder rest of body, but 
 to profounder rest of mind, when at last 
 he is able to say : 
 
 " In peace I will both lay me down and sleep, 
 For Thou, Lord, alone makest me dwell in safety." 
 
 The man rises in the morning to the work 
 of a human being, yet in reality to the work 
 of a son of God. Shall he rush, like a
 
 PRATER AND REASON. 93 
 
 whipped slave, to his tasks ? Let him give 
 himself a moment of pause, worthy of a 
 man, before he takes up his tasks. Let him 
 lift his eyes to the hills and see the end and 
 aim of his march ; let him at least say : " Thy 
 will be done," before he goes forth. Let 
 the mother and housekeeper take on her 
 lips the lines of a hymn, or the refrain of a 
 psalm, to recur at times through the day to 
 keep her in mind of the faith, the hope, and 
 the love with which her fingers move in ac- 
 cord. Such a beginning of the day is to 
 start from the heights ; it binds us to God 
 and attunes body and mind to the pitch of 
 efficient and harmonious use. But this ad- 
 justment of the life to its work, as if in the 
 presence of the Almighty, this consecration 
 of ourselves to our duty and our love, 
 whether in simple rude words of our own 
 or in the beautiful and hallowed passages of 
 great souls of other times, is prayer. It is 
 the prayer of the grown and civilized man 
 whispering, " Thy Kingdom come," as he 
 engages in each new enterprise of that
 
 94 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 higher civilization to which he has devoted 
 his life. 
 
 Man carries within himself the finest of all 
 tools or instruments. It is the temper or 
 spirit with which he essays his various tasks. 
 Send him forth to his work in any mood of 
 ill temper; send him among his fellows 
 sour, embittered, anxious, or angry, and he 
 will as certainly damage his work as if the 
 cabinet maker were to use dull and broken 
 tools or as if the violinist were to play out 
 of tune. 
 
 The time draws near when these things 
 must be recognized by every intelligent 
 observer. Prayer is a profound function of 
 life. Men cannot get on without it and do 
 their full stent of work. The time is 
 coming when the employer or the super- 
 intendent of labor cannot afford to try to 
 handle hundreds of men except as the spirit 
 of prayer, quiet and friendly, teaches him. 
 The time is coming when no teacher will 
 venture to go into a school-room without 
 having first caught sight of the divine stand-
 
 PRATER AND REASON. 95 
 
 ards which govern education. No physician 
 will enter a sick-room without being sure 
 that he carries the restful and hopeful pres- 
 ence which true prayer creates. No parent 
 will dare to touch the mystery of child-life, 
 without the recognition, sweet and solemn, 
 that his child and he are both children of 
 God. Statesmen and public men must see 
 by and by that prayer clarifies the judgment 
 and shows the way of human progress and 
 true political expediency. It will not be 
 ministers alone who must pray. Who 
 desires to think, act, live, and love, at his 
 best? He must pray. For only thus can 
 he keep in accord with the mainspring of 
 life. 
 
 It is obvious that we are close to the open 
 secret of much that has gone under various 
 strange and occult names, touching the rein- 
 vigoration of the bodily health. No one can 
 reasonably question the fact that the body 
 is subtly but surely bound up, for better for 
 worse, in sickness and hi health, with a 
 man's varying conditions and moods of con-
 
 96 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 sciousness. Is the man disappointed, wor- 
 ried, vexed, angered, brought to shame and 
 confusion ? All this reacts upon the body. 
 Countless morbid tendencies flow from a 
 man's baffled egotism and selfishness, wear- 
 ing on the nerves, impairing the assimilation 
 of food. Passion, greed, appetite, and lust 
 prey on the health. Reverse now all these 
 morbid tendencies, change the ill temper to 
 good temper, fear to hope, disappointment 
 and shame to satisfaction, self-will to love, 
 egotism to the sight of the visions of good- 
 ness, and the beauty of the inward change 
 must often shine through, and, as Mr. Fiske 
 has said, change and accelerate " the rhythm 
 of nutrition." A well body naturally tends 
 to clothe a sane and happy spirit. This 
 principle needs no occult names or practises. 
 There is no need to deny facts, or set aside 
 conditions, or turn the orderly universe into 
 unreality. 
 
 Does any one now care to ask the question 
 whether prayer is answered ? If the world 
 is once interpreted into terms of thought,
 
 PRATER AND REASON. 97 
 
 love, will, spirit, the whole vast system is 
 a mode of motion from God to man and 
 from man to God. What does man, God's 
 child, really need? He needs experience, 
 intelligence, wisdom, spur and incitement 
 to urge him to grow, power to draw on and 
 use the proof of God's love. Whatever 
 man really needs, the universe is at hand to 
 impart. In the mood of prayer this proves 
 true. In this mood man at his best opens his 
 heart to receive. In this mood God takes 
 man to himself and unfolds more and more 
 the treasures of his beauty and goodness. To 
 the man who looks out on the world in this 
 mood, the universe answers back in words 
 of divineness. What soul ever tried the 
 experiment and found it to fail? At our 
 best, obedient, modest, willing, loving, all 
 things speak to us of God, sorrows and joys, 
 laws and mysteries, life and death also.
 
 98 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 
 
 Is it true that men are born free ? The 
 fact is that freedom is the highest attain- 
 ment which a man can reach. I wish in 
 this chapter to show how high, rare, pre- 
 cious, and beautiful true human freedom is. 
 I wish to stir my readers to a new desire for 
 it, to bring about a healthy discontent with 
 life that falls short of freedom. 
 
 Look at men as they pass in the streets of 
 your city. The majority of grown men and 
 women are not free. They live under con- 
 straint ; they carry burdens of anxiety ; they 
 are not doing what they wish ; they unwill- 
 ingly serve the will of others. They are 
 only legally free. How many in the crowd 
 are free indeed. Here and there, however, 
 is a man who thinks, acts, loves, lives, not as 
 if compelled from without, not as a machine,
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 99 
 
 an automaton, or a bondman, but with inward 
 ease, contentment, willingness, and joy. Mar- 
 cus Aurelius and Epictetus, the great Stoics, 
 are full of this freedom. Emerson is a mas- 
 ter in it. Jesus sings it in the Beatitudes. 
 That fine old English gentleman Sir Henry 
 Wotton chants it to us : 
 
 " How happy is he born or taught, 
 
 Who serveth not another's will ; 
 Whose armor is his honest thought, 
 And simple truth his utmost skill." 
 
 Average men rise to this height almost as 
 if by accident, only in their noblest moments. 
 
 The fact is that freedom, so far from being 
 common and cheap, is uncommon and costly ; 
 it belongs to the period of maturity not 
 to boys, but to grown men. The world is 
 full of parables am} object lessons to show 
 this. Here, for example, is a new invention ; 
 we will suppose that it is the first typewriter. 
 It has in it already every essential principle. 
 Its parts are fairly well made and put to- 
 gether. What prevents our full trust and 
 satisfaction in it ? Why will it not immedi-
 
 100 THE RELIGION OP A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ately be profitable to use? It still wants 
 freedom of motion ; the parts are stiff ; there 
 are points of friction ; it is clumsy, compli- 
 cated, and noisy ; there is not yet any ease 
 and joy in working it. It is a great step 
 upward between this first awkward machine 
 and the latest noiseless instrument that the 
 operator can work all day without a moment 
 of annoyance ! 
 
 Watch the child now as he learns to walk, 
 to skate, to dance, to ride horseback. The 
 child knows how to produce every motion 
 before he has got freedom in the command 
 of his motions. He may have heard every 
 rule in his arithmetic, or committed the rules 
 to memory, before he has yet learned free- 
 dom, that is, ease and joy in working out 
 his problems in fractions or interest. It is a 
 great step from the constrained efforts of the 
 beginner to the art of the master. 
 
 In the old-fashioned industrial system they 
 recognized the period of transition from mere 
 apprenticeship to assured mastership. When 
 the youth had finished his discipline he did
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 101 
 
 not yet become a master. He must first be 
 a journeyman. They knew that to learn 
 the rules and motions of a trade did not give 
 ease, joy, or freedom in it. Not every 
 master in name, indeed, was a real master. 
 The men who still went on doing slovenly, 
 inartistic, clumsy work, or who had no joy 
 in their work, were never masters. 
 
 Thus in every province of life the novice 
 lacks freedom ; up to the last stages of ap- 
 prenticeship he is conscious of more or less 
 resistance, friction, and frustration. Free- 
 dom means mastery, ease, joy, and satisfac- 
 tion. With each new motion the apprentice 
 acquires freedom in new provinces of his 
 work. The master holds a free hand every- 
 where. There is nothing in the range of 
 his trade or art impossible to him. 
 
 Moral freedom, or freedom of the soul, 
 follows the same law. It is the mastery of 
 the whole of life ; it is ease, contentment, sat- 
 isfaction, sometimes joy, at all times peace, 
 under whatever circumstances. Nothing 
 can baffle or overwhelm the free soul ;
 
 102 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 nothing can defeat him ; nothing in all the 
 range of duty is impossible. Whatever the 
 Master of life bids him do is precisely that 
 which he at that moment believes is the 
 most desirable thing to be done. Neither 
 does he think anything else practicable. I 
 am aware that this is a great claim, but true 
 and complete freedom is nothing less than 
 this. 
 
 We wish now to know what is the secret 
 of freedom. What does any one need in 
 order to emerge from the lower level of con- 
 straint and apprenticeship into the freedom 
 of the masters ? We must grant in the first 
 place that there is need everywhere of prac- 
 tice. The young pupil thinks that he knows 
 his violin lesson ; that is, he can produce 
 tones and scramble through the new piece 
 of music, but he needs days and weeks of 
 practice before he can be trusted to play 
 before an audience. So likewise men 
 think that they know the Golden Rule 
 merely because they can repeat it glibly. 
 What do they lack ? They lack practice in
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 103 
 
 it. Must the violinist go through the same 
 motion hundreds of times before he has com- 
 plete ease and joy in the motions, and shall 
 the man who can count on his fingers the 
 instances in which he has fairly tried the 
 venture of the Golden Rule imagine that he 
 already knows it ? 
 
 The secret of freedom, however, is not in 
 practice. Let the young player go on prac- 
 tising all his life, let him perform every 
 motion correctly a thousand times, and he 
 might never enjoy an hour of freedom and 
 mastery. The freedom of the man is more 
 than the freedom of the machine. When 
 the man works his soul must move as well as 
 his muscles ; there must be joy and hearti- 
 ness. This brings me to say something 
 about the mystery of self-consciousness. 
 
 What part does self-consciousness play 
 in man's life? Is it good or evil, a help 
 or a hindrance? The little child, like the 
 animal, seems to get on well enough for a 
 while without any self -consciousness. In 
 some respects the quiet, automatic, imita-
 
 104 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 tive, and instinctive actions are the most 
 perfect. 
 
 How often we wish that we could be rid 
 of self -consciousness ! It seems to be the 
 bane of our work ; it handicaps our activity ; 
 it makes us shy, uneasy, and timid, or again 
 overbold, vain, and arrogant. It provokes 
 us to ask what men are saying about us, or 
 what blame or reward we shall get as the 
 result of our effort. It exaggerates the im- 
 portance of what we do, as if we cried out to 
 the world, " See me and my fine clothes ! " 
 Such are the vagaries, I might even say the 
 diseases, of a self-consciousness which has 
 become strained and over-sensitive. 
 
 Nevertheless, self-consciousness is our 
 glory, being a necessary process of intel- 
 lectual growth. It is acute in man because 
 he is not an automaton, and he is more than 
 an animal. It is a part of the price of ap- 
 prenticeship that he has to pay for all the 
 higher experiences. Moreover, it has its own 
 delightful compensations. 
 
 The fact is, the natural movement of
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 105 
 
 man's development with respect to every- 
 thing which he learns is through a period of 
 active and even exaggerated self-conscious- 
 ness, not back to unconsciousness, but up 
 and onward to a higher stage of conscious 
 life. Thus, while the young violinist is 
 taking up a new movement, he becomes 
 conscious at first of the motions of his arm 
 and his bow, which seem to be out of rela- 
 tion with what he has learned before. But 
 as soon as he has learned the new motion, it 
 now becomes a part of himself and takes its 
 harmonious place in his consciousness. He 
 is never again self-conscious about it. 
 
 We become real persons, with unity in our 
 lives, as we assimilate into ourselves all 
 manner of experiences and make a symphony 
 of them. The new experience, or possible 
 lesson, is not at first ours ; it is as yet out- 
 side of us. It even calls a halt in our ac- 
 tivity, while we survey it, and pass judg- 
 ment upon it, and say whether we like to 
 assimilate it or to reject it. This period of 
 judgment, of caution, hesitation, and experi-
 
 106 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ment, this pause, while the train of life 
 seems to come to a halt, is self-consciousness. 
 In a normal life the stop should be brief. 
 
 We are ready to state a vital law. It is 
 as important to human life as gravitation is 
 to the stars, but it is still little understood. 
 The acquisition of freedom depends upon it. 
 The law is in whatever we do, in whatever 
 motion we make, in outward acts, and not less 
 in every moral and spiritual effort, to let our- 
 selves go in the effort. The art of swimming 
 illustrates what we mean. Here is some 
 one who practises the motions of swimming 
 for months, but this will not make him 
 a swimmer. Something more than practice 
 is needed ; the learner must give his body 
 to the water ; he must cease to ask whether 
 the water will bear him up. Who has not 
 seen little boys swim in the first lesson, 
 because they let themselves go, trusted the 
 water, and struck out, however clumsily, to 
 get to the shore ! Children learn a new lan- 
 guage by the same secret ; they let them- 
 selves go ; they make necessary mistakes ;
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 107 
 
 they are not afraid of being laughed at. 
 Did not Jesus mean this when lie said that 
 we must become as little children ? Children 
 let themselves go in what they do. What 
 grace in their movements ! It is not uncon- 
 sciousness that Jesus is teaching. There 
 could be no human freedom without con- 
 sciousness. But Jesus teaches the art of 
 letting ourselves go, as children do. 
 
 See now how our law works, for ex- 
 ample, with respect to the matters of 
 friendship and love. There is no real 
 friendship except with those who at least 
 sometimes let themselves go in their love. 
 What if you are always cool and reserved ? 
 What if you are always counting the cost of 
 your friendship ? Will you never open your 
 heart and give your friendship utterance? 
 While you are still selfish in your affection, 
 while you are timid, while egotism con- 
 strains you, your friendship is yet in the 
 stage of its apprenticeship. Be sure that 
 true love, once having got its growth, gives 
 itself utterly. Who has never risen, at least
 
 108 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 for a while, to this new height of ease, joy, 
 freedom ! 
 
 The secret of the art of conversation is 
 here. We have sometimes been in the 
 company of bright people where, however, 
 the conversation would not flow. Why was 
 this? It was because every one in the 
 circle was afraid of his own acquaintances. 
 And lo ! at the appearance in the room of a 
 single free and merry soul, willing to let himself 
 go, never asking " What will they say of 
 me? " we have seen all tongues unloosed and 
 hearts unlocked in fellowship. 
 
 There is a profound secret of bodily health 
 in this highly spiritual law. There are 
 many persons, especially in well-to-do and 
 quite sophisticated communities, who are 
 always near to or over the line of invalid- 
 ism. Without actual disease in any bodily 
 organ, they suffer the symptoms and pains 
 of innumerable diseases. The trouble witli 
 them is that they have become self-conscious 
 with respect to their bodies and their health ; 
 they have fallen into the habit of a con-
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 109 
 
 strained life. Watch them ; they are noting 
 their own aches and pains ; they are fearful 
 and apprehensive so as hardly to draw a full 
 and free breath ; they feel their own pulse, 
 count the beating of their hearts, and almost 
 weigh their food. Sometimes they have for- 
 gotten how to rest or sleep ; they will not 
 actually give their bodies to the bed as 
 children do, when they lie down, but they 
 try to support themselves, as if upon taut 
 nerves. What wonder if the circulation of 
 the life becomes stagnant and real bodily dis- 
 orders set in ! What wonder, when the life 
 does not flow freely, if the nervous tension 
 increases ! Disease no doubt always stands 
 ready to set in, as long as men do not live 
 rightly. 
 
 There is a simple gospel for this large 
 class of suffering humanity. It is no less 
 curative for physical ills because it is also 
 moral and spiritual. I will put my word 
 in an almost extravagant form : " Let your- 
 self go ; give up concern for your health ; 
 resolve, as every soldier has to resolve, that
 
 110 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 you will be willing to die, if die you must. 
 But, then, resolve also to live as if you 
 were going on to live forever ; give yourself 
 up as long as you live, to live worthily, right- 
 eously, nobly. Make your body, such as it is, 
 merely a tool to use, a channel to convey and 
 communicate all the power and life possible." 
 
 It is better to miss certain excellent hy- 
 gienic conditions, to eat too little or even 
 too much, to have fewer cubic feet of air 
 in your sleeping-room than the normal body 
 requires, to encounter draughts and be cold 
 on occasion, and yet to breathe freely as a 
 free man should, without fear, constraint, 
 or anxious thought, yes, it is better to be 
 the master of a weak body than the slave of a 
 good one. Man does not live by bread alone. 
 A new hope of any sort, a new duty, a new 
 obedience, often suffices to release the slug- 
 gish current of the circulation, to open un- 
 used cells in the lungs, to clear away morbid 
 imaginings. 
 
 It has been said that genius is an infinite 
 capacity for hard work and taking pains.
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. Ill 
 
 It is rather an infinite capacity to let one's 
 self go and give one's self up to one's task. 
 Will clever artifice and the mathematics 
 of music ever move your heart? The great 
 composer must put his soul into his music 
 and lo! there is melody. It is so with the 
 poet; it is so with the orator. There is no 
 drudgery in this kind of work. 
 
 There is likewise a certain abandon of 
 soul in the highest exercise of virtue. It is 
 only with the beginner that goodness seems 
 to be a motion "against the grain." The 
 masters in virtue, therefore, least need encour- 
 agement or applause. Shall we praise Jesus 
 for l>eing pure in heart, or single in purpose, 
 or for being willing to give his life for love's 
 sake ? Did men need to encourage Chaiming 
 or Charles Darwin to speak the truth ? These 
 were men who loved virtue and truth; 
 they had committed themselves to the beau- 
 tiful ways of virtue. It had become easier 
 to be true than to be false, easier to be just 
 than unjust. There is indeed no freedom of 
 truth, as long as lying is a temptation.
 
 112 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Would Bach or Beethoven be tempted to 
 make discords? So the lover of goodness, 
 which is the harmony of the soul, cannot 
 bear to do wrong. As Marcus Aurelius 
 writes : " Whatever any one does or says, I 
 must be emerald and keep my color." 
 
 We rise at once to a splendid conception 
 of the religious life. Religion is not to 
 practise certain motions, however excellent; 
 it is not to repeat good words ; it is not 
 even to admire or worship certain beautiful 
 ideals ; its law is to let ourselves utterly go 
 with the motion of the good will of God. 
 There are a multitude of people who think 
 that they have a religion, but you would not 
 know it by their actions or their faces. 
 They are timid and anxious ; they suspect 
 that if they really gave themselves up to do 
 justice, they might starve ; that if they told 
 the truth, they would be unpopular. How 
 many professing " Christians " have ever 
 tried the experiment of letting themselves 
 go, and simply living the life of the children 
 of God for a single day ?
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 113 
 
 The law of freedom connects itself with 
 the rational doctrine of prayer. In real 
 prayer the human spirit lets itself go. We 
 make in prayer the magnificent venture and 
 trust ourselves to the spirit of the universe. 
 We say in substance : " Show us the truth, 
 and we will follow Avherever it leads ; tell 
 us the way of our duty, and we will march." 
 We say : " Let the good will be done ; we 
 are here to be possessed with it, and then to 
 do its bidding." In the attitude of prayer we 
 seem to be here for nothing else except to do 
 the bidding of Love. We give ourselves up 
 to the care of God, the innermost life and 
 will of the universe. In prayer we enter the 
 realm of free spirit. The man at the work- 
 bench, in the laboratory, in the machine shop, 
 at the helm or on the engine, in the senate 
 chamber or on the public platform, once pos- 
 sessed with the spirit of good will, and 
 yielding his life to do its behests, is at the 
 height of his power, a free man. Is not this 
 the secret, in simple terms, of the wisdom- 
 books of the ages ?
 
 114 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 In the old days the freedom of a city was 
 a great boon. Country boys, like Richard 
 Whittington, came up to London and 
 earned the rights of free men. The free- 
 dom of the city was conferred upon illus- 
 trious strangers. It opened doors otherwise 
 closed, and cleared the way to attain the 
 highest honors. In the United States we 
 have established a similar and very wonder- 
 ful freedom throughout more than forty 
 states, stretching across a continent. Wher- 
 ever the citizen goes, the laws are his to 
 protect him ; the privileges of a common 
 citizenship are open to him. In the case of 
 certain eminent men we have seen the free- 
 dom of the world extended to them. Where- 
 ever General Grant went, though a private 
 American citizen, he went like a prince ; 
 all doors were unlocked for him. The na- 
 tions took him in as a free man of the world ; 
 he had enemies nowhere. Napoleon, the 
 egotist and conqueror, had no such freedom 
 as this. Thus good will, possessing a man, 
 constitutes him a citizen of the universe.
 
 WHAT FREEDOM IS. 115 
 
 This freedom is imperishable. You may 
 lock such a man up, as they locked Madame 
 Guyon in her dungeon, and the soul still 
 sings: 
 
 " My God, how full of sweet content 
 I pass my years of banishment." 
 
 Wherever this freeman goes, among what- 
 ever people he lives, he goes without fear ; 
 he carries the talisman wherewith to open 
 all hearts and break down barriers ; he 
 moves in unison with the guiding life of 
 God.
 
 11G THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 
 
 THERE is one sense of the word "good" 
 in which it can only be applied to God. 
 This was the high sense which Jesus had in 
 mind when he declined to be called good, 
 saying, "No one is good bnt one, that is, 
 God." We have here a thought of absolute 
 or perfect goodness. Here is a justice which 
 can never do a wrong, unswerving truth 
 upon which the universe depends, a love 
 that carries no enmity to any soul, infinitely 
 patient, inexhaustible, pouring out its sun- 
 shine upon the evil and the good. Its single 
 purpose is the welfare of all. We can think 
 of nothing less than this when we speak of 
 the Eternal Goodness. This is the ultimate 
 reality. All forms of goodness are only 
 sparks and manifestations of this, without
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 117 
 
 which the world would be unintelligible and 
 human life would be a vain dream. 
 
 There is no blame or "sin" if man falls 
 short of this kind of goodness. He would 
 not be man, that is, a growing creature, if he 
 had attained to this perfectness. Jesus would 
 have ceased to grow better, that is, he would 
 have ceased to be a real man, if he could 
 ever have passed, once for all, beyond the 
 human line where temptation lies in wait for 
 all of us. We cannot conceive of man, even 
 at his highest, except as one who is still on the 
 march upward to a more constant and beau- 
 tiful goodness. Since the characteristic of 
 man is that he has never attained perfect- 
 ness, there is surely no blame or sin in this 
 fact of his nature. 
 
 There is another sense in which we com- 
 monly use the word " good." We use it in 
 a conventional way as opposed to the bad. 
 We use it to describe law-abiding and orderly 
 people. We use it of the boys who make no 
 trouble or mischief in school. We even use 
 it of little babies to mean that they make us
 
 118 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 no trouble. " It is a good baby," we say. This 
 means nothing more than that it is well fed 
 and comfortable. So the people in every 
 community who represent law and order 
 speak of those who are " respectable " like 
 themselves as the good citizens. 
 
 Why is it that the kind of goodness which 
 consists in being orderly, though it is con- 
 venient, useful, and necessaiy, fails to stir 
 our hearts to any admiration ? One reason 
 is that it does not cost much to be " good " 
 for those who are so born and brought up. 
 It is easier to keep within the laws than to 
 transgress them, as it is easier to walk on a 
 good road than to walk through a thicket. 
 
 Moreover, curiously enough, it is possible 
 to be " good " and orderly, never to get a 
 " bad mark in school," never to have to fear 
 the police or the sheriff, and yet to be mean, 
 narrow, and selfish. The boy who stands at 
 the head of his class is not therefore a brave 
 or generous fellow. What if his father 
 has offered him the prize of a gold watch for 
 being the first scholar? It is for the in-
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 119 
 
 terest of most people to obey the laws, and 
 to be respectable. They find business credit, 
 honors, and official position in being respect- 
 able. Why, indeed, should any intelligent 
 person venture to do wrong and lose his 
 respectable standing? But suppose that 
 every one could be persuaded to be " good " 
 by this shrewd calculation of the profit of 
 goodness, who would ever be satisfied with 
 a world full of such cold-blooded virtue ? 
 
 As a matter of fact, we often prefer the 
 company of certain persons who are not very 
 " good," to the company of others who are 
 extremely orderly and proper. Mothers 
 and teachers love their mischievous and 
 troublesome boys as well at least as they 
 love the boys who never need a word of 
 blame. The popular heart responds to the 
 stories of the Jim Bludsoes, of Kipling's 
 heroes of the barracks and mess-room, of the 
 deeds of Roosevelt's Rough Riders, of the 
 brave kindliness of Trilby. I am sorry for 
 the man whose heart does not in this respect 
 beat in sympathy with the popular heart.
 
 120 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Do we like men and women who happen 
 to be "off color" because they are brutal, 
 or cruel, or loose in their morals ? Do we 
 love our troublesome school-boy because he 
 makes trouble ? In our liking for the Jim 
 Bluclsoes or Trilbys do we approve vulgar 
 oaths, unseemly jests, drunkenness, or de- 
 bauchery ? Certainly not. But what we 
 do love and admire is a gleam of life, reality, 
 sincerity, generous and unselfish abandon. 
 The "good" people, shut up within the 
 reservations of their egotism, or their supe- 
 rior caste, give us no touch of real, joyous, 
 bountiful life. They exploit law and order 
 for their own benefit, like the " good " boy 
 who proposes to earn a holiday with his 
 conduct marks. Between selfish "good- 
 ness," that is, merely orderly conduct, and 
 a certain lawlessness, with moments of gen- 
 erosity shining out of it, we frankly prefer 
 the sight of the latter, though we may not 
 altogether enjoy living next door to it. 
 
 It is interesting and almost startling, as 
 one reads the New Testament, to observe
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 121 
 
 how Jesus regards the conventional or legal 
 difference between the " good " and the 
 k ' bad," how he ignores the ordinary distinc- 
 tions, how he goes to dine at the Pharisees' 
 houses and consorts equally with publicans 
 and sinners. Is it explained that he goes to 
 the latter in order " to do them good " ? 
 But he evidently likes them and finds them 
 interesting. He is actually in closer sym- 
 pathy with them than with the respectable 
 Pharisees 1 
 
 Shall we go oil to rub out all the costly dis- 
 tinctions that the world has marked between 
 its good and its bad, between law and order 
 on the one hand and lawlessness and bar- 
 barism on the other ? Shall we make saints 
 of the Jim Bludsoes and the Trilbys, and 
 raise monuments to such men as Crispus At- 
 tucks? On the contrary, we are urged to 
 discover the sounder and more vital sense of 
 the word "goodness." We must insist upon 
 a real distinction between the good and the 
 bad, instead of a superficial and conven- 
 tional distinction.
 
 122 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Our problem is really the problem of every 
 school-room and nursery. It is even the 
 problem of the stock-raiser who has colts to 
 train. There are two prime requisites in the 
 perfect horse : one is good form, discipline, 
 obedience. The horse will be useless that 
 throws its rider, that runs away, that will 
 not go in the carriage or balks at its load. 
 But there is even more need of life, force, 
 ease, and speed than of discipline. The 
 problem is to combine training and life. 
 The training must not waste the life ; it 
 must develop the life, so that the trained 
 creature can do and be more than he could 
 possibly do and be if left to run wild. 
 This splendid combination is often actually 
 achieved. 
 
 We try for the same kind of combination 
 in the education of our children. We want 
 to keep every ounce of their exuberant 
 energy, and to turn it over by discipline into 
 beauty, grace, and efficiency. We do this 
 with the body in the gymnasium ; we aim or 
 ought to aim to do the same with the mind
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 123 
 
 in the university. We have the same task 
 with the character. Show us only wild 
 goodness, slovenly, inconstant, impatient, 
 blundering, and then show us trained good- 
 ness watchful, biding its time, uncom- 
 plaining, faithful to death, generous, and 
 who will not choose the latter ? 
 
 Let us see now what it really is to be 
 good. To express good will or love is to be 
 good. To let good will, flowing from the 
 heart of God, as if from an infinite reservoir, 
 flow through us and use us this is the 
 soul of goodness. This is perfectly natural, 
 albeit divine. In every act of real love 
 we are good. The mother is good to her 
 little child ; the friendless tramp is good 
 at least to his dog, or else he is lonely in- 
 deed. You are good to your friends, or else 
 you have no right to call them friends. 
 Every one is good, at least in gleams of good- 
 ness, in happy hours, in grand moments when 
 the tide of love comes flowing in upon the 
 soul amid the trumpet calls of duty. We 
 fall in love. Is it not as if God inspired
 
 124 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 us at such times ? Who has not known 
 times when it was easy to be good, and when 
 for a little while we were good, to a few 
 or to one, if not to many, - in the sight of 
 God if not hi the sight of the world? We 
 were good because hi these better moments 
 we carried good will in our hearts ; we let 
 our love well up into expression ; we spoke 
 it or acted it ; its light was in our faces ; 
 its frank fearlessness was in our hearts. 
 
 When, therefore, the roystering engineer 
 goes to his death with his hand on the 
 throttle of his engine, when the sailor, yes- 
 terday drunk and profane, goes over the 
 ship's side to the rescue of perishing strangers 
 on a storm-tossed" wreck, when the aban- 
 doned woman gives her last morsel of bread 
 to a famishing child, we say, " Behold good- 
 ness, even the goodness of God." Continue 
 such good will, reiterate such acts, be good 
 to others as you are good to this one whom 
 you love ; in short, keep the flow of the 
 divine current open from the infinite reser- 
 voir through your soul, as through a channel,
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 125 
 
 and in so doing you are living the eternal 
 life ; you share in the goodness of God. 
 Who wishes to do any wrong to another so 
 long as good will possesses and breathes 
 through him? 
 
 The trouble with our goodness is not 
 that we do not know how to be good, but 
 that we will not be good all the time. Men 
 behave like the electric light, when it was first 
 installed in our cities. It would shine out 
 for a time, and without a moment's warning 
 it would leave the city in darkness. So 
 men are good by fits and starts, but you can- 
 not depend upon them, or know in what 
 dark and stormy night the shining of their 
 goodness will go out. 
 
 Real goodness is not merely a continuous 
 force ; it is also universal in its nature. I 
 mean that it shines out upon all and not 
 merely upon a select few. With most men 
 there is a dark belt where their goodness 
 does not act ; they have enemies, or rivals, 
 or those whom they despise, or to whom 
 they are indifferent. For the various dog-
 
 126 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 matic phases of Christianity I have no con- 
 cern. But the name, at its best, stands for 
 the ideal of a universal or humanitarian 
 form of goodness. The characteristic of 
 the divine good will is that it makes no 
 distinction of persons. It goes out freely 
 wherever need is. The greater the need, 
 the more active and generous is the love of 
 God. Do we not wish to be like God in 
 respect to the all-round generosity of our 
 goodness ? 
 
 Suppose that you had lived before the 
 government ever built lighthouses. Sup- 
 pose that your house had stood on a point 
 where the ships sailed by into the harbor. 
 Suppose that partly out of kindliness, and 
 also because you were a ship-owner yourself, 
 you kept a bright light in your window to 
 guide the sailors in dark nights. Suppose 
 now that you knew to a certainty the charac- 
 ter of every ship and crew that approached, 
 the kind captains and the cruel ones, your 
 own countrymen and foreigners, the vessels 
 in which you owned a share and your rivals'
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 127 
 
 vessels, also certain crews of desperate and 
 dangerous men. Suppose now, since the light 
 is your own, and you can do as you please 
 with it, you are able to turn it on or shut 
 it off at will, as each vessel passes ; you can 
 use it to help the people whom you like, and 
 you can simply leave the others to get on as 
 well as they can without any light. It will 
 not be your affair if they go to wreck. Why 
 should you keep a light at your own ex- 
 pense for your rivals, for Frenchmen and 
 Dutchmen, for cruel and desperate char- 
 acters of whom it would be a convenient 
 thing to rid the earth ? 
 
 Is there any reader so barbarous as to 
 admit but one answer to this question ? 
 Would not every one choose to help all the 
 men whom he could possibly save with his 
 light ? Would any one let the foreigners or 
 even his worst enemy go to wreck for want 
 of the warning lamp ? 
 
 This illustration carries the practical es- 
 sence of the universal religion, without 
 which the world can never be civilized.
 
 128 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Why must I keep my good will continually 
 flowing, not only for my friends, but for all 
 men, never asking the question whether 
 they are good to me or not ? Because this 
 is the divine and universal law of all spirit- 
 ual life, because God, the father of our 
 spirits, does thus for us, and to do as 
 God does is what every man is here for. 
 We cannot even be good to those who are 
 good to us, unless the divine current is 
 turned on once for all, and we make up our 
 minds to keep it on, so far as we can, forever. 
 If we turn off the flow of our good will 
 because others are not good to us, and let 
 them go to wreck for aught we care, in the 
 same hour of our darkness we shall let the 
 light go out for our friends, our brothers, 
 and our children. If we will not turn on 
 the light for strangers we shall not turn it 
 on in those desolate changes of weather 
 when our friends look like strangers. The 
 one law of our life is to turn on the power 
 and to keep it on. The one prayer is 
 that, whatever we do, we may never show
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 129 
 
 ill will or self will, but only good will 
 to all. 
 
 We are surely so made as to admire this 
 ideal. Why else is it that the heart of the 
 world goes out to Jesus ? Suppose, as he 
 hung at last on the cross, he had given up 
 his religion, and had played for a moment 
 the part of the animal and barbarous man ; 
 suppose instead of blessing those who per- 
 secuted him he had cursed Pilate and 
 Herod, the high priest and the Pharisees. 
 How could mankind ever have called him a 
 Master in Goodness if he had not stood 
 true to his splendid faith in a God who 
 loves all men, whose sun shines alike on the 
 evil and on the good ? 
 
 We admire Jesus not less but more, 
 because such all-round love is not unique 
 and exceptional in him. It is in us all to 
 do the same as he did. In fact, civilization 
 is nothing less than this, and civilization 
 only comes in by this means. The men 
 and women of good will are the only civilized 
 people, the only true civilizers. The names
 
 130 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 of Howard, Elizabeth Frye, Dorothy Dix, 
 David Livingstone, George Peabody, Monte- 
 fiore, Leclaire are enough to suggest a host 
 of those who, having caught the primal law 
 of the life of the children of God, have 
 served to change the face of the world, as 
 when the spring sun shines on the bare 
 hillsides. 
 
 The health of our souls rises and falls 
 with the flow of the good will in us. It is 
 like our bodily health, which, when the circu- 
 lation is sluggish, falls close to the danger 
 line of disease. Hardly does temptation be- 
 set us in the hours when our lives go freely 
 with the current of the divine goodness. 
 Does the current of our good will drop ? 
 Does any one venture to say, " I have been 
 good for a long time ; now I will have my 
 way and be selfish for a little ? " Alas ! when 
 the noble nature ceases to be noble and 
 begins to be selfish it is a more dangerous 
 selfishness than that of the child. Herein 
 is the tragedy of " The Lost Leader." Does 
 the civilized or " Christian " nation leave its
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 131 
 
 place as a civilizing power, and begin to play 
 the r61e of a fighting people? When the 
 "good" kill one another killing is more 
 awful than when savages do it. There is 
 one law of safety. It is to keep open the 
 flood-gates of good will, never to dare to 
 close them against any one. Let us never 
 forget it, that when this vital connection is 
 broken, no one is safe ; no action is valid. 
 Without good will or love the good be- 
 come as the bad ; with good will the bad at 
 once cease to be bad and are good. As the 
 plant must reach up and spread out its 
 leaves toward the sun, so the life of man 
 must forever spread itself out to receive and 
 transmit beneficence. 
 
 A profound question of philosophy finds 
 answer here. It is about the relation of hap- 
 piness to dufy. In the eyes of love happi- 
 ness and duty become one. What is the 
 way of happiness in the home ? It is the 
 way of order and love. What is the way of 
 happiness among friends ? It is again the 
 same. Give yourself to your friends and
 
 132 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 friendship rises thus to its summit. This 
 is coining to be recognized as the law in all 
 successful human business. What is the way 
 of thorough-going satisfaction in one's trade 
 or profession ? It is in the utmost social 
 service. Who can do most for his customers, 
 for his clients, for the enrichment of man- 
 kind? He is the happiest man in his work. 
 Human welfare or happiness is in good will. 
 Love is life. To express the largest flow of 
 the divine goodness of which you are capable, 
 whether in art, music, literature, statesman- 
 ship, or in the humblest domestic service, is 
 satisfaction and gladness. 
 
 Does this translate all human goodness 
 into selfishness ? The very reverse. It makes 
 selfishness, that is, the vague childish instinct 
 for well being, the raw material out of which 
 real and generous love is developed. Even 
 self-love is the starting-point of true love. 
 The child grasps after the shadow, but it is 
 the sun that casts the shadow. But this fact 
 of a crude beginning does not make the real 
 and well-grown love to be anything else
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE GOOD. 133 
 
 than divine. The true man who sees and 
 loves God in his every manifestation, who sees 
 and loves life like his own life, akin also to 
 God, in the face of the dullest of his fellows, 
 who counts this whole earthly life naught, 
 as Paul said, for love's sake, does not surely 
 hate himself, whom God also made. He loves 
 himself, that is, the image of the goodness 
 of God, but he loves himself, not as the centre 
 of the universe, but as simply one among 
 many brothers. Once in the little child's 
 heart years ago this love of God only showed 
 itself by a spark of consciousness and per- 
 haps a cry of pain ; now that same life at the 
 stature of manhood manifests itself freely in 
 a continuous flow of delightful and noble 
 emotions, going out to all God's universe. 
 
 " A sacred burden is this life ye bear; 
 Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
 Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. 
 Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
 But onward, upward, till the goal ye win."
 
 134 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 
 
 No chivalrous and generous nature is con- 
 tent with an easy religion. As in the old 
 stories of Hercules, the noble soul challenges 
 the immortal powers to set it worthy and 
 daring tasks to accomplish. Is there divinity 
 in any form of religion which does not pro- 
 pose some splendid act of renunciation ? 
 
 The New Testament is full of the word 
 " whatsoever." It stands for a certain infinite 
 element in the religion that created the New 
 Testament. It calls upon the infinite ele- 
 ment in man. The New Testament is for- 
 ever saying, " Whatsoever God bids you, do 
 it." This idea carries with it the continual 
 promise (I scorn to say menace or peril) of 
 what the world knows as sacrifice or renun- 
 ciation. He who takes a religion with this 
 idea of " whatsoever " in it must face and wel-
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 135 
 
 come the possibility of the giving up of all 
 that he possesses. 
 
 This is not because religion is apart from 
 ordinary life. We have already seen that 
 ease, joy, and freedom in everything that 
 man accomplishes depend on his obeying 
 the primal law to give himself up, to let 
 himself go, to merge self altogether in that 
 which he undertakes. He is not a free man 
 till he thus lets himself go as the good will 
 of the universe bids. It is equally true, 
 though it may seem like a paradox, that we 
 never actually possess anything till we are 
 able, if ever the need arises, to relinquish 
 its possession. The miser does not possess 
 his money; his money possesses him. The 
 generous man, who is ready to let his money 
 go, alone possesses it. I do not possess my 
 own body as long as I am afraid to die. In 
 that case my body makes me its slave. I 
 possess my body when I am ready to live or 
 die, as God pleases. I do not fairly possess 
 the love of my friend or my child if my 
 love insists upon keeping him with me for-
 
 136 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ever. I must be willing to let him go free ; 
 my love must put no constraint on my 
 friend, or else it binds him and me. I do not 
 own an idea or a thought so long as I hug 
 it close as a secret and private possession ; 
 it is only fully mine when I can use it, 
 publish it, set it free to traverse the earth. 
 What I wholly own I share with the uni- 
 verse ; I hold my possessions in sacred trust, 
 but they hold me, not I them, till I am 
 ready and willing to deliver them over to 
 the Master of life. 
 
 If what I say is true we shall find life full 
 of instances and object lessons of renuncia- 
 tion, as if to give us daily practice. What 
 is the condition of success with the man 
 who really succeeds in any business or pro- 
 fession ? There is an element of renuncia- 
 tion. The man, from boyhood up, seems to 
 say, " This one thing I do." He puts side 
 issues where they belong ; he says " No " to 
 self-indulgence ; he turns the streams of his 
 energy where they will drive the wheels of 
 his purpose. This is sacrifice or renuncia-
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 137 
 
 tion, so far as it goes. You say it is sacri- 
 fice of the less for the sake of the greater ; 
 you call it economy or even intelligent sel- 
 fishness. But all renunciation is of the less 
 for the greater ; it is always real economy or 
 it is not called for ; it is not genuine sacrifice 
 if it is not intelligent. It only needs to be 
 more intelligent and it will altogether cease 
 to be selfish. The end toward which it 
 marches is larger than the individual. The 
 individual welfare is taken up into the wel- 
 fare of all men, as the least violin in the 
 orchestra becomes a part of the symphony. 
 
 See how true this is, when the man who 
 has so far sacrificed for himself and suc- 
 ceeded for himself now falls in love and be- 
 gins to know by experience new, wider, and 
 deeper human relations. Where this true 
 love is, the old story of Jacob and Rachel 
 forever comes to pass. The man's toilsome, 
 scheming gains of years are as nothing pro- 
 vided he can win the woman's love. He 
 does not deserve her or love her enough if 
 he would not renounce all that he has for
 
 138 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 her sake. The quaint words of the wedding- 
 service, " For better, for worse," and " With 
 all my worldly goods I thee endow," suggest 
 this fact. Nay ! he does not love her well 
 enough, nor quite deserve her, if he would 
 not be willing to renounce even his claim to 
 her love, provided another could make her 
 more truly happy. Years pass ; perhaps she 
 is ill, or his children fall sick. What does 
 he grudge or hold back, to the extent of all 
 that he owns, if he can save a single life that 
 he loves ? Yes ! renunciation is in the warp 
 and woof of human life. We would not 
 wish it away, as we would not wish love to 
 be less or other than love. 
 
 Stories are told every day of this kind of 
 renunciation, of which the simple actors are 
 hardly even conscious. A poor woman in a 
 crowded Chicago tenement takes into her 
 home the mother and children of another 
 family, mere acquaintances, poorer than her- 
 self, and provides for them, like the good 
 Samaritan. It is a mere accident that this 
 characteristic story out of the short and
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 139 
 
 simple annals of the poor comes to our 
 knowledge. The beauty of this story is 
 that the kindly woman probably never kne\v 
 that she was doing anything unusual. What 
 are friends good for, unless they stand ready 
 to give up all that they have for one 
 another ? 
 
 The people of Lucerne show the traveller 
 a monument of a lion, erected to the memory 
 of a force of Swiss guards who were cut to 
 pieces in defence of the Tuileries at the out- 
 break of the French revolution. These men 
 were nothing but " mercenaries," but having 
 once sold their lives to the French king, they 
 held themselves to belong to him. Yes ! 
 even an honest bargain carries with it the 
 idea of renunciation. Cost what it will, you 
 must deliver the goods, of the quality, at the 
 very price, and at the appointed time, ex- 
 actly as you had agreed. 
 
 Mr. Kipling has a short story called 
 William the Conqueror. There appears at 
 first to be nothing noteworthy in the three 
 young people whom the story concerns.
 
 140 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 But when famine breaks out and the sudden 
 call is for a certain absolutely devoted kind 
 of relief work, then these two men in the 
 civil service and the girl, the sister of 
 one of them, " renounce all " to start off 
 hundreds of miles into the land of death. 
 They forsake their comfortable quarters, 
 the chances of vacation and pleasure, and 
 all immediate possibilities of professional 
 promotion. The engineer leaves his own 
 business of engineering and offers himself 
 to do any menial task that human hands 
 can do for starving women and children. 
 The young girl puts aside her love for 
 society, display, dances, and dress, and all 
 regard for her health, and changes herself 
 into a nurse for native orphan babies whom 
 she never had seen before. What is the 
 marvelous and infinite element of the " what- 
 soever" in human lives that turns all seem- 
 ing obstacles into stepping-stones, that 
 smiles at toil or pain ? It is surely of the 
 nature of God. No wonder that the truest 
 love story springs out of the splendid renun-
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 141 
 
 elation in which a man and a woman see 
 each in the other a likeness of the Eternal. 
 No wonder that our gifted realistic story- 
 teller makes the summer of privation and 
 peril the time of the sweetest joy for the 
 two souls who had found out together what 
 it means, " He that loseth his life shall save 
 it." Have we not seen that no one truly 
 has life unless the divine element of " what- 
 soever " brings his soul into touch with the 
 everlasting sources of being ? 
 
 There was once a teaching, quite familiar 
 in New England and Scotland, that " mere 
 morality never would save a soul." This 
 teaching shocked many persons. " What ! " 
 they cried, "is it not enough to be just, 
 pure, truthful, affectionate, and benevolent ? 
 What more do you ask? " Is it possible that 
 the harsh and extremely awkward saying 
 had truth in it? There is conduct, that 
 is, morality which we recognize as conven- 
 tional and outward. There is an honesty 
 which is measured, being set to the prevalent 
 fashion of the group or community where
 
 142 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 honesty happens to be respectable up to 
 a certain degree. There is a species of 
 " charity " which falls far short of " giving 
 one's goods to feed the poor ; " there is a 
 " fidelity " which has to give bonds for its 
 good behavior which never dreams of 
 " giving one's body to be burned." Why 
 can it be too often said, " Every man has 
 his price " ? Why do men who seem re- 
 spectable, temperate, virtuous at home be- 
 come loose, vulgar, disreputable, and even 
 false when they are transplanted to the 
 frontier, to garrison life, to a foreign city ? 
 Surely it ought never to be said of a man 
 who is a man that he can be purchased, 
 or that having known civilized life he can 
 ever be tempted to live as a barbarian. 
 
 The truth is, customs, conventions, insti- 
 tutions, morals, codes, such as they are, are 
 hardly more than stagings and scaffoldings 
 for the making of men. We always want to 
 know what the man is, in his inward struc- 
 ture. Is he true, pure, faithful, honorable, 
 benevolent at heart? Is the kingdom of
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 143 
 
 God, as Jesus said, within him? The char- 
 acteristic of this inward structural quality is 
 that which expresses itself in the word " what- 
 soever." As soon as goodness is vital it is 
 devoted. 
 
 In one sense the true man still "has a 
 price ; " but it is no longer a price in material 
 terms; it cannot be reckoned in dollars. 
 Think of purchasing Emerson, or Beethoven, 
 or Michael Angelo, or Paul ! You measure 
 the value of these men in quite immaterial 
 terms of Thought, Beauty, Justice, Benefi- 
 cence. You value the man by what he 
 can do for humanity, to express the mind 
 and heart of God. Tell what good deeds, 
 heroisms, hours of sympathy, flashes of love, 
 pictures, temples, and symphonies cost and 
 are worth to the world, and you have fixed 
 the price at which true men are bought. 
 These prices are infinite, the men who bear 
 them have an infinite worth. There is no 
 sound morality which does not rise out of 
 this infinite and truly spiritual quality which 
 God shares with his children. Never dare
 
 144 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 to be sure of the depth of any virtue to 
 which the soul does not cry out of its depths, 
 " Whatsoever the beautiful law bids, I will 
 strive to fulfil." Is not this what Emerson 
 sings : 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' 
 The youth replies, ' I can.'" 
 
 It is this quite infinite element in vital 
 morality that always presses us home to re- 
 ligion. Why is not conduct enough? men 
 aften ask. It is enough if it is thorough- 
 going, efficient, unreserved. But such con- 
 duct as this is religious conduct. It flows 
 out of good will, regnant in the heart, such 
 good will as rules the universe. 
 
 The old theologians propounded the ques- 
 tion, " Would a man be willing to be damned 
 for the glory of God?" In one aspect it 
 was an abominable and well-nigh blasphe- 
 mous question. On the other hand it illus- 
 trates the essentially spiritual nature of man 
 that any one could ask such a question, and
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 145 
 
 that men could always be found who, catch- 
 ing its real meaning, could answer, "Yes." 
 What is the glory of God ? It is the joy 
 and welfare of his creation, is it not ? If then, 
 in some inconceivable way your loss, your 
 pain, your death, yes, even your eternal 
 death, might really mean gain and joy and 
 welfare forever to all your brothers, ought 
 you not to be willing, would you not be 
 willing, to say, " Use me, O Master of Life, 
 wherever and however thou wilt " ? 
 
 See, however, the splendid paradox here. 
 To utter this grand renunciation, to vow all 
 that one has, provided Goodness demands it, 
 this is to love as God loves. And this is 
 to live, aye ! and to have life eternal. This, 
 indeed, is the meaning of the old Christ-story. 
 One who had all glory, men said, left all be- 
 hind and gave himself up for love's sake to 
 do the uttermost will of Beneficence. How 
 wonderful, men cried, that any saint or 
 angel of God, or even God's son, should 
 show such goodness as this ! But lo ! the 
 old story has long ago become typical and
 
 146 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 illustrative of what resides in our common 
 human nature. What true son of man, see- 
 ing man's great need, would not, like the 
 Oriental Buddha, strip himself and go out 
 of his Paradise, if God so bade him, to seek 
 and save his brothers ? What is any son of 
 man here for, whether in a palace, a farm- 
 house, or an attic, except for the service of 
 the brotherhood of man? 
 
 Is it said that each man is here for his 
 own welfare ? The deep law is, that his own 
 welfare is inseparable from the good of 
 humanity. He can never grow to the 
 measure of his own best self unless he is a 
 lover, a friend, a citizen of the world. He 
 does not know love unless his love is devoted 
 and infinite, like the love of God. Was not 
 this the truth that the young governor of a 
 great State was trying to grasp when he 
 praised " the strenuous life " ? This is not 
 the life of the athlete or the fighter. It is 
 infinitely more sacred. It is moral courage, 
 tremendously needed in America to-day, 
 devoted, earnest, faithful to death, strong
 
 THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 147 
 
 enough to say " No " on occasion to the siren 
 voices of wealth, luxury, self-indulgence, or 
 ambition, to popular majorities or partisan 
 czars, strong also to say an enthusiastic 
 " Yes " to whatever truth or duty or country 
 or humanity requires. 
 
 " God's trumpet wakes the slumbering world : 
 
 Now each man to his post ! 
 The red-cross banner is unfurled; 
 Who joins the glorious host? 
 
 " He who in fealty to the truth, 
 
 And counting all the cost, 
 Doth consecrate his generous youth, 
 He joins the noble host! "
 
 148 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 
 
 WHO is so great a lover of peace as 
 to wish that there had never been any war ? 
 Who would be willing to wipe out of the 
 memory of our race every story of the world's 
 Marathons and Bunker Hills, and all the bat- 
 tie songs ? We all agree that the nations 
 ought to learn to live together in peace, but 
 when we try to imagine the consummation of 
 our hopes, when we .rule out of the sight of 
 future men the great battleships, the forts 
 and guns, all the pomp and parade of war, 
 the march of battalions through the streets, 
 the stirring martial music, we must confess 
 that something of picturesqueness will have 
 gone forever. We are ready indeed to sacri- 
 fice this picturesqueness. Every human re- 
 form and advance involves a sacrifice of 
 some sort. The jungle and swamp, the tiger,
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 149 
 
 wolf and cobra, slavery dwelling on grand pa- 
 triarchal estates, poverty starving in hovels, 
 the magnificent costumes of rich lords and 
 the quaint dress of peasants, even the moss- 
 grown cottage and the old oaken bucket of 
 our fathers, had an aspect of picturesque- 
 ness which the man of to-day must recog- 
 nize, while he sturdily turns away from it, 
 as he turns away from the face of death. 
 
 What we will not give up, however, is our 
 memories of certain tremendous human ex- 
 periences dearly bought, but precious. We 
 will still tell the stories of Thermopylae and 
 Lexington, and recite the " Charge of the 
 Light Brigade." We will continue to be glad 
 and not sorry that our forefathers fought on 
 many a bloody field. Why do we dare to 
 say this ? It is not because we love slaugh- 
 ter and barbarity, not because it is ever well 
 for men to hate each other, but because we 
 are made to love the drama, and war, in spite 
 of all its horror of carnage and cruelty, is 
 essentially dramatic. I mean that war has 
 afforded innumerable pictures of effort and
 
 150 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN, 
 
 struggle, of the greatest and noblest manly 
 qualities, intelligence, patience, resolution, 
 hardihood, chivalry, represented in action. 
 As much as we may hate war, we cannot 
 help our admiration for the grand dramatic 
 events which in all times have suggested in 
 and behind war the play of forces so moral, 
 so humane, so holy as to guarantee by and 
 by higher and perhaps no less dramatic forms 
 of human life, when war has become im- 
 possible. 
 
 " There is in fate what only poets see, 
 There is in fate the noblest poesie." 
 
 Children learn to walk by falling ; clean 
 hygienic conditions come out of the lessons 
 of the fever ward. So out of the hell 
 and barbarism of war arise certain mighty 
 spiritual teachings. Pray God that we may 
 never need to learn these lessons again, that 
 we may walk without falling, that we may 
 not relapse into the fever again, that we 
 may henceforth practice our lessons in the 
 school of civilization and not in the lower 
 grade of the barbarian !
 
 THE S OLDIERL Y LIFE. 1 5 1 
 
 I wish to set forth the splendid ideal of 
 the soldierly life. This ideal is the ingot of 
 gold that comes to our hands out of the 
 cruel fires of unknown centuries of strife 
 and battle. Every youth must perforce bow 
 before this ideal, shining out in all the mili- 
 tary records of the race. Does he believe 
 in the soldierly life ? Then it is a single 
 step of necessary logic to believe in the 
 highest ideal of modern religion. 
 
 Let us count up the characteristics that 
 mark the life of any good soldier. In the 
 first place, the soldier begins by giving him- 
 self altogether away. At least for the term 
 of his service, one year, three years, or 
 while the war lasts, he gives himself up ; 
 he is not his own master any longer. Did 
 he belong to the country before ? He now 
 acknowledges the obligation, and does what 
 he before only professed. The volunteer 
 citizen soldier especially is no bondman, 
 the victim of the press-gang. He chooses 
 to give himself away. He was never more 
 free than when he enrolled his name at the
 
 152 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 enlistment office. He may never have been 
 better satisfied in his life than after he was 
 sworn into service. Yes, men generally like 
 to be " sworn in," as if indeed it was an act 
 according to nature to be bound over for 
 life to a grand cause. I have not the 
 slightest doubt that this is true. 
 
 See next what happens at once. The 
 moment the man is sworn into the army 
 everything of personal and private interest 
 becomes subordinate and incidental. The 
 main idea of the man's life now is the ser- 
 vice of the state. Other things are second- 
 ary. Pay and rations, rest and sleep, 
 occasional furloughs-, comradeship and merry- 
 making, are incidental to the service. Who 
 would care to enlist for such things as 
 these ? These things may fail. The man 
 is bound to go on just the same, with or 
 without pay, hungry, weary, sore, till per- 
 haps he drops dead in the march. The 
 lines of " mine and thine " contract to the 
 narrowest limits. The great word is no 
 longer "mine" but "ours." The social
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 153 
 
 forces, not the selfish, are the dominant ones. 
 It is not only good for men to go with 
 these social forces. Whenever they try life 
 after this model they like it. The pleasures 
 that come along in the course of duty, and 
 incidental to duty, are the keenest of pleas- 
 ures. I count myself rich in the number of 
 men and women whom I have known who. 
 have conceived of life in this soldierly fash- 
 ion. I will match them against any set of 
 pleasure seekers in the world for the delight 
 which they have got out of life. And yet 
 pleasure is not what they are after at all. 
 Does my friend, a certain great captain of 
 industry, ever stop to think what course of 
 conduct will pay him in pleasure? No 
 more than General Grant ever dreamed of 
 stopping the army of the Potomac that 
 he might take a holiday. My friend is 
 sworn into the service of God and humanity 
 as really as Grant was sworn into the service 
 of the nation. Pay, rations, comforts, fur- 
 loughs, vacations, comradeships, are the in- 
 cidents of his life.
 
 154 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Moreover, in army life every one lives 
 under orders. You have nothing to do hut 
 to obey. Even the commander-in-chief must 
 obey. The laws are over him ; a tremendous 
 responsibility presses on him. He is not fit 
 for his place unless at every moment he 
 consults the welfare of his cause. He cannot 
 sit down to his dinner to eat if this means the 
 neglect of his command. Now men submit 
 to this and like it. The easiest course of life, 
 the freest of friction, is thus to obey at each 
 moment, and do nothing except under orders. 
 You might guess that this would crush the 
 individual. On the contrary, the greatest 
 heroes and most successful soldiers, Crom- 
 well for example, have developed the most 
 robust individualism. To live under orders 
 is in fact a necessity of all-round individ- 
 ualism. I hold that life at its best consists 
 in utter obedience, like the soldiers'. There 
 is at every moment (if, like Socrates, we 
 would heed the inward voice,) some one thing 
 which has now become the command of 
 God, and therefore the most desirable of all
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 155 
 
 things. It may be to march, or to work, or 
 to rest, or to play. It steadies me to think 
 that I am always thus under orders. What 
 does duty or truth, love or humanity, wis- 
 dom or good will, bid me do ? I am bound 
 over to do this. Life is to do this. To 
 fail of this is to suffer privation of life. 
 
 The soldierly attitude toward hard work, 
 fatigue, exposure, discomfort, and danger is 
 very interesting. To be dragged out of 
 your quarters at midnight, to be ordered to 
 a sentry post, to stand in the rain or snow and 
 be shot at from an ambuscade, to lie in the 
 hospital and have your wounds dressed, 
 these things seem dreadful as seen through 
 the colors of the imagination. But human 
 nature bounds up elastic under the actual 
 pressure of hardship. While the lookers-on 
 weep, men in the thick of toil and strife 
 will have their merry jests. This is the law 
 wherever men face duties. You come to 
 expect obstacles, losses, disappointments, 
 hurts, and injustice; you will often be 
 asked to do more than others and to take
 
 156 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 less pay or praise. It is all in "the day's 
 work." 
 
 There is the same attitude with regard to 
 death. Here are men living every day in 
 the presence of death. Their comrades fall 
 by their side. Each day may be the last. 
 This does not tend to make men sorrowful. 
 They do not act with reference to death. 
 They eat and drink and converse and enjoy 
 themselves as if they were going to live 
 forever. They are able to be glad up to the 
 very last breath. This is as it should be. 
 It is a figure of all life. Let us so live, 
 provided we are obeying orders, as if we were 
 going to live forever. Let us think of 
 death as an incident of life, as also a part of 
 " the day's work." Let it be said, as in 
 Milton's " Samson Agonistes," 
 
 " Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
 Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, 
 Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, 
 And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 
 
 Again, it does us good to see that in war 
 every one counts. There is some place or
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 157 
 
 niche where each fits and is wanted. The 
 need is that every company shall be full ; 
 whoever falls out will be missed. Even 
 if a man is detailed for the signal service, 
 or to forage, or to build bridges, this is be- 
 cause there is so much the greater need of 
 each man. If the man is f urloughed on sick 
 leave, or lies wounded in the hospital, he is 
 still counted and wanted. He is under 
 orders, as it were, to get well if he can. 
 There is not a man hi any branch of the 
 service on whose fidelity victory does not de- 
 pend, by whose unfaithfulness or cowardice 
 defeat is not menaced. All this is a figure 
 of human society. It is a sort of rough 
 draught of the ideal democracy. Who in 
 America does not count and is not needed 
 to rear the costly structure of civilization ? 
 What voter, what citizen, what good woman, 
 what boy or girl has not some place which, 
 if it is honestly filled, helps to secure the 
 welfare of us all? Where is there cow- 
 ardice, unfaithfulness, self-indulgence, dis- 
 honesty, bribery, waste, extravagance, drunk-
 
 158 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 enness, that a menace and danger signal is 
 not there set up against our common happi- 
 ness, prosperity, and. humanity? 
 
 The men's lives count who have committed 
 themselves to the cause of the nation and 
 have been sworn in to obey. Those do not 
 count for the sake of the nation who are 
 rolling up their gains while others pour out 
 their blood. Those do not count who are in 
 doubt to which side they belong. So always 
 in human society. Those lives do not count 
 who do not know what they are living for 
 idle, unsympathetic, selfish, seeking what 
 they can get, without cooperation, comrade- 
 ship, or brotherhood. A million lives like 
 this construct nothing; they constitute so 
 many obstacles to the success of democratic 
 society. The test of a man is : what cause 
 do you serve with heart and soul ? It is so 
 in the army ; it is so in athletics ; it is the 
 law of life. 
 
 Another curious fact comes to us : It is the 
 few and not the many who turn the tide at 
 every critical moment and wrest victory out of
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 159 
 
 seeming defeat. It was a little phalanx that 
 carried Greek civilization over Asia. Only a 
 few thousand men fought out the battles of 
 the American revolution. In most of the 
 colonies the majorities were lukewarm or even 
 hostile ; the ardor and patience of the few kept 
 up the courage of the many. It has been 
 said that in every average regiment, while 
 ten per cent, are cowards, only ten per cent, 
 are heroes. A few dauntless, devoted men 
 will hearten a thousand to stand up to their 
 duty. Here is the doctrine of "the remnant," 
 as Matthew Arnold called it, that is, of 
 leadership. As an army without leaders is 
 futile, so in society and the state, so in all 
 the concerns of civilization ; in the true 
 democracy there must always be an actual 
 aristocracy. It consists in merit, in intelli- 
 gence, in trained experience, in generosity, 
 in consecration. The everlasting need is of 
 the spirit of gentlemen, who will pay any 
 cost, and die if need be, but will never quit 
 the good cause. Well for the people who 
 discover this law, who search out behind
 
 160 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 all costumes and disguises their true and 
 natural leaders, and having found trust- 
 worthy men, elect to trust them, help them, 
 follow them, obey their call, and grow to be 
 such men themselves ! 
 
 Once more, we are able to answer the 
 standing question of moral skepticism. We 
 want to do right, men say ; we should like to 
 keep the Golden Rule ; we should like not 
 to be mercenaries, forever asking what pay 
 or office we will get. But how can we help 
 being mercenaries, how can we help doing 
 occasional mean and dishonorable things, so 
 long as other men around us are selfish and 
 dishonest? If all the others would obey the 
 Golden Rule we would join with them. If 
 the world would agree to some grand 
 scheme of socialism and guarantee us a 
 living we would stop wrangling and com- 
 peting with each other. 
 
 Now, army life teaches men who say these 
 things a notable lesson. There was never 
 any army so patriotic, in which pure patriot- 
 ism prevailed, in which no mercenaries
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 161 
 
 were, which was not infested by vulgar sut- 
 lers and camp followers, which was not 
 preyed upon by base contractors, and which 
 had not plenty of critics and traitors in 
 its rear. How many of the army of the 
 Revolution had Washington's spirit and 
 not Gates'? How many of Grant's men 
 had Lincoln's spirit and needed neither 
 present bounty nor hope of pensions to 
 keep them in the ranks ? Yet what pa- 
 triot ever needed to halt in his patriotism 
 till his mercenary comrades had caught 
 up with him ? Washington's and Lin- 
 coln's kind of men never asked whether 
 they were a majority as compared with 
 Gates' and Arnold's men. Washington 
 never dreamed of saying to Gates, " I will 
 renounce my ambitions and give myself 
 to the service of the country, provided 
 you will do the same." He and men like 
 him simply devoted themselves, never 
 counting the cost when once a duty com- 
 manded them. No true soldier ever did 
 anything less. No victory would ever have
 
 162 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 been won if brave men waited for the 
 skulkers. 
 
 "No care for cowards, fight ! " 
 
 Is this, then, the rule of war and is it not 
 the rule of civilization ? Was it the law of 
 gentlemen while they were emerging from 
 barbarism, and is it not the eternal law of 
 gentlemen ? Must true men be provided 
 with a nice social scheme, and have guaran- 
 tees voted by unanimous multitudes, before 
 they deem it safe to do the divine deeds of 
 men ? We say that we believe in God ; we 
 call ourselves his sons ; we hold this to be a 
 righteous universe ; must we then see to it 
 that our salaries are assured before we dare 
 to practice justice, to tell the fearless truth, 
 to treat men as our brethren? 
 
 I have used a parable. I have drawn les- 
 sons from the stories of war. But war is 
 not civilization ; it is the rough scaffolding, 
 or false bridge, that men used while the 
 lasting archways were being built. Let us 
 proceed to tear down this unsightly scaf-
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 163 
 
 folding. True civilizers have no further use 
 for it. " Ah ! " men reply, " we still have 
 need for war. We cannot trust men as we 
 wish. We suspect the nations over the 
 seas. We need ironclads to defend our 
 commerce; we will disarm when all the 
 world agrees to do the same." This is what 
 the world has said to every advance move- 
 ment of reform or enlightenment. The 
 world was never ready, or will be ready, to 
 march together one forward step. The 
 world always calls for object lessons in the 
 one or the few who dare to take risks, to 
 set the banners in advance, and to bid the 
 multitude come on. The Czar will never 
 persuade the rival nations to beat their 
 swords into pruning-hooks on a given day. 
 A single nation must take the splendid 
 venture by itself. America has this oppor- 
 tunity. Let America say to the world, 
 " Our strength is in justice ; we wish to do 
 no wrong to any people ; we are friends of 
 all nations ; see ! we are ready to adjudi- 
 cate all questions by the methods of peace
 
 164 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 and good will." Grant, if you like, that 
 this course involves risk. It involves risk 
 when we travel without carrying weapons. 
 Which risk is more noble to maintain 
 toward the world the attitude of barbarians 
 or of civilized men ? 
 
 The American nation are not going to de- 
 cide at once and by an easy majority to put 
 aside the militarism of thousands of years. 
 It is not yet popular to vote against appro- 
 priations for the army and navy, and for 
 coast defenses. Wait, the cautious say, till 
 the millennium draws near. So the cautious 
 have never yet grown tired of saying. The 
 need is the greater of men and women, and 
 specially of noble youth, committed to prin- 
 ciples of justice, believers in civilization, not 
 to say Christianity, fearless of what people 
 say, outspoken by voice, influence, acts, and 
 votes, with the spirit of gentlemen, leaders 
 of a new and saner public opinion against 
 the old giant curse of militarism ; and not 
 against militarism alone. A dozen grand 
 adventures in our day call for volunteers
 
 THE SOLDIERLY LIFE. 165 
 
 who will stand to the fore. It is of such as 
 these that Wordsworth sings : 
 
 " Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
 Plays in the many games of life that one 
 Where what he most doth value must be won ; 
 Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
 Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
 This is the happy warrior; this is he, 
 Whom every man in arms should wish to be."
 
 166 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 
 
 I WANT to take now the point of view of 
 the man who calls himself " practical." He 
 hears what poets and preachers and reform- 
 ers say, and he admires their ideas. He 
 goes to church as he would go to a picture 
 gallery; here seems to be another world 
 from that in which he dwells and works. 
 He is rather glad that there are poets and 
 orators, that there is a realm of ideal things 
 which a tired man can occasionally visit. 
 Who will deny that the thought of a divine 
 universe is beautiful and restful ? 
 
 The practical man, however, does not take 
 the fine thoughts of the idealists very seri- 
 ously. He does not purpose to live in the 
 realm of religion. "The real world," he 
 says to himself, " is a practical world. I 
 face conditions and facts," he says, "not
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 167 
 
 theories. The world in which I live, what- 
 ever its destiny may be, is pretty barbarous 
 yet ; it is a world which has to put locks on 
 its doors and policemen on its street cor- 
 ners." "Besides," he goes on to say, "I 
 must earn my living; I must support my 
 family ; I must take this world 'as I find it; 
 I must adjust myself to actual men, and not 
 to the life of angels." The practical man at 
 times is tired of the idealists. They ask 
 him to do impracticable things; they chal- 
 lenge him to take daring and unpromising 
 risks. They do not always rest his mind 
 when now and then they appear in the pul- 
 pit; they set his conscience against his in- 
 clinations, his habits, and even against his 
 cooler judgment. Sometimes he is tempted 
 to despise them as mere dreamers ; again he 
 suspects that they are only "professionals," 
 making a business of poetry, philanthropy, 
 and religion, as he himself makes a business 
 of dealing in wheat or stocks. 
 
 I am bound to have sympathy with the 
 difficulties of the plain practical men. I
 
 168 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 respect their questions, which deserve a care- 
 ful answer. I do not wish to live in a world of 
 dreams ; I share in the characteristic Anglo- 
 Saxon admiration for energy, enterprise, 
 achievement the wise and successful con- 
 duct of affairs. I am a believer in a religion 
 that is either good now in this earth, or 
 else, if it is not usable and workable here, 
 has for me no promise whatever. My 
 thought of a divine universe embraces all 
 human business, the relations of indus- 
 try, of society, and of politics. ... I 
 have also as strong a sense of abhorrence of 
 professional philanthropy as I have of all 
 forms of priestcraft. The " unpardonable 
 sin " is to turn art, poetry, ideals, or re- 
 ligion into traffic and lucre. I can, there- 
 fore, admit no valid distinction between the 
 men of religion and practical men ; I can 
 endure no aristocracy of professed philan- 
 thropists. I preach the democratic gospel, 
 that every man should serve, help, and love 
 his fellows. If this is not practical for the 
 wage-earner, the merchant, and the states-
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 169 
 
 man I doubt if it is practical or obligatory 
 for any one. 
 
 Let us clear our minds as to what we 
 mean by ideals. We are all idealists, so far 
 as we have any practical art, skill, or use. 
 An ideal is simply an intelligent plan or 
 pattern. The ideal is that which ought to 
 be. The good gardener has an ideal of his 
 garden ; the housekeeper has an ideal of 
 good domestic service ; the merchant has 
 his ideals of how his business should be ad- 
 vanced ; the inventor is forever working out 
 ideals of machinery or electrical appliances ; 
 the painter, the sculptor, the architect, and 
 the engineer work by ideal plans. We speak 
 of the poet's or artist's dream. Lo ! what he 
 dreams is presently incarnated in marble or in 
 literature in "Paradise Lost," or in the 
 "Minute Man" at Concord. Has a man 
 no plan or ideal of his day's work ? Then you 
 must give him a master ; he is the most un- 
 practical of men. Who has the most far- 
 reaching plans? Who is the man of the 
 architectonic mind? You make him the
 
 170 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 captain of industries, the commander of 
 armies, the king among men. 
 
 Yes, some one says, but are not the ideals 
 of religion of a different order ? The ideals 
 of a reasonable and civilized religion, I an- 
 swer, are the plans and patterns of what 
 ought to be in human society. Whoever 
 first laid down the Ten Commandments was 
 an idealist statesman. Who finds fault 
 with his plan? Moral and spiritual ideals 
 are not dreams for angels in Heaven ; they 
 are actual working plans for the higher life 
 of man here and now. If they are not work- 
 ing plans, good for your homes, good for 
 education, good foi 5 neighbors wherewith to 
 live happily together, good for workers and 
 employers, good for cities, good for the 
 family of nations, then I, for one, have no 
 use for them. The architect's ideal is for a 
 house or a cathedral ; the landscape garden- 
 er's ideal or plan is for a park. These are 
 ideals for man's tools or pleasures, for parts 
 of his life. Moses', Jesus', Paul's, Channing's 
 ideal is for human life as a whole, for the
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 171 
 
 fulfillment of his happiness. Will any one 
 deny that it is practical to plan for the wel- 
 fare of cities, states, nations, and indeed for 
 all humanity ? 
 
 This is not saying that there are no fool- 
 ish idealists, in other words, foolish archi- 
 tects, careless engineers, bad artists, short- 
 sighted politicians, reckless promoters of 
 mines, banks, and trusts. The good planner 
 or idealist takes account of all the facts, 
 counts the cost of his enterprise, adjusts 
 himself to each new situation, and studies 
 the strength of material, not least of all, the 
 human material with which he must work. 
 The average man takes short views ; the 
 animal takes no views at all. Shall we not 
 say that the good idealist takes long views ? 
 He plans not for to-day or to-morrow merely, 
 but for the next year, and the next century. 
 What can you desire more than to plan, de- 
 sign, and construct somewhat as God does ? 
 The good idealist is the good and true 
 thinker, who thinks before he executes, 
 plans before he builds.
 
 172 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Many seem to suppose that as soon as an 
 idealist conceives an idea he must at once 
 proceed as if the idea had been realized. 
 As if the painter should dream about his 
 paintings, but never touch his brush to the 
 canvas ; as if the sculptor should live in 
 the realm of beauty without ever putting 
 his chisel to the marble ! So I suppose in- 
 nocent souls might dream of the millennium 
 and play that it had arrived ! They might 
 take the bolts off their doors ; they might 
 lend or give their money to any one who 
 asks ; they might never " resist evil," or 
 defend even a child from the assault of a 
 ruffian or a maniac ; they might not consent 
 to earn or hold property. Thus Count 
 Tolstoi is often held up as an example of 
 the true and consistent idealist. 
 
 Ask what the wise manager does in clear- 
 ing the wilderness, in building houses, in 
 laying out railroads, and then see if the 
 moral and spiritual idealist does not proceed 
 in exactly the same manner. A colonist, for 
 example, goes into the wilderness to estab-
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 173 
 
 lish a home. He begins with a dream, if you 
 please. He sees in his dream the home of 
 the future, the commodious house, the 
 smooth lawn, the well-filled barns, broad 
 fields of corn and wheat, and a prosperous 
 commonwealth. Does he therefore sit down 
 as if the dream were true ? Not unless he is 
 a fool and only a dreamer. Around him is a 
 howling wilderness, wild creatures and wild 
 men, endless call for labor and patience, 
 in this day of small things. His dream is 
 the pattern toward which he labors. He 
 runs no lawn-mower over the burnt stumps 
 in front of his little log hut, but one by one 
 he roots the stumps out, and year by year he 
 widens the clearing in the forest. This is 
 the parable of the everlasting practical task 
 of the wise idealist. 
 
 Take another parable. A new union 
 terminal station had to be built for several 
 railways in one of our great cities. All the 
 tracks of these roads had to be relocated, 
 while the vast freight and passenger traffic 
 went on uninterrupted. Suppose yourself
 
 174 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 for a moment to have been one of the divis- 
 ion superintendents of the new work. The 
 lookers-on tell you that you have undertaken 
 an impossible task. They do not see how 
 the new tracks can ever be relaid without 
 for one day stopping the business of the 
 railways. The work is beset with difficulties 
 and disappointments ; contractors are unable 
 always to come to time with their brick and 
 mortar and metal; quicksands possibly ap- 
 pear in the excavations. You dream of the 
 finished work ; you foresee its comfort and 
 convenience. But you never act for a mo- 
 ment as if the plans had already been car- 
 ried out ; you will not yet let the cars pass 
 over the new tracks; you will not trust 
 freight upon the incomplete bridges ; every- 
 thing so far is provisional. Meanwhile you 
 work day and night ; you urge onward 
 the laggard contractors ; if pieces of road- 
 way are behindhand you put on extra men ; 
 you meet emergencies with tireless patience 
 and invention. This is good idealism. 
 This present world, as it now is, full of
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 175 
 
 savage men, only half civilized even in Ber- 
 lin, Paris, London, Washington, or New 
 York, still ravaged by man's avarice and 
 hate, with primitive volcanic passions liable 
 any day to rise into active eruption, is the 
 standing problem for the idealist. It is the 
 same kind of problem for the lover of law 
 and order, the builder of civilization, as the 
 wilderness presents to the colonist, as the 
 new Nicaragua canal will be to its promoters, 
 engineers, and contractors. It is a work 
 not only to be imagined and planned, but 
 also to be executed. There are those who 
 hold aloof from the task, and call this too 
 vile a world to touch. They complain that 
 they cannot engage in human business with- 
 out tainting their souls and becoming ac- 
 complices in other men's greed and oppres- 
 sion ; they tell us that no one can undertake 
 practical politics without compromise and 
 corruption. They say that the world is not 
 yet ripe for the application of their ideals. 
 Sometimes they run away from the world 
 altogether and grieve over its wickedness;
 
 176 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 sometimes they make it their business to ex- 
 ploit and reveal its evil ways ; sometimes, 
 most pathetic of all, they turn their backs 
 on their visions, and try to be " practical," 
 like those who have never seen any ideals, 
 and they end by becoming cynical and un- 
 scrupulous. The true idealist never runs 
 away from the world, never despairs of his 
 task, never consents to play the part of a 
 coward or traitor, never ceases his attempt 
 to realize his vision, that is, to carry out 
 his plan. 
 
 The world, as it is, is like the orange tree. 
 There is fruit on the tree at one and the 
 same time in all stages of development. 
 There are blossoms, and green fruit, and 
 here and there a ripe and golden orange. 
 Suppose that you are a drop of the life sap 
 in the tree, charged to carry your vigor 
 wherever you are bidden to go. You are 
 sent to the ripe, luscious fruit to add one 
 more drop of sweetness to it ; or you are 
 sent to help ripen fruit which is already 
 beginning to turn yellow ; or you are sent to
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 177 
 
 the hard green fruit to soften and ripen it ; 
 or you are sent to the youngest blossom on 
 the tree, where your coming means the set- 
 ting of the fruit. There is no difference in 
 the nature of your task, wherever you go. 
 You suffer no compromise when you enter 
 into the greenness and crudity of the half- 
 formed oranges ; you abate nothing from 
 your ideal when you only succeed in making 
 the sourness a little less; the one law of 
 your being is to give your single drop of 
 life toward making the sweetest possible 
 orange. Your life is not lessened or hurt 
 because you are sent to be a pioneer in the 
 divine work of making green fruit ripe. 
 
 Is there no compromise, some one may 
 ask, in taking up grimy work and associat- 
 ing with all kinds of comrades ? Does one 
 not sometimes have to work alongside of 
 rogues and miscreants? It is not com- 
 promise, I answer, to live in the world as it 
 is God's growing orange tree. There is 
 no compromise in living a friendly life 
 towards all men, in a school with dull and
 
 178 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 bad scholars, in a mill or factory with ineffi- 
 cient workmen, in a bank or counting-room 
 with careless clerks, in politics or in society 
 with the ambitious, the vulgar, and the 
 selfish. While you remain true, faithful, 
 honorable, good tempered, high minded, and 
 friendly, while you seek the ends for which 
 you are bidden to live, your soul can never 
 be tainted because others do not yet see or 
 seek the same ends. But compromise begins 
 when you cease to tell the truth, or to do 
 justice, or to do faithful service, when you 
 stoop from the stature of your manhood to 
 cowardice or selfishness. 
 
 I can imagine a multitude of men pulling 
 a great load together. There is a goal to 
 which the load must be brought ; there is a 
 straight road in which it must be kept. I 
 can imagine some of the men, careless of 
 their work, swaying from side to side ; others 
 dropping their hold on the rope and forsak- 
 ing their work ; others attempting to delay 
 the work, or even to turn the load in another 
 direction. The actual progress of the load
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 179 
 
 is the resultant of the forces of all the men, 
 the negligent, the idle, the half-hearted, the 
 recalcitrant, as well as the earnest and the 
 faithful. It is compromise if I too drop my 
 hold on the rope, or if I yield to the swaying 
 forces which hinder the forward motion. It 
 is no compromise, provided I pull with all 
 my might to keep the load in the straight 
 road. It is not my fault even if for a time 
 the rope is swayed out of the true line, 
 provided I still keep my direction. So with 
 the great car of human progress, my one ef- 
 fort is to pull with all my might, and to 
 keep the rope as straight as I can. The 
 time never can be when I need to give up 
 my task, or again, to consent to turn with 
 the swaying multitude to the right or the 
 left to do evil. 
 
 The nineteenth century has been the rich- 
 est in the annals of mankind in the story 
 of its great idealists. No lesson of the cen- 
 tury has been more impressive than the 
 fact that the idealist is the most practical 
 man in the world. In other words, the most
 
 180 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 practical men of the century have proved to 
 be men who worked toward ideal ends. 
 Read the biographies of the illustrious men 
 who have made the character of the century 
 merchants, manufacturers, inventors, voy- 
 agers, discoverers, the men of science, the 
 poets, the thinkers, statesmen, administra- 
 tors, and educators. There were never so 
 many biographies written in a hundred years 
 before. The characteristic of a remarkable 
 number of them is that the men and women 
 whose lives are described thought and acted 
 on the long lines of truth, justice, fidelity, 
 good will, and humanity. Their practical 
 efficiency can be seen to spring out of their 
 idealism. To a large degree they have ap- 
 preciated that their work was a part of a 
 universal order ; they have not sought mere 
 personal or selfish success, but the promotion 
 of learning, the increase of human happi- 
 ness, the enlargement of human welfare, the 
 achievement of liberty, the attainment of a 
 lasting civilization. Gladstone, John Bright, 
 Lord Lawrence, Livingstone, Montefiore,
 
 A PRACTICAL QUESTION. 181 
 
 Darwin, Huxley, General Gordon, Tenny- 
 son and the Brownings, Martineau and the 
 Arnolds, Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi ; Lafay- 
 ette, Victor Hugo, Renan ; Schleiermacher, 
 Mendelssohn, Lotze, and a procession of 
 German scholars, scientists, and lovers of 
 truth ; Swiss political thinkers, and men of 
 affairs, who have made the institutions of 
 their little country the model for the world ; 
 Channing and Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, 
 and Whittier, Garrison and the victorious 
 heroes of the conflict with human slavery, 
 Charles Brace and Armstrong, how can 
 we begin to recount the names of the men 
 and women who would surely, like Abou 
 Ben Adhem, bid the recording angel to 
 write : 
 
 " . . . I pray thee, then, 
 Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 
 
 The wonder and beauty of their lives is 
 that to a marvelous extent they achieved 
 what even the world's short sight accounts 
 success. Not seeking anything for them-
 
 182 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 selves, only obeying the law which bids men 
 give, utter themselves, live, and serve lo ! 
 these men had what they did not seek : 
 friends, honors, fame, the love and confi- 
 dence of their fellows. Surely this must be 
 a divine world wherein they succeed best, 
 and alone have permanent success, who with 
 most utter loyalty follow ideal and divine 
 ends ; who speak truth without fear, per- 
 form duty by an inward compulsion, and 
 make their business the service of humanity. 
 Who, then, shall we say is the practical man 
 of affairs, whom the new century demands 
 as its chosen leader and helper? It is the 
 upright, outspoken, noble, and generous 
 gentleman, the friend and lover of men, co- 
 worker with God.
 
 WHAT IS THE USE f 183 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WHAT IS THE USE? 
 
 THIS is the question of doubt and pessi- 
 mism. It arises out of moods of weariness 
 and physical depression. It comes at times 
 in the reaction after success and victory. 
 Children often ask it as well as grown men. 
 Sensualists ask it, like the Solomon of Ec- 
 clesiastes, of the vanity of pleasures and lux- 
 uries which they ought never to have had. 
 Saints and heroes have often asked it in 
 bitterness of spirit in their lonely Gethsem- 
 anes : What is the use ? 
 
 You may be sure that Columbus' men 
 often asked this question as they pushed 
 their venturesome way toward the unknown 
 edge of the earth. Did not the master's 
 stout heart ever doubt whether he should 
 see Spain again? The little company on 
 the " Mayflower " must have asked the sor-
 
 184 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 rowful question, as " days, weeks, and months 
 passed by, and winter overtook them on 
 the deep," and many a time thereafter, while 
 death hewed down their ranks in the land 
 of their exile. What use was it to suffer 
 hunger and cold and the ravages of disease ? 
 The little army at Valley Forge must have 
 asked the same question while they marked 
 the snow with their bleeding feet. Did not 
 their great commander himself sometimes 
 wonder: What is the use? In the long 
 Civil War in the North and the South, 
 homesick men at the front and anxious 
 women in lonely farmhouses asked this 
 question : " What is the use ? " When the 
 lesson is not yet learned, when the play has 
 not been acted, when work turns into fatigue, 
 and hope is chilled, the human nature in us 
 easily droops toward doubt and despondency. 
 Was harvest ever rightfully earned, was suc- 
 cess or victory ever won, except by men 
 who had asked : What is the use ? 
 
 The question, what is the use? implies 
 intelligence. Because we are men and not
 
 WHAT IS THE USE f 185 
 
 brutes, an infinite discontent presses upon 
 us, and never will leave us till we are as- 
 sured that what we do is of use. For there 
 are things that are of no use, except only 
 as waste and pain and fever are of use to 
 warn men and urge them to obey the laws 
 of life. 
 
 There are schools in New York City 
 which require as the price of a boy's tuition 
 as much as would provide eight or ten 
 scholarships in certain colleges. Suppose 
 one of the boys on whom this costly culture 
 is lavished is lazy and idle, dawdles through 
 his tasks and never learns how to study or to 
 think, what is the use in wasting money 
 on such boys as this? Suppose the boy 
 goes to the university, and spends every 
 year more than two, three, five, or more 
 skilled workmen can earn being carried, 
 as it were, on the backs of a troop of men ; 
 suppose he never wakes up to the duties and 
 obligations which match his princely living, 
 and leaves his college as he entered it, an 
 idler and lounger, a university man without
 
 186 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ever having caught sight of what a divine 
 universe he is a citizen, what is the use of 
 such men as this in America ? 
 
 A certain university club holds banquets 
 which cost eight dollars for each plate. This 
 is in celebration of the college whose famous 
 motto is Christo et Ecclesice ! What is the 
 use of this gilded extravagance in mere eat- 
 ing and drinking ? What is the use in thus 
 disfellowshipping all college men of modest 
 income ? Is this the fruit of modern educa- 
 tion? 
 
 A hundred thousand Americans are said 
 to spend abroad every year a hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars. There are fine possibilities 
 in foreign travel ; our people may learn mod- 
 esty and promote international good will; 
 they may return filled with a new sense of 
 the responsibility which they owe in return 
 for their splendid enjoyments. But what 
 shall we say of those who come home arro- 
 gant, conceited, no more generous, no better 
 citizens for all that they have spent upon 
 their own pleasures ? What is the use
 
 WHAT IS THE USE? 187 
 
 of sending such spendthrift Americans 
 abroad ? 
 
 What is the use of the eight hundred 
 millions that we in the United States pour 
 out every year for alcoholic drinks? And 
 the vast sum besides that goes up in smoke ? 
 What moiety of this colossal tribute to men's 
 self-indulgence can be justified at all ? What 
 lover of his country, seeing the immense 
 need of money wherewith to do the work of 
 humanity, of education, of civilization, can 
 bear to add anything to these gigantic forms 
 of extravagance ? 
 
 What shall we say of the billions that go 
 to maintain the military establishments of 
 " Christendom " ? What is the use of burn- 
 ing all this treasure, not to speak of sacrific- 
 ing human lives, on the altars of the Moloch 
 of barbarism ? A people who purpose to do 
 justice, who covet nothing that does not 
 belong to them, surely need not live in con- 
 stant and ruinous fear and suspicion of other 
 peoples. 
 
 I have intimated that there are transcen-
 
 188 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 dent values. It is because we possess an 
 ideal standard of value that we question 
 the use of certain base or doubtful things. 
 It was of use that early men, Moses 
 and Solon, and unknown Egyptians before 
 them, laid down the foundations of law 011 
 which all human institutions and govern- 
 ments must be built. It was of use that 
 brave men waged war, fierce though it was, 
 against time-honored systems of cruel and 
 lustful idolatry, and proclaimed the one God 
 against the worshippers of Baal and Ashta- 
 roth. It was doubtless of use that lonely 
 Hebrew prophets stood up against the op- 
 pression and avarice of their nobles and 
 defended the rights of the poor. We feel 
 to-day the impulse of their inspiration ; we 
 still quote their ringing words of faith in 
 the coming kingdom of righteousness. 
 
 The whole world agrees that it was of use 
 that a Galilean carpenter lived his brief life 
 and died an ignominious death. His name 
 has become symbolic of a new order or type 
 of humanity the men of good will.
 
 WHAT IS THE USE? 189 
 
 Modern civilization follows slowly in the 
 track of the man, who came, not to get but 
 to give, not to be paid or praised or re- 
 warded, but to achieve and accomplish, not 
 even to be loved, least of all to be wor- 
 shipped, but to love and to do the deeds that 
 love bids. This is the ideal man to whom 
 the race now looks. We are just now at 
 last learning not merely to look backward 
 to a figure of history, but forward to the 
 development of actual men and women 
 of the same beautiful order. Why do we 
 look back to ideals in the past, unless we 
 move on toward the highest ideals of the 
 future ? 
 
 It was of use that a young Italian in 
 Assissi, who had never done a stroke of 
 honest work, waked up one day to see the 
 needs of the poor, and began to preach the 
 old forgotten gospel of service and brother- 
 hood. All Europe and distant England 
 heard of this good Francis. His humble lay 
 preachers stirred the fire of humanity in 
 men's hearts. English Lollards, who helped
 
 190 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 make American Puritans, drew moral life 
 from this single man's zeal and love. 
 
 The sorrows and pains of the mothers 
 who bore Shakespeare and Milton and Go- 
 ethe, Channing and Martineau, Lucretia 
 Mott and Abraham Lincoln, were doubtless 
 of use. Shall we stop with the mothers of 
 illustrious men and women? Ask the mil- 
 lions of good mothers who have borne chil- 
 dren, and lost some of them in childhood, and 
 lost others again in the promise of youth, or 
 have seen them go from their faces to make 
 homes in the ends of the earth ask them 
 if all this pain and sorrow were worth while ! 
 We seem to hear a chorus of answers : 
 " Yes ! It was infinitely worth while to 
 have had our children's love and smiles 
 the eternal love-message of God." Who 
 was ever poorer for having borne the sacred 
 cost of love? The fact is, no sane mind 
 ever doubts that certain divine and price- 
 less .qualities, truth, justice, faithfulness, 
 loyalty, love, are of use ; that a certain type 
 of life which bears the fruitage of these qual-
 
 WHAT IS THE USE? 191 
 
 ities is of use ; that there have been lives in 
 this world of infinite worth. 
 
 It has often been said that this human life 
 is worthless and empty, unless the hope of 
 immortality is added. The fact is, there 
 come in this present life scenes of such won- 
 der and beauty, ideals and visions so lovely, 
 interests so immense and dramatic, hours of 
 rest and peace so unfathomable, activities so 
 divine as if the eternal power throbbed in us, 
 moments of ecstasy so unspeakable, such a 
 sense of rhythm, harmony, and music, as 
 if we were let into the presence chamber of 
 the Almighty, that if annihilation yawned 
 at our feet we should perforce say: "It 
 has been well." Would we exchange one 
 of these radiant moments for an endless 
 paradise of mere sensuous existence ? Have 
 we not known men and women who have 
 taken what they thought the risks of hell 
 for the sake of truth or love? The myth 
 was that Prometheus stole the sacred fire 
 and suffered seons of torture. Did he 
 regret that he had held the divine forces
 
 192 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 and lived as a god, though only for a brief 
 day? But the scenes, the interests, the vis- 
 ions, the days and hours of which I speak, 
 do not forebode hell, or point the way of an- 
 nihilation ; they are incredible in a godless 
 world, they tell us of an infinite nature in 
 us, they bring us into the presence of God 
 and give us the foregleam of his own eter- 
 nity. I speak of facts of human experience, 
 marvelously lighting up the mystery of exis- 
 tence. The infinite element in human life 
 ever and anon flames up. The stress of great 
 burdens, duties, responsibilities, to which 
 the soul yields itself, stirs it into flame. 
 
 The master question of philosophy and 
 religion What shall we make of our uni- 
 verse ? What use is it ? is just like the 
 little question of each individual life. It 
 comes from the same root. It is answered 
 in the same way. I ask, in despair, " What 
 am I good for? " when I fix my eyes on the 
 cost and toil of life, without seeing what the 
 cost goes to purchase. The cure of my pes- 
 simism is to count up my assets. I do not
 
 WHAT IS THE USE * 193 
 
 mean by "assets," houses and money and 
 titles. No man ever rested his soul by look- 
 ing at money values. I mean those spiritual 
 assets that constitute my manhood. So my 
 doubt about the world, which comes from 
 seeing the mass of all the toil and misery, 
 the expense and outgo, the struggle and the 
 war, has its cure as soon as we begin to 
 count up the world's spiritual assets. The 
 census returns give us no answer to our pes- 
 simism. But we mass the deeds of heroism, 
 the courage, the faith, the hope, the growing 
 sympathy and love ; we pass in review the 
 procession of the true-hearted men and the 
 good women of all times. Have we not 
 known some of them the men of infinite 
 trustworthiness, " the true children of God " ? 
 Our libraries are full of psalms and hymns, 
 poems and prayers, histofy and prophecy. 
 Lo ! as we read, the mystery of chaos and 
 evil rolls back, as if God had spoken : " Let 
 there be light." Before the first apple tree 
 that bursts into blossom in May the wintry 
 pessimism of the whole country-side passes
 
 194 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 away. So before the smile of true love 
 chaos itself begins to be penetrated by the 
 signs of the coming order. 
 
 Please observe that our times of depres- 
 sion are not, as a rule, while we are actually 
 at our work. We ask, " What is the use ? " 
 when we survey life from a distance, when 
 we have not taken up our task, or when we 
 have dropped it, when the trolley is off the 
 wire. The idlers are the pessimists. If I 
 am ignorant I can see no use in spending 
 time and money for schools. If I have 
 never given attention to music I cannot 
 understand my friend's enthusiasm over 
 symphony concerts and the opera. If my 
 honor has never cost me anything I set 
 little value upon conscience. If I do not 
 take the trouble to vote I cannot easily see 
 what the use is in advocating the Australian 
 ballot or civil-service reform. If I have 
 never given a dollar to help my fellows I 
 cannot understand what use it is to send 
 money out of the country to starving India.
 
 WHAT IS THE USE? 195 
 
 If I rarely or never go to church I join those 
 who scoff at religion. 
 
 But change all this. Suppose you are 
 earning your way through college : you can 
 hardly now get education enough. Suppose 
 you have saved money to buy a season 
 ticket to the symphony concert : the more 
 you go, the more you want to continue to 
 go every winter. Suppose you have become 
 poor for the sake of keeping your honor: 
 you understand now what it means to 
 " hunger and thirst after righteousness ; " 
 you grudge no sacrifice that honor de- 
 mands. Suppose you have taken the hands 
 of the reformers and the lovers of men ; sup- 
 pose you have helped them with your money 
 and your time : you cease to have any doubt 
 about the use of the work that Jacob Riis 
 and Carl Schurz and Jane Addams and 
 Booker Washington are doing. Those never 
 despair who are doing the hardest work, 
 whose trolley is always on the wire. Those 
 whose life is to give their utmost measure 
 of human service are not pessimists. Is
 
 196 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 not this proof enough that the secret of life 
 is not to get but to give ? 
 
 This is no longer the doctrine of preachers 
 only, speaking conventional words in a 
 church. It is coming to be the settled word 
 of experience and life. It is the message of 
 the men of action. Great educators, like 
 President Eliot and President Jordan, take it 
 up. Do you want the happy life ? they ask. 
 See to it, then, they urge, that you give your 
 life to the largest and noblest uses of human 
 society. Exorcise the mercenary spirit from 
 your acts. Live your life in the spirit of 
 the gentleman, high-minded, untiring, gener- 
 ous, public-spirited, dutiful, fearless of 
 danger, hopeful of good. No one shall ever 
 doubt your use in the world. You shall 
 never doubt your own use. While the elec- 
 tric power is on, and the arc light shines, 
 there is no doubt what the light is good for.
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 197 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 
 
 IT is my wish in this chapter not merely 
 to speak of the mystery of death, but to 
 trace the profound law that underlies, and 
 illumines also, the whole sorrowful side of 
 human life. Can religion assuage and en- 
 noble suffering and turn pain into the terms 
 of life and hope? Can it do this without 
 superstition or delusion? Can it do this 
 and remain quite reasonable and intelligent ? 
 Can it have a gospel for sufferers, which 
 shall also be a gospel to the well and strong ? 
 These questions afford the test of a true and 
 sane religion. 
 
 The stoics held it to be childish to rule 
 death out of their thoughts. There is a 
 tremendous range of stern facts which, like 
 the reefs and shoals in the course of the 
 navigator, ought to be accounted for and
 
 198 TEE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 laid down on the chart of life. No man 
 should ever be overtaken unawares by evil. 
 Christianity erected a worship of one who 
 died on a cross. Millions every year set 
 apart a stated Lenten season for the celebra- 
 tion of austerities and the commemoration of 
 " the man of sorrows." By a strange para- 
 dox the day on which he died is called 
 " Good Friday," as if to emphasize by a per- 
 petual object lesson the word of the poet 
 Sophocles that " pain is gain." The men 
 and women of Puritan ancestry seem often 
 to have received by a sort of blood in- 
 heritance an oppressive sense of the insepar- 
 ableness of human life from sacrifice. In a 
 recent story, " Henry Worthington, Idealist," 
 the interest partly turns upon the exagger- 
 ated foreboding of the heroine that her life 
 is destined to sorrow ; and though the story 
 ends well enough, the author certainly justi- 
 fies the old motto that " the course of true 
 love never runs smooth." Many young 
 people have this almost superstitious dread 
 of the mystery of sorrow. When it comes
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 199 
 
 to them they are overwhelmed, having no 
 clue to understand it. 
 
 The element of sorrow or pain seems to 
 be in the warp and woof of things. It must 
 be more or less in the lot of all of us. It is 
 in the material out of which the fabric of 
 life is wrought. They used to teach that it 
 came from sin, death being the supreme 
 punishment of disobedience. But pain is in 
 that out of which sin itself arises. For dis- 
 obedience is only the child's unintelligent 
 attempt to snatch forbidden pleasure, or to 
 run away from pain. And death was here 
 before man came. We may even reverently 
 say that God himself could not prevent 
 sorrow, as we say that God cannot make a 
 triangle without three sides. I go further 
 than this. I pity the angels in heaven if 
 they have no sorrow. This would be to 
 have no sympathy. To be conscious that 
 others grieve and not to grieve with them 
 would be not to love. I believe that the 
 life of God is not less, but more, for having 
 as one of its constituent elements what our
 
 200 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 lives have, namely, this universal element 
 of sorrow. To take this away from the 
 divine life is to put a limit upon it, and to 
 make it less than humanity. Who could 
 love an impassive God? 
 
 I go further than this. If I had my life 
 to live over again, and if I were given the 
 choice to accept it from infancy to old age, 
 without a disappointment, the shadow of a 
 loss, a hurt, or a pain, I should not dare to 
 take life on such terms ; I should say rather, 
 " Give me such life as this universe offers, 
 with its strange vicissitudes, with its summer 
 and winter, its shadows and sunshine, its 
 bitter sweet of sorrow mingled in its cup." 
 If the raising of my hand would save those 
 whom I love most from all pain throughout 
 eternity I should not dare to raise my hand. 
 What is universal, what comes thus to all, 
 I believe is not evil, but good. 
 
 This is very different from saying that 
 pain or disease or death does not exist. If 
 pain did not exist there would be no call 
 for sympathy, human or divine. It does
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 201 
 
 exist, and therefore sorrow is in the world, 
 and therefore love goes on its tireless quests. 
 
 I do not deny the instinct in us which 
 prays, Deliver us from evil. We can imag- 
 ine the wood in the hands of the carver, 
 or the ore in the smelter's furnace. If the 
 ore could be conscious, and yet not quite 
 prescient of the finished work, it would 
 shrink from the smelter's fire. So we, being 
 conscious, but not quite prescient, shrink 
 from the blows and the fires of life. It is as 
 if we were climbing from below : pain and 
 sorrow urge us from behind that we may 
 escape them; joy, peace, and love are the 
 prizes above us toward which we are urged. 
 
 We say that toil and work are good, but 
 we are always striving to economize labor 
 and minimize toil. The labor of the future 
 is in finding out and turning on the forces 
 of the universe to do our work. Pain and 
 sorrow likewise are moral or spiritual labor. 
 The divine pressure upon and within us is 
 to economize and minimize this kind of labor, 
 to reduce the friction that selfishness makes
 
 202 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 against the free movement of love. The 
 work of civilization comes to be in finding 
 out and turning on the inexhaustible re- 
 sources of love. 
 
 My meaning will be plainer when we ask 
 what constitutes real and full life. As 
 Longfellow says, 
 
 " Not enjoyment and not sorrow, 
 Is our destined end and way." 
 
 One must still be very young not to have 
 perceived that things, prizes, money, praise, 
 pleasures, rank, and office do not satisfy 
 any one. We have already nearly got over 
 the wonder why it was that the good were 
 allowed to fail, to suffer, and to die. Life 
 is not measured by what men call success or 
 misfortune. Life is not primarily in get- 
 ting ; it is in expressing or uttering itself ; it 
 is in the exercise of every kind of power that 
 characterizes manhood. To express and show 
 forth physical power and perform the natural 
 functions of the bodily life is the delight of 
 the body. The best workman many a time 
 would rather work than eat. To express
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 203 
 
 thought, intellect, the sense of beauty, and 
 order this too is the normal delight of 
 the mind. To express the divinest of all 
 power love or good will to set it forth 
 and do its work, is the delight of the com- 
 plete man. To use body and mind, with 
 all the powers working together for love's 
 sake, for friendship, for patriotism, for 
 humanity, this is the essence of what we 
 call by the highest term, Life Eternal. For 
 this is the quality of the life of God. 
 
 What is the delight of the great engineers, 
 the men, for example, who carried the 
 Canadian Pacific railroad across the Rocky 
 mountains? Is it in being paid or ap- 
 plauded ? I hope not. They would choose 
 to have done their work if they barely got 
 their living out of it, or even if the praise 
 went to the wrong persons. Was their de- 
 light in merely cutting through loose gravel 
 or pushing their way over easy levels ? No ! 
 The great engineers' joy is in overcoming 
 obstacles, in solving hard problems, in ex- 
 pressing all the power, courage, intelligence,
 
 204 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 genius, that they possess, in a splendid piece 
 of human service. Show them steep cliffs, 
 deep canons, roaring mountain torrents, 
 quicksands, and bogs. Their delight is in 
 turning every kind of material to their mas- 
 ter purpose. So the divine life power in 
 man takes every material of experience 
 difficulties, losses, opposition, pain, as well 
 as successes, praise, favor, and joy and 
 weaves all into the beautiful harmony. 
 Through all things love expresses itself; 
 through nothing does it express itself with 
 such overwhelming persuasion as when it 
 reveals itself triumphing over pain or un- 
 daunted in the face of death. 
 
 See if this is not so. Take the simple 
 cases of hunger and thirst, weariness and 
 exposure, hurts and pains. I am not sorry 
 that I have had to bear bodily discomfort. 
 I know better what health is than if I had 
 never been uncomfortable. There is a law 
 in the body by which pressure calls out 
 elasticity. After pain ceases the thrill of 
 ecstasy often follows. Life thus rousing
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 205 
 
 itself to drive out disease, leaves a surplus 
 behind. 
 
 Take the case of sorrow, either for one's 
 own transgression or, more ennobling, for 
 the wrong-doing of others. I pity the life 
 that has not had this element of penitence 
 in it. Have you never had sorrow for sin? 
 Then you do not know what it is to hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness. Has your 
 heart never ached at the cruelty, greed, op- 
 pression, and selfishness of the world, at the 
 tragedy of " man's inhumanity to man " ? 
 Then you do not know yet what it is to 
 keep company with the heroes. Pray God 
 to smite you, before the sun goes down, with 
 divine sorrow, pity, and shame. 
 
 You think it hard to suffer injustice, not 
 to be paid for your work, not to have a fair 
 measure of praise, not to win success, while 
 others less deserving take the prizes. I will 
 tell you what the real hardship is. It is to 
 be rewarded overmuch, to get success that 
 rightly belongs to others, to receive praise 
 and thanks which one does not deserve. I
 
 206 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 say deliberately that I am glad that I have 
 been often disappointed, and have even 
 suffered misunderstanding and apparent in- 
 justice. Such suffering has never done me 
 the slightest harm. I am glad to cherish 
 visions and dreams of possible attainment, 
 for which this life will hardly be long 
 enough. I see noble tasks which I am un- 
 likely ever to be allowed even to undertake. 
 Disappointments will mark my way till the 
 day of my death. God forbid that I brood 
 over them for one wasteful moment ! They 
 are the price that I pay for ideals which are 
 better than life. Bearing disappointments, 
 I am bearing the common lot of all God's 
 children. Not the meanest, but the noblest 
 have taken their share in this species of 
 spiritual labor. Was it not said of the great 
 William of Orange that he was beaten in 
 every battle, and his life to the last fatal 
 bullet was a series of disappointments ? But 
 he won liberty in Holland, nevertheless. 
 And, as the familiar hymn says,
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 207 
 
 " Jesus won the world through shame, 
 And beckons thee his road." 
 
 Take, again, the perennial miracle where- 
 by bereavement and death become trans- 
 formed into higher forms of life. I mean 
 life here and now, with immortality still 
 undrawn upon. A little book called "A 
 Boy's Life " illustrates this. In this book a 
 father tells the short simple story of a young 
 life. It is a completely healthy life, despite 
 growing invalidism; it is bright, cheerful, 
 happy, brave, manly, with all a natural boy's 
 instincts and interests. It is cut off at the 
 very flowering time of promise and hope. It 
 goes forth as it had gone on, without fear, 
 dutiful and courageous to the end. Must 
 this early death be called failure or defeat ? 
 The father says " No." He assures us that 
 every one in the little circle of his boy's 
 friends is better forever for this brief life. 
 The sorrow is thus already transmuted into 
 faith, hope, and love. This is no uncommon 
 story. It is illustrative of a great class of 
 facts.
 
 208 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Some one may say, How about the griefs, 
 disappointments, pain, and losses that 
 end in bitterness, suspicion, and selfishness ? 
 I hold that water is good, though on occa- 
 sion it may drown men. I hold that fire is 
 good, though it may burn our flesh. I can- 
 not call sorrow a disaster, because men have 
 not yet learned to handle or understand it. 
 I see a hundred children at their drawing- 
 lesson. If five or ten have caught the idea 
 and made the picture it does not trouble me 
 that the work of all the rest must be rubbed 
 out. If only one pupil has perceived the law 
 of the work this is the earnest that in due 
 time all will learn the lesson, and the good 
 and not the bad drawing will prevail. So 
 men's failures to understand and obey the 
 law of sorrow only prove that they are as 
 yet children, and not grown men. 
 
 Turn now to one of the masters and see 
 what he made of sorrow. Pick out the week 
 of Jesus' life which men have called " Pas- 
 sion Week," marking it as typical of the 
 direst human trouble. I suspect that they
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 209 
 
 have altogether mistaken the meaning of 
 the story. The week brought sorrow, but 
 it also brought the keenest joy. Here was 
 a man who was living for a few days on 
 the heights of life. Heart and soul and 
 mind and strength were occupied. All that 
 was in him of power, intellect, goodness, 
 rushed on to express itself and pour itself out. 
 This was the week in which the story was, 
 that the joyous city came out of its gates to 
 welcome the prophet of the new age. This 
 was the week in which he taught with au- 
 thority in the open temple. After busy 
 days, full of the conscious kingship of truth, 
 he returned each evening, surrounded by 
 friends, to the loving, restful home in Beth- 
 any. True, he wept over Jerusalem, but he 
 wept as one who saw the vision of the truths 
 that always build new cities. True, he 
 went down into the depths in the garden of 
 Gethsemane, as weary men, both before and 
 after victory, are fated often to suffer un- 
 speakable loneliness, but the legend tells an 
 eternal truth, that after the sorrow " angels
 
 210 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 came and ministered to him." True, he 
 hung upon the cross bitter hours, but when all 
 was finished, his soul, and not pain, was the 
 victor. Presently a new tide of humanity, 
 more hopeful, enthusiastic, and brotherly 
 than men had known, was sweeping over 
 the world. By and by great singers would 
 turn the events of this week into the most 
 noble music. 
 
 Do you pity Jesus for this glorious week ? 
 I do not conceive that he would have ac- 
 cepted your pity. What man in whose 
 veins the flow of life, power, love, has 
 tingled ever wanted pity of his fellows? 
 Do not call this " Passion Week ; " call it a 
 gleam and manifestation of eternal life. It 
 was such life as Luther lived at the Diet of 
 Worms, as Wolfe lived at Quebec, as Charles 
 Sumner lived striving for freedom in the 
 Senate Chamber, as Lincoln lived at the 
 height of his power, weighted with burdens, 
 victorious and fortunate even in the hour of 
 his death. 
 
 We see now what kind of life constitutes
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 211 
 
 tragedy. Not Jesus' life, but Herod's was 
 tragedy. For Herod had power, high sta- 
 tion, wealth, great duties, and he turned all 
 to waste, growing base and sensual with 
 every new honor or title. The story of 
 Pilate is tragedy. With the power of Rome 
 to uphold him in doing justice, he became a 
 cowardly and feeble accomplice in malice 
 and murder. The story of Judas is tragedy. 
 He had known the best man in the world, 
 and he had learned nothing from him; he 
 did not even know how to repent ! To pos- 
 sess and enjoy riches, talents, office, educa- 
 tion, influence, friendship, and then to stoop 
 to do mean, brutal, or cruel things, this is 
 tragedy. To bear hardship, to endure suf 
 fering, to encounter injustice, to face dis- 
 appointment, to grow more generous, noble, 
 resolute, to rise with every new load of care 
 or duty, to turn each stroke of pain into a 
 wiser love, to stand up like a king to meet 
 death and " greet the unseen with a cheer," 
 this is the demonstration of the living 
 God.
 
 212 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 "Speak, history! who are life's victors? Unroll thy 
 long annals and say, 
 
 Are they those whom the world called the victors who 
 won the success of a day? 
 
 The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Ther- 
 mopylae's tryst, 
 
 Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges, or Socrates? 
 Pilate, or Christ?" 
 
 My aim is to take away fear. If this is 
 God's world there is no need of fear or 
 anxiety. Treat it as God's world and two 
 wonderful facts become evident. First, 
 there is nothing which ever befalls you or 
 those whom you love which may not be 
 so handled as to translate it into beauty and 
 good. Human experiences of every sort 
 become so much material out of which to 
 create goodness, love, and life. This is the 
 law. In spite of seeming exceptions, I speak 
 with assurance in saying that I never knew 
 it to fail. They tell us that there is no feat 
 of the engineer's art needful for man that is 
 not possible. Is it desirable to lift loaded 
 ships from sea to sea, or blast a channel for 
 them to sail through the midst of the hills ?
 
 MEMENTO MORI. 213 
 
 Whatever needful thing humanity prays to 
 have done, science, genius, and hidden 
 powers of nature stand ready to effect. So 
 of the problems of the soul of man. It has 
 already been demonstrated that whatever 
 needs to be overcome in the name of love 
 can be not only overcome, but turned also 
 into moral and spiritual advantage. What- 
 ever befalls, the law is that, following the 
 voice of love, you shall thereby grow to the 
 stature of a fuller manhood. Try it and see. 
 Lastly, the true note of life is not sorrow 
 or sacrifice. Pain, losses, disappointments 
 are only the incidents of life. They may 
 be more or less. Life is blended of many 
 notes and voices ; joys and sorrows, toil and 
 rest, alternate. The keynote of life rises out 
 of the whole. It is no wail of grief ; it is 
 no bitter cry ; it is nothing to fear. Believe 
 me, it is musical, sweet, beautiful, a clarion 
 call. It is a psean of victory ; it tells a love 
 story, and is joy. It is the witness and the 
 present proof of immortality. For we are 
 admitted here in this world into the enjoy-
 
 214 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ment of a quality of life which is surely 
 divine ; it is above the range of material 
 change, accident or death. As Emerson 
 teaches, all that we know fills us with con- 
 fidence for what is beyond our sight. As 
 Jowett, the great scholar of Baliol, loved to 
 quote year by year in his old age : " The 
 best is yet to be." As Robert Browning 
 saw and sang : 
 
 " There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall 
 
 live as before ; 
 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound ; 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much 
 
 good more ; 
 On the earth, the broken arcs ; in the heaven a perfect 
 
 round."
 
 OUR RULE OF LIFE. 215 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 OUR RULE OF LIFE. 
 
 WE hate no one ; we envy no one ; we 
 disallow in ourselves jealousy, bitterness, or 
 wrath ; we put away indignation. Who are 
 we that we dare to be harsh or severe to our 
 fellows ? We propose to bear with men as 
 we wish them to bear with us. As we love 
 clean hands and unspotted clothing, so we 
 love clean thoughts and unspotted honor. 
 We cannot abide meanness, revenge, false- 
 hood, impurity. We pity those who are 
 ignorant, weak in will, or bound by animal 
 passions, who suffer the rule of vice and 
 selfishness. We never despise any man, as 
 we would not despise the blind or the sick. 
 The worse men are, the more childish, bar- 
 barous, or degraded their conditions are, the 
 more we owe them our help and our sym- 
 pathy.
 
 216 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Whenever friendliness goes out of us we 
 know that the light of our life has gone out ; 
 when we hate or scorn any one we become 
 in that moment outcasts from love, like those 
 whom we hate. We harbor no grievances in 
 our hearts ; we complain at nothing ; we as- 
 sume that " offenses must come," that mis- 
 understanding, disappointment, and injustice 
 in some measure must be met with and borne 
 in every man's life. We are not merce- 
 naries to bargain in advance whether the 
 day's work shall be more or less. We pur- 
 pose to live as free men, not as slaves. If 
 we are workmen and servants we are also 
 cooperators, sharers-, heirs, and sons of God. 
 We had rather suffer injustice than commit 
 it. We had rather be underpaid, under- 
 praised, underrated than to be paid, or 
 praised, or estimated for more than we and 
 our work are honestly worth. We desire 
 nothing comfort or money or honors 
 that must come at other men's expense or 
 pain or loss. 
 
 We will not harbor conceit, vanity, or
 
 OUR RULE OF LIFE. 217 
 
 pride, as if we were better than others, of 
 finer clay, or dearer to God ; as if we had 
 won by ourselves the priceless heritage of 
 wisdom or goodness. We remember that all 
 things which we possess have been given to 
 us, and that from those to whom much is 
 given much should be required. 
 
 We are glad whenever we see power, skill, 
 beauty, genius, faith, humanity, good will. 
 We are glad if these divine traits are in our- 
 selves ; we are glad to see them in other 
 men ; we are glad if we find them in those 
 who had seemed base, selfish, and evil. 
 
 We desire always to look truth in the 
 face, to follow her call, not to shrink from 
 her just rebuke. We are pledged, whether 
 conscience whispers or thunders, whether 
 multitudes go with us or not, equally to 
 obey. There is no shining height so great 
 whither for duty's sake we would not wish 
 to climb; no depth so forbidding whither 
 for mercy's sake we would not seek to pene- 
 trate. 
 
 Whether appreciated or not, we will yet
 
 218 THE RELIGION OF A GENTLEMAN. 
 
 try to be gracious ; we are here not to get, 
 but to give, to achieve, to accomplish, to 
 pour life out, and make love grow, to help, 
 to save, to uplift. We delight in all good 
 work done, whoever does it. 
 
 We will stand by and strengthen the 
 hands of the leaders and helpers in truth, in 
 science, in reform, in religion, for our city, 
 for our country, for humanity, as we would 
 wish, if we were leaders, that men might 
 stand by us. If ever our turn is to lead we 
 will be faithful and modest; we will ask 
 nothing for ourselves, remembering that he 
 who leads best must always be the servant 
 of all. 
 
 Our aim is to do true men's work in the 
 world ; like a good tree to bear some fruit ; 
 to leave the world after our stay in it better 
 off, and not poorer ; to pay our way as we go ; 
 if we make mistakes to atone for them 
 promptly ; if we have faults to try to correct 
 them ; to turn pain, sorrow, and losses into 
 larger sympathy, friendliness, and faith in 
 God ; to grow in gentleness, consideration,
 
 OUR RULE OF LIFE. 219 
 
 and thoughtfulness ; to keep our eyes on the 
 past only so far as to learn its lessons ; to 
 forebode nothing, to apprehend nothing, to 
 give fear no tenantry in our thoughts; 
 to keep our eyes on the future and ever 
 toward the light, while we do the nearest 
 present duty ; to march on in all weathers, by 
 night, if it must be, as well as by day, with 
 love warm in our hearts, and hope in our 
 eyes, as the sons of God, immortals, having 
 won here and now some foregleam of the 
 wisdom, the truth, the justice, and the death- 
 less good will which constitute Eternal Life. 
 " Finally, whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
 things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report; if there be any 
 virtue, and if there be any praise, think on 
 these things."
 
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