Man as a mere animal is necessarily active and energetic; otherwise he stagnates and degenerates. Labor is a curse, but work a blessing; and man's best work, of every kind, is done in the friction of life, not in ease and quiet. Man is, further, a being composed of cells, tissues, and organs, which were successively developed for him by the lower animal kingdoms. The old view, that man was the microcosm, had in it a certain amount of every important truth. We need to be continually reminded of our indebtedness in a thousand ways to the lowest and most insignificant forms of life.

Man is a vertebrate animal. This means that he has a locomotive, not protective, skeleton, composed of cartilage—a tough, elastic, organic material, hardened, as a rule, by the deposition of mineral salts, mainly phosphate of lime, in exceedingly fine particles, so as to form a homogeneous, flawless, elastic, tough, light, and unyielding skeleton, held together by firm ligaments.

The skeleton is internal, and this fact, as we have seen, gives the possibility of large size. And size is in itself no unimportant factor. Professor Lotze maintains that without man's size and strength, agriculture and the working of metals, and thus all civilization, would have been impossible. But we have already seen that there is an extreme of size, e.g., in the elephant, which makes its possessor clumsy, able to exist only where there are large amounts of food in limited areas, slow to reproduce, and lacking in adaptability. This extreme also is avoided in man; in this, as in many other particulars, he holds the golden mean. But we have also seen that large size is, as a rule, correlated with long life and great opportunity for experience and observation. And these are the foundations of intelligence. Hence the deliverance of the higher vertebrate, and especially of man, from any iron-bound subjection to instinct.

And here another question of vital importance meets us. Is man's life at present as long as it should or can be? The question is exceedingly difficult, but a negative answer seems more probable. We cannot but hope that, with a better knowledge of our physical structure, a clearer vision of the dangers to which we are exposed, more study of the laws of physiology, heredity, and of our environment, and above all, less reckless disregard of these in a mad pursuit of pleasure, wealth, and position, man's period of mature, healthy, and best activity may be lengthened, perhaps, even a score of years. The mitigation of hurry and worry alone, the two great curses of our American civilization, might postpone the collapse of our nervous systems longer than we even dream. And if we could add even five years to the working life of our statesmen, scholars, and discoverers, the work of these last five years, with the advantage of all previously acquired knowledge and experience, might be of more value than that of their whole previous life. Human advance could not but be greatly, or even vastly, accelerated.

Moreover, we have seen that the history of vertebrates is really the history of the development of the cerebrum, forebrain or large brain, as we call it in man. This is the seat in man of consciousness, thought, and will. This portion as a distinct and new lobe first appears in lowest vertebrates, increases steadily in size from class to class, reaches its most rapid development by mammals, and its culmination in man. During the tertiary period—the last of the great geological periods—the brain in many groups of mammals increased in size, both absolutely and relatively, eight to tenfold. Dr. Holmes says, that the education of a child should begin a century or two before its birth; man really began his mental education at least as early as the appearance of vertebrate life.

But man is a mammal. This means that every organ is at its best. The digestive system, while making but a small part of the weight of the body, and built mainly on the old plan, is wonderfully perfect in its microscopic details. The muscles are heavy and powerful, arranged with the weight near the axis of the body, and replaced near the ends of the appendages by light, tough sinews. The higher mammal is this compact, light, and agile. The skeleton is strong, and the levers of the appendages are fitted to give rapidity of motion even at the expense of strength. And this again is possible only because of the high development and strength of the muscles. Moreover, the highest mammals are largely arboreal, and in connection with this habit have changed the foreleg into an arm and hand. The latter became the servant of the brain and gave the possibility of using tools.

But increase in size and activity, and the expense of producing each new individual, led to the adoption of placental development. And the mammal is so complex, the road from the egg to the fully developed young is so long, that a long period of gestation is necessary. And even at birth the brain, especially of man, is anything but complete. Hence the necessity of the mammalian habit of suckling and caring for the young. And this feebleness and dependence of the young had begun far below man to draw out maternal tenderness and affection. And the mammalian mode of reproduction and care of young led to a more marked difference and interdependence between the sexes.

The result of this is man's family life, as Mr. John Fiske has shown so beautifully in that fascinating monograph, "The Destiny of Man." And family life once introduced becomes the foundation and bulwark of all civilization, morality, and religion. Far down in the mammalian series, before the development of the family, maternal education has become prominent, and the young begins life, benefited by the experiences of the parent. How much more efficient is this in family life. But, furthermore, the family is perhaps the first, certainly the most important, of those higher unities in which men are bound together. Social life of a sort undoubtedly existed, before man, among birds, insects, and lower mammals. The community was often defective or incomplete in unity, or existed under such limitations that it could not show its best results, but that it was of vast benefit from an even higher than mere physical standpoint, no one will, I think, deny. But with the family a new era of education and social life began.

First of all, the struggle for existence is thereby greatly modified and mitigated. This crowding out and trampling down of the weaker by the stronger is transferred, to a certain extent, from the individual to the family and, in great degree, from the family to larger and larger social units. For within the limits of the family competition tends to be replaced by mutual helpfulness, and not only are the loneliness and horror of the struggle between isolated individuals banished, but, what is vastly more, the family becomes the school of unselfishness and love. And what has thus become true of the single family, and groups of nearly related families, is slowly being realized in the larger units of communities and states. For, as families and communities are just as really organisms as are the individual men and women, whose soundness depends upon the healthy activity of every organ, so there is a survival, first of families, then of communities and rival civilizations, in proportion to their unity and soundness in every part. For on account of the close bonds of family and social life, and in connection with the development of articulate speech, a new kind of heredity, so to speak, arises, of vast importance for both good and evil. This mental and moral heredity, over-leaping all boundaries of blood and natural kinship, spreads light and good influence or an immoral contagion through the community. And thus, in sheer self-defence, society passes laws setting limits to the oppression of the poor and weak, lest, degraded and brutalized, they become breeding centres of physical and moral disease in the community. The positive lesson that the surest mode of self-defence is the elevation of these submerged classes, we are just beginning to learn and apply.

By the ever-increasing acceleration of the development the gap between man and the lower animal widens with wonderful rapidity. Of course it is only in man, and higher man, that these last and highest results of mammalian structure appear. But that, far removed as they are, they are the results of mammalian and vertebrate characteristics cannot, I think, be well denied. And this is only one of innumerably possible illustrations of the fact that all our most highly prized institutions are rooted far back in our ancestry, often ineradicably in the very organs of our bodies. And thus evolution, which many view only from its radical side—and it has a radical side—is really the conservative bulwark of all that is essentially worth possessing in the past.

But every factor in man's development tends toward intellectual and spiritual development. Man's vast increase of brain; his finely balanced body; his upright gait; setting his hands free from the work of locomotion that they might become the skilful servants of the mind; finally, articulate speech and social, and, above all, family, life, all tended in this same direction.

And this makes the great difficulty in assigning man his proper place in our systems of classification. Our zooelogical classifications depend upon anatomical characteristics; and anatomically man belongs among the order primates. But mental and moral values cannot be expressed in terms of anatomy, any more than we can speak of an idea of so many horse-power, and hence worth three or four ancestral dollars. Hence, while from the zooelogical standpoint man is a primate, and while he is very probably descended from one of these, he has gradually risen above them mentally and spiritually, so that he stands as far above them as they above the lowest worm. And this leads us to the consideration of man, not merely as a mammal, but as "Anthropos," Homo sapiens, although he often degenerates into "Simia destructor."

From what has just been said man's pre-eminence cannot consist in any anatomical characteristic, even of the brain—much less of thumb, forefinger, hand, or foot. But man's mental and moral characteristics (even though germs of these may be present in the animal), whether differing in degree or kind from theirs, raise his life to a totally different plane. He lives in an environment of which the lower animal is as unconscious and ignorant as we of a fourth dimension of space. He has the knowledge of abstract truth and goodness, of certain standards outside of mere appetite and desire, and feels and acknowledges, however dimly, the requirement and the ability to conform his life to these standards. He alone can say "I ought," and answer "I can and will." And hence man alone actually lives in an environment of the laws of reason, responsibility, and personality. Whatever germs of these higher powers the animal possesses are means to material ends, to the physical life of the animal. In man the long and slow evolution has ended in revolution, the material and physical have been dethroned, and truth and goodness reign supreme as ends in themselves.

But, you may object, this definition of man may be true ideally, certainly it is not true actually. Where are the high ideals of truth and goodness in the savage? and are these the supreme ends of even the average American of to-day? But allowing all weight to this objection, does it not remain true that a being who never says "I ought," who acknowledges and manifests no responsibility, to whom goodness does not appeal, and in whom these feelings cannot be awakened, is either not yet or no longer man? But far more than this, if the character of the individual is to be judged by his tendency more than his present condition, by the way in which he is going more than his momentary position, is not the race to be judged and defined by a tendency, gradually though very slowly becoming realized, and a goal, toward which it looks and which it is surely attaining, rather than by its present realization? As we rise higher in the animal kingdom the characteristics of the successive higher groups are more and more slow of attainment and difficult of realization, just because of their grander possibilities. And this is true and important above all in the case of man. His possibilities are beyond our powers of conception, for, if you will, man is yet only larval man.

We have followed the sequence of functions to its culmination in a mind completely dominated by righteousness and unselfishness, however far above our present attainments this goal may be. We have found that all attempts to reverse this sequence end in death or degeneration. Failure to advance, especially in higher forms, results in extinction or retrogression. We cannot stand still. Each higher step is longer and more important than any preceding; each last step is essential to life. Righteousness in the will is the last step essential to man's progress. And if a sound mind in a sound body is important or necessary, a sound will, resolutely set on right, is absolutely essential. Failure to attain this is ruin.

And man can to a great extent place himself so that his surroundings shall aid him to take this last, essential, upward step. He does this by the choice of his associates. If he associates himself with men who are tending upward, he will rise ever higher. If he choose the opposite kind of associates he must sink into ever deeper degradation; he has thereby chosen death. For his associates, once chosen, make him like themselves. And thus natural selection makes for the survival of those men who resolutely choose life. And thoughtless or careless failure to choose is ruin. The man has preferred degradation; it is only right that he should have it to satiety.

But man is not, and never can be, pure spirit. He may "let the ape and tiger die," but he must always retain the animal with its natural appetites. Moreover, his higher mental capacities increase their power. Memory recalls past gratifications as it never does to the animal; imagination paints before him vivid pictures of similar future enjoyments, and mental keenness and strength of will tell him that they can all be his. But if he yields himself a slave to these appetites, if he seeks to be an animal rather than a spiritual being, he becomes not an animal but a brute; and the only genuine brute is a degenerate man. And thus after conquering the world man's very structure compels him to join battle with himself. For here, as everywhere else, to attempt to go backward to a plane of life once passed is to surely degenerate. The time when the prize of pre-eminence could be won by mere physical superiority was passed before man had a history. Physical superiority must be maintained, and every advance in art and science, considered here as ministering to man's physical comfort, is advantageous just so far as these allow man freedom and aid to pursue the mental and moral line which is the only true path left open to him. But when even these are allowed to minister only to the animal, or to tempt to luxurious ease and indifference to any higher aims, in a word, in so far as they fail to minister to mental and moral advancement, they are in great danger of becoming, if they have not already become, a curse rather than a blessing. And we all know that this has been proven over and over again in human history. Families, cities, and nations rot, mainly because they cannot resist the seductions of an overwhelming material prosperity. A man says to his soul, "Take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," and to that man scripture and science say, with equal emphasis, "Thou fool!"

Every upward step in attainment of the comforts of life, of art and science, brings man into new fields not of careless enjoyment but of struggle. They swarm with new enemies and temptations before unknown. The new attainments are not unalloyed blessings, they are merely opportunities for victory or defeat. The uncertain battle is only shifted to a little higher plane. Man has increased the forces at his command only to meet stronger opposing hosts. And retreat is impossible. Man remains a spiritual being only on condition that he resolutely and vigilantly purposes to be so. To lag behind in this spiritual path is death.

And the epitaph of nations and individuals is the record of their defeat in this struggle to be masters and not slaves of their material and intellectual attainments. Greece, the most intellectual of all nations of all times, died in mental senility of moral paralysis. Of Socrates's and Plato's "following after truth" nothing remained but the gossipy curiosity of a second childhood, living only to tell or to hear some new thing. And the schools of philosophy were closed because they had nothing to tell which was worth the knowing or hearing. All the wealth of the world was poured into Rome, the home of Stoic philosophy, and it was smothered, and died in rottenness under its material prosperity.

A family, race, or nation starts out fresh in its youthful physical and mental vigor and strict obedience to moral law and in its faith in God. For these reasons it survives in the struggle for existence. It grows in extent and power, in intelligence and wealth. But with this increase in wealth and power comes a deadening of the mind to the claims of moral law, and an idolatrous worship of material prosperity. The new generation looks upon the stern morality and industry and self-control of its ancestors as straight-laced and narrow. Morality may not be unfashionable, but any stern rebuke of immorality is not conventional. Strong moral earnestness and whole-souled loyalty to truth are not in good form. Wealth and social position become the chief ends of men's efforts, and, to buy these, unselfishness and truth and self-respect are bartered away. Luxury, enervation, and effeminacy are rife, and snobbery follows close behind them. The ancestral vigor, the insight to recognize great moral principles, and the power to gladly hazard all in their defence have disappeared in a mist of indifference, which beclouds the eyes and benumbs all the powers. The race of giants is dwindling into dwarfs. They say, when the time comes, we will rouse ourselves and be like our fathers. And the crisis comes, but they are not equal to it. The nation has long enough cumbered the ground, it has already died by suicide and must now give place to a race and civilization which has some aim in, and hence right to, existence, and which is of some use to itself and others. If we would learn by observation, and not by sad experience, we must remember that man is above all, and must be a religious being conforming to the personality of the God manifested in his environment.

Can you find anywhere a more profound or scientific philosophy of history than that of Paul in the first chapter of Romans? "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; so that they are without excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness."[A] And then follows the dark picture, from which we revolt but which the ancient historians themselves justify.

[Footnote A: Romans i. 20-22, 28.]

On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at Rome is Michel Angelo's marvellous painting of the creation of Adam. A human figure of magnificent strength is half-rising from its recumbent posture, as if just awakening to consciousness, and is reaching out its hand to touch the outstretched finger of God. The human being became and becomes man when, and in proportion as, he puts himself in touch with God, and is inspired with the divine life. The lower animal conformed mainly to the material in environment, man conforms consciously to the spiritual and personal.

Any science of human history that does not acknowledge man's relation to a personal God is fatally incomplete; for it has missed the goal of man's development and the chief means of his farther advance. And a religion which does not emphasize this is worse than a broken reed. It is a mirage of the desert, toward which thirsty souls run only to die unsatisfied.

Man can never overcome in this battle with the allurements of material prosperity and with the pride and selfishness of intellect, except as he is interpenetrated and permeated with God, any more than we can move or think, unless our blood is charged with the oxygen of the air. It is not enough that man have God in his intellectual creed; he must have him in his heart and will, in every fibre of his personality, in every thought and action of life. Otherwise his defeat and ruin are sure.

Three fatal heresies are abroad to-day: 1. Man's chief end is avoidance of pain and discomfort, in one word, happiness; and God is somehow bound to surfeit man with this. And this is the chief end of a mollusk. 2. Man's chief end is material prosperity and social position. 3. Man's chief end is intellect, knowledge. Each one of these three ends, while good in a subordinate place, will surely ruin man if made his chief end. For they leave out of account conformity to environment. "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever." And just as the plant glorifies the sun by turning to, and being permeated and vivified and built up by, the warmth and light of its rays, similarly man must glorify God. This is the religion of conformity to environment: man working out his salvation because God works in him. Thus, and thus only, shall man overcome the allurements of these lower endowments and receive the rewards of "him that overcometh."

Thus prosperity and adversity, success and failure, continually test a man. If he can rise superior to these, can subjugate them and make them subserve his moral progress, he survives; if he is mastered by them, he perishes. Through these does natural selection mainly work to find and train great souls. They are the threads of the sieve of destiny.

In this struggle man must fight against overwhelming odds, and the cost of victory is dear. He must be prepared, like Socrates, to "bid farewell to those things which most men count honors, and look onward to the truth." He appears to the world at large, often to himself, eminently unpractical. The majority against his view and vote will usually be overwhelming. Truth is a stern goddess, and she will often bid him draw sword and stand against his nearest and dearest friends. The issue will often appear to him exceeding doubtful. The grander the truth for which he is fighting, the greater the need of its defence and enforcement, the greater the probability that he will never live to see its triumph. The hero must be a man of gigantic faith. But all his ancestors have had to make a similar choice and to fight a similar battle. The upward path was intended to be exceedingly hard. This is a law of biology.

Why this is so I may not know. I only know that no better and surer way could have been discovered to train a race of heroes. For no man ever becomes a hero who has not learned to battle with the world and himself. Does it not look as if God loved a heroic soul as much as men worship one, and as if he intended that man should attain to it? Man was born and bred in hardship that he might be a hero.

"Careless seems the great avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied."

The Crown Prince of Prussia has less spending money than many a young fellow in Berlin. He is trained to economy, industry, self-control. He is to learn something better than habits of luxury, to rule himself, and thus later the German Empire. The children of a great captain, themselves to be soldiers, must endure hardness like good soldiers. And man is to fight his way to a throne.

But his powers are still in their infancy and the goal far above him. What he is to become you and I can hardly appreciate. First of all, the body will become finer, fitted for nobler ends. It will not be allowed to degenerate. It may become less fitted for the rough work, which can be done by machinery; it will be all the better for higher uses. It is to be transformed, transfigured. The eye may not see so far, it will be better fitted for perceiving all the beauties of art and nature. It will become a better means of expressing personality, as our personality becomes more "fit to be seen." It is continually gaining a speech of its own. And will not the ear become more delicate, a better instrument for responding to the finest harmonies, and better gateway to our highest feelings? We may not have so many molar teeth for chewing food, but may not our mouths become ever finer instruments for speech and song? In other words, the body is to be transfigured by the mind and become its worthy servant and representative.

As we learn to live for something better than food and clothes, and cease to pamper the body, it will become better and healthier. Science will stamp out many diseases, and we shall learn to prevent others by right living. And what a change in our moral and religious life will be made by good health. What a cheerful courage and hope it will give.

Man will become more intelligent. He will learn the laws of heredity and of life in general. He will see deeper into the relations of things. He will recognize in himself and his environment the laws of progress. He will clearly discern great moral truths, where we but dimly see lights and shadows.

But while we would not underestimate the value and necessity of growth in knowledge, we must as clearly recognize that the intellect is not the centre and essence of man's being. Knowledge, while the surest form of wealth of which no one can rob us, and the best as the stepping-stone to the highest well-being, is like wealth in one respect: it is not character and can be used for good or evil. If my neighbor uses his greater knowledge as a means of overreaching us all, it injures us and ruins him.

Our emotions, and this is but another word for our motives, stand far nearer to the centre of life; for they control our conduct and directly determine what we are. Knowledge of environment is good, but of what real and permanent use is such knowledge without conformity? Our real weakness is not our ignorance; we know the good, but lack the will and purpose to live it out. And this is because the thought of truth and goodness excites no such strength of feeling as that of some lower gratification. We cannot perhaps overrate the value of intellect; we certainly underrate the value of emotion and feeling. "Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth." It does not require great intellect, it does require intense feeling to be a hero. We slander the emotions by calling people emotional because they are always talking about their feelings; but deep feeling is always silent. It is not fashionable to feel deeply, and we are dwarfed by this conventionality. We have almost ceased to wonder, and hence we have almost ceased to learn; for the wise old Greeks knew that wonder is the mother of wisdom.

The man of the future will probably be a man of strong appetites, for he will be healthy; he will be prudent, because wise; but he will hold his appetites well in leash. He will trample upon mere prudential considerations at the call of truth or right. For in him these highest motives will be absolute monarchs, and they are the only motives which can enable a man to face rack and stake without flinching. He will be a hero because he feels intensely. In other words, he will be a man of gigantic will, because he has a great heart. And in the man of the future all these powers will be not only highly developed; they will be rightly proportioned and duly subordinated. He will be a well-balanced man. But how few complete men we now see.

We see the strong will without the clear intellect to guide it; the gush of feeling either directed toward low ends or evaporating in sentiment; the clear head with the cold heart. The high development of one mental power seems to draw away all strength and vitality from the rest. How rarely do we find the strong will guided by the keen intellect toward the highest aims clearly discerned. Memory and imagination must always play their part in the joy set before us. But in addition to all these, the white heat of feeling, of which man alone is capable, is necessary for his grandest efforts. Such a being would be a man born to be a king. And there will be a race of such men. And we must play the man that they may be raised upon our buried shoulders. And they will tower above us, as the seers of old in Judea, Athens, India, and Rome towered above their indolent, luxurious, blind, and material contemporaries. And with all their accelerated development, infinite possibilities will still stretch beyond the reach of their imagination. For "men follow duty, never overtake."

But all our analyses are unsatisfactory. In the history of any great people there is a period when they seem to rise above themselves. They have the strength of giants, and accomplish things before and since impossible. We sometimes ascribe these results to the exuberant vitality of the race at this time; and their life is large and grand. Such was England under Elizabeth. Think of her soldiers and explorers, her statesmen and poets. There were giants in those days. What a healthy, hearty enjoyment they showed in all their work, and with what ease was the impossible accomplished. The greater the hardships to be borne or odds to be faced, the greater the joy in overcoming them. They sailed out to give battle to the superior power of Spain, not at the command, but by the permission, of their queen; often without even this.

And what a vigor and vitality there is in the literature of this period. Life is worth living, and studying, and describing. They see the world directly as it is; not some distorted picture of it, seen by an unhealthy mind and drawn by a feeble hand. The world is ever new and fresh to them because they see it through young, clear eyes.

Were they giants or are we dwarfed? Which of the two lives is normal? They used all their faculties and utilized all their powers. Do we? The only force or product which we are willing to see wasted is the highest mental and moral power. Our engines and turbine wheels utilize the last ounce of pressure of the steam or water. The manufacturers pay high wages to hands who can tend machines run at the highest possible speed. The profits of modern business come largely from the utilization of force or products formerly wasted. But how far do we utilize the highest faculties of the mind, which have to do with character, the crowning glory of human development? Are we not eminently "penny-wise and pound-foolish?" A ship which uses only its donkey-engines, and does nothing but take in and get out cargo is a dismantled hulk. A captain who thinks only of cargo, and engines, and the length of the daily run, but who takes no observations and consults no chart, will make land only to run upon rocks. Are we not too much like such dismantled hulks, or ships sailing with priceless cargoes but with mad captains?

But we have not yet seen the worst results of this waste of our highest powers. The sessile animal, which lives mainly for digestion, does not attain as good digestive organs as his more active neighbor, who subordinates digestion to muscle. Lower powers reach their highest development only in proportion as they are strictly subordinated to higher. This may be called a law of biology. And our lower mental powers fail of their highest development and capacity mainly because of the lack of this subordination.

But a disused organ is very likely to become a seat of disease and to thus enfeeble or destroy the whole body. And this disease effects the most complete ruin when its seat is in the highest organs. Dyspepsia is bad enough, but mania or idiocy is infinitely worse. And our moral powers are always enfeebled, and often diseased, from lack of strong exercise. And some blind guides, seeing only the disease, cry out for the extirpation of the whole faculty, as some physicians are said to propose the removal of the vermiform appendage in children. Similarly might the drunkard argue against the value of brain, because it aches after a debauch. Our work is hard labor, and we gain no enjoyment in the use of our mental powers; for the enjoyment of any activity is proportional to the height and glory of the purpose for which it is employed. As long as we are content to use only our lower mental faculties and to gain low ends, our use of even these will be feeble and ineffectual, and our lives will be poor, weak, and unhappy.

But future man will subordinate these lower powers to the higher. He will utilize all that there is in him. And his efficiency must be vastly greater than ours. And finally, and most important, these men will be all-powerful, because they have so conformed to environment that all its forces combine to work with them.

England under Elizabeth seemed to rise above itself. Think of Holland, under William the Silent, defying all the power of Spain. Look at Bohemia, under Ziska, a handful of peasants joining battle with and defeating Germany and Austria combined. Think of Cromwell and his Ironsides, before whom Europe trembled. These men were not merely giants, they were heroes. And the essence of heroism is self-forgetfulness. The last thought of William the Silent was not for himself, but for his "poor people." And those rugged Ironsides, "fighting with their hands and praying with their hearts," smote with light good-will and irresistibly, because they struck for truth and freedom, for right and God. These are motives of incalculable strength, and they transfigure a man and raise him above his surroundings and even himself. The man becomes heroic and godlike, and when possessed by these motives he has clasped hands with God. He is inspired and infused with the divine power and life. Such a man has no time nor care to think of himself. To him it matters little whether he lives to see the triumph of his cause, provided he can hasten it. Though victory be in the future, it is sure; and the joy of battle for so sure and grand a triumph is present reward enough. His very faith removes mountains and turns to night armies of the aliens. For heroism begets faith, just as surely as faith begets heroism.

"Where there is no vision the people perish." When the member of Congress can see nothing higher than spoils of office, nothing larger than a silver dollar, you should not criticise the poor man if his oratorical efforts do not move an audience like the sayings of Webster, Lincoln, or Phillips.

Future man will be heroic and divine, because he will live in an atmosphere of truth and right and God, and will be consciously inspired by these divine, omnipotent motives.

But who will compose this future race? We cannot tell. And yet the attempt to answer the question may open our eyes to truth of great practical importance.

It would seem to be a fact that the offspring of a cross between different races of the same species is as a rule more vigorous than that of either pure race. Human history seems to show the same result. The English race is a mixture of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, with a sprinkling of other races. And a new fusion of a great number of most diverse strains is rapidly going on in the newly populated portions of America and in Australia. The mixture contains thus far almost purely occidental races. It will in future almost certainly contain oriental also. For the races of India, Japan, and even China, are no farther from us to-day than the ancestors of many of our occidental fellow-citizens were a century ago. Racial prejudices, however strong, weaken rapidly through intercourse and better acquaintance. One of the grandest and least perceived results of missionary work is the preparation for this great fusion.

Many races will undoubtedly go down before the advance of civilization and have no share in the future. Progress seems to be limited to the inhabitants of temperate zones; and even here the weaker may be crowded out before the stronger rather than absorbed by them. But many whom we now despise may have a larger inheritance in the future than we. God is clearly showing us that we should not count any man, much less any nation, common or unclean. And the laws of evolution give us a firm confidence that no good attained by any race or civilization will fail to be preserved in the future.

The forms which seem to us at any one time the highest are as a rule not the ancestors of the race of the future. These highest forms are too much specialized, and thus fitted to a narrow range of space, time, and general conditions; when these change they pass away. Specialization is doubly dangerous when it follows a wrong line. But whenever it is carried far enough to lead to a one-sided development, it narrows the possibility of future advance; for it neglects or crowds out or prevents the development of other powers essential to life. The mollusk neglected nerve and muscle. But the scholar may, and often does, cultivate the brain at the expense of the rest of the body until he and his descendants suffer, and the family becomes extinct.

The young men of the nobility of wealth, birth, and fashion usually marry heiresses, if they can. But only in families of enormous wealth can there be more than one or two heiresses in the same generation. She has very probably inherited a portion of her wealth from one or more extinct branches of the family. Moreover, not to speak of other factors, the labor and anxiety which have been essential to the accumulation and preservation of these great fortunes, or the mode of life which has accompanied their use or abuse, tend to diminish the number of children. Heiresses to very large fortunes usually therefore belong to families which are tending to sterility. And this has very probably been no unimportant factor in the extinction of "noble" families.

A sound body contains many organs, all of which must be sound. And in a sound mind there is an even greater number of faculties, all of which must be kept at a high grade of efficiency. Man is a marvellously complex being, and more in danger of a narrow and one-sided development than any lower animal. And it is very easy for a certain grade or class of society, or for a whole race, to become so specialized, by the cultivation of only one set of faculties as to altogether prevent its giving birth to a complete humanity. Along certain broad lines the Greeks and Romans attained results never since equalled. But their neglect of other, even more important, powers and attainments, especially the moral and religious, doomed them to a speedy decay. The rude northern races were on the whole better and nobler, and became heirs to Greek art and letters, and to Roman law. And this is another illustration of the advantage or necessity of the fusion of races.

To answer the question, "Which stratum or class in the community or world at large is heir to the future?" we must seek the one which is still to a large extent generalized. It must be maintaining, in a sound body, a steady, even if slow, advance of all the mental powers. It will not be remarkable for the high development or lack of any quality or power; it must have a fair amount of all of them well correlated. It must be well balanced, "good all around," as we say. And this class is evidently neither the highest nor the lowest in the community, but the "common people, whom God must have loved, because he made so many of them."

They have, as a rule, fair-sized or large families. Their bodies are kept sound and vigorous by manual labor. They are compelled to think on all sorts of questions and to solve them as best they can. They have a healthy balance of mental faculties, even if they are not very learned or artistic. They are kept temperate because they cannot afford many luxuries. Their healthy life prevents an undue craving for them. They help one another and cultivate unselfishness. The good old word, neighbor, means something to them. They have a sturdy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral crises. They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so many, or so enslaving, selfish interests. They have always been trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hardship; and heroism is natural to them. They have a strong will, cultivated by the battle of daily life. And among them religion never loses its hold.

But what of our tendencies to specialization in education and business? Are these wrong and injurious? Specialization, like great wealth, is a great danger and a fearful test of character. It tends to narrowness. If you will know everything about something, you must make a great effort to know something about, and have some interest in, everything. The great scholar is often anything but the large-minded, whole-souled man which he might have become. He has allowed himself to become absorbed in, and fettered by, his specialty until he can see and enjoy nothing outside of it. There is no selfishness like that of learning.

We can accomplish nothing unless we concentrate our efforts upon a comparatively narrow line of work. But this does not necessitate that our views should be narrow or our aims low. Teufelsdroeckh may live on a narrow lane; but his thoughts, starting along the narrow lane, lead him over the whole world. The narrowness of our horizon is due to our near-sightedness.

But the only absolutely safe specialization is the highest possible development of our moral and religious powers. For their cultivation only enlarges and strengthens all the other powers of body and mind. "But," you will object, "does religion always broaden?" Yes. That which narrows is the base alloy of superstition. But a religion which finds its goal and end in conformity to environment, character, and godlikeness can only broaden.

But there is the so-called "breadth" of the shallow mind which attempts to find room at the same time for things which are mutually exclusive. God and Baal, right and wrong, honesty and lying, selfishness and love, these are mutually exclusive. You cannot find room in your mind for both members of the pair at the same time. You must choose. And, when you have chosen, abide by your choice. A ladleful of thin dough fallen on the floor is very broad. But its breadth is due to lack of consistency. Better narrowness than such breadth.

But while individual specialization may be safe for the individual, and beneficial to the race, the race which is to inherit the future must remain unspecialized. It must not sacrifice future possibilities to present rapidity of advance. And the common people are advancing safely, slowly, but surely. Wealth and learning become of permanent prospective and real value only when they are invested in the masses. They are the final depositaries of all wealth—material, intellectual, moral, and religious. Whatever, and only that which, becomes a part of their life becomes thereby endowed with immortality. Will we invest freely or will we wait to have that which we call our own wrested from us? If we refuse it to our own kin and nation, it will surely fall to foreigners. "God made great men to help little ones."

The city of God on earth is being slowly "builded by the hands of selfish men." But the builders are becoming continually more unselfish and righteous, and as they become better and purer its walls rise the more rapidly.



CHAPTER IX

THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE

We have studied the teachings of science concerning man and his environment, let us turn now to the teachings of the Bible. And though eight chapters have been devoted to the teachings of science, and only one to the teachings of the Bible, it is not because I underestimate the importance of the latter. It is more difficult to clearly discover just what are the teachings of Nature in science. The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one requiring careful study; and yet once deciphered it is clear. Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human history. But this record is a history of continually closer conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms. The animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence. Environment has stamped its laws on the very structure of man's body and mind. And the old biblical writers read these laws, guided by God's Spirit, in their own hearts, and in those of their neighbors, and in their national history, as the record of God's working, and gave us concrete examples of the results of obedience and disobedience. Hence the teaching of the Bible is always clear and unmistakable.

The Bible treats of three subjects—Nature, Man, and God—and the relations of each of these to the others. I have tried to present to you in the first chapter the biblical conception of Nature and its relation to God. In its relation to man it is his manifestation to us, and, in its widest sense, the sum of the means and modes through which he develops, aids, and educates us. And in this conception I find science to be strictly in accord with scripture.

Now what is the scriptural idea of man? Man interests us especially in three aspects. He is a corporeal being; he is an intellectual being; he is a moral being, with feelings, will, and personality.

Man's body. Plato considered the body as a source of evil and a hindrance to all higher life. And Plato was by no means alone in this. The Bible takes a very different view. Neglect of the body is always rebuked. The only place, so far as I can find, where the body is called vile is where it is compared with the glorious body into which it is to be transformed. "Your bodies," writes Paul to the Corinthians, "are members of Christ," "temples of the Holy Ghost." But the Bible teaches that the body is to be the servant, not the ruler, of the spirit. "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection," continues Paul. Here again science is strictly in accord with scripture.

Man is an intellectual being. I need not quote the praises of knowledge in the Old Testament. They must be fresh in your mind. But the practical Peter writes, "giving all diligence add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge." And Paul prays that the love of the Ephesians may "abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment." But the important knowledge is the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master. And similarly science emphasizes that the chief end of all knowledge is that we should know the environment to which we are to conform. Knowledge is useful to strengthen and clarify the mind, that it may see and conform to truth and God: and if it fails to become a means to conformity, it has failed of the chief, and practically the only, end for which it was intended. We are to come "in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." But knowledge which only puffs up and distracts the mind from the great aims and ends which it should serve is rebuked with equal emphasis by the Bible and by science.

I would not claim that we have set too high a value upon knowledge, perhaps we cannot; but there is something far higher on which we are inclined to set far too low a value. This is righteousness and love; and true wisdom is knowledge permeated, vivified, and transfigured by devotion to these higher ends. And in this highest realm of the mind feeling and will rule conjointly. Love is a feeling which always will and must find its way to activity through the will, and it is an activity of the will roused by the very deepest feeling, inspired by a worthy object. If you try to divorce them, both die. Hence Paul can say, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." And John goes, if possible, even farther and says, "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love." And this sort of love bears and believes and hopes and endures, and never fails. And for this reason the Bible lays such tremendous emphasis on the heart, not as the centre of emotion alone, but as the seat of will as well. And science points to the same end, though she sees it afar off.

And what of God? God is a Spirit, Creator, Author, and Finisher of all things, and filling all. But while omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, these are not the characteristics emphasized in the Bible. He is righteous. "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" is the grand question of the father of the faithful. And when Moses prays God to show him his glory, God answers, "I will make all my goodness pass before thee." He is the "refuge of Israel," the "everlasting arms" underneath them, pitying them "as a father pitieth his children." And in the New Testament we are bidden to pray to our Father, who is love, and whose temple is the heart of whosoever will receive him. Truly a very personal being.

Now the Bible rises here indefinitely above anything that mere natural science can describe. But can the ultimate "Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness" and unselfishness, of whose presence in environment science assures us, be ever better described than by these words concerning the "Father of our spirits?"

And an infinitely wise, good, and loving being will have fixed modes of working; for "with him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Thus only can man trust and know him. The old Stoic philosopher tells us "everything has two handles, and can be carried by one of them, but not by the other." So with God's laws. Many seem to look upon them as a hindrance and limitation to him in carrying out his righteous and loving will toward man. But they are really the modes or means of his working, which he uses with such regularity and consistency that we can always rely upon them and him. The pure river of the water of life proceedeth from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

If I am lying ill waiting anxiously for the physician I can think of this great city as a mass of blocks of houses separating him from me. But the houses have been arranged in blocks so as to leave free streets, along which he can travel the more quickly. And God's laws are not blocks, but thoroughfares, planned that the angels of his mercy may fly swiftly to our aid. We are prone to forget that these laws are expressly made for your and my benefit, as well as that of all beings, that we may be righteous and unselfish. And this is one ground of the apostle's faith that "all things work together for good to them that love God." And in the Apocalypse the earth helps the woman. It must be so.

But what if you or I try to block the thoroughfare? What would happen to us if we tried to stop bare-handed the current of a huge dynamo, or to hold back the torrent of Niagara? Nothing but death can result. And what if I stem myself against the "river of the water of life, proceeding from the throne of God," and try to turn it aside or hold it back from men perishing of thirst? And that is just what sin is, even if done carelessly or thoughtlessly; for men have no right to be careless and thoughtless about some things. "The wages of sin is death;" physical death for breaking physical law, and spiritual death for breaking spiritual law. How can it be otherwise? The wages are fairly earned. The hardest doctrine for a scientific man to believe is that there can be any forgiveness of such sin as the heedless, ungrateful breaking of such wise and beneficent laws of a loving Father. And yet my earthly father has had to forgive me a host of times during my boyhood. Perhaps I can hope the same from God; I take his word for it.

But if you or I think that it is safe to trifle with God's laws, we are terribly mistaken. The Lord proclaimed himself to Moses as "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." But someone will say, This is terrible. It is terrible; but the question is, Does the Bible speak the truth about nature? Is nature a "fairy godmother," or does she bring men up with sternness and inflict suffering upon the innocent children, if necessary, lest they copy after their sinful parents? Do the children of the defaulter and drunkard and debauchee suffer because of the sins of their father, or do they not? If the blessings won by parental virtue go down to the thousandth generation, must not the evil consequences of sin go down to the third or fourth?

That we are not under the law, but under grace, does not mean, as some seem to think, that it is safe to sin. Otherwise the forgiveness of God becomes the lowest form of indulgence slanderously attributed to the Church of Rome. We gain freedom from law as well as penalty only by obedience. The artist can safely forget the laws and rules of his art only when by long obedience and practice he obeys them unconsciously. We seem to be threatened with a belief that God will never punish sin in one who has professed Christianity. This view cheapens sin and makes pardon worthless, it takes the iron out of the blood, and the backbone out of all our religion and ethics. It ruins Christians and disgraces Christianity. We sometimes seem to think that our nation or church or denomination is so important to the carrying on of God's work that he cannot afford to let any evil befall us, whatever we may do or be.

"Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." That was plain preaching, and the people did not like it. They would not like it any better to-day; it would come too near the truth.

But others seem to think that God is too kind, not to say good-natured, to allow his children to suffer for their sins. This is part of a creed, unconsciously very widely held to-day, that comfort, not character, is the chief end of life. Now if God is too kind to allow his children to suffer some of the natural consequences of sin, he is not a really kind and loving father, he is spoiling his children. Salvation is soundness, sanity, health; just as holiness is wholeness, escape from the disease, and not merely from the consequences of sin. A physician, unless a quack, never promises relief from a deep-seated disease without any pain or discomfort. And if the disease is the result of indulgence, he warns us that relapse into indulgence will bring a worse recurrence of the pain. Perhaps, after all, Socrates was not so far from right when he maintained that if a man had sinned the best and only thing for him is to suffer for it. "God the Lord will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly." And our Lord says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." If we would be great in the kingdom of heaven we must do and teach the commandments. One of the best lessons that the clergy can learn from science is that law and penalty are not things of the past. They are eternal facts; and if so, ought sometimes to be at least mentioned from the pulpit as well as remembered in the pew.

But if God is a person striving to communicate with man, and if man is a person intended to conform to environment by becoming like God, what is more probable from the scientific stand-point than that God should seek and find some means of making himself clearly known to man in some personal way? I do not see how any scientific man who believes in a personal God can avoid asking this question. And is there any more natural solution of the question than that given in the Bible? "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." "God, who spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son." Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Jesus saith unto him, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works."

"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

Something more is needed than light. We need more light and knowledge of our duty; we need vastly more the will-power to do it. I know how I ought to live; I do not live thus. What I need is not a teacher, but power to become a son of God. "I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?"

This is the terrible question. How is it to be answered? Let us remember our illustration of the change wrought in that panic-stricken army before Winchester by the appearance of Sheridan. What these men needed was not information. No plan of battle reported as sure of success by trustworthy and competent witnesses, and forwarded from the greatest leader could have stayed that rout. What they needed was Sheridan and the magnetic power of his personality. This is the strange power of all great leaders of men, whether orators, statesmen, or generals. It is intellect acting on and through intellect, but it is also vastly more; it is will acting on will. The leader does not merely instruct others, he inspires them, puts himself into them, and makes them heroes like himself.

Now something like this, but vastly grander and deeper, seems to me to have been the work of our Lord. Read John's gospel and see how it is interpenetrated with the idea of the new life to be gained by contact with our Lord, and how this forms the foundation of his hope and claim to give men this new life by drawing them to himself. And Peter says that it was impossible for the Prince of Life to be holden of death, for he was the centre and source from which not only new thoughts and purposes, but new will and life was to stream out into the souls of men. This power of our Lord may have been miraculous and supernatural in degree; I feel assured that it was not unnatural in kind and mode of action.

And here, young men, pardon a personal word about your preaching. You will need to preach many sermons of warning against, and denunciation of, sin; many of instruction in duty. The Bible is a store-house of instruction and men need it, and you must make it clear to them. All this is good and necessary, but it is not enough. Learn from the experience of the greatest preacher, perhaps, who ever lived.

Paul, the greatest philosopher of ancient times, came to Athens. You can well imagine how he had waited and longed for the opportunity to speak in this home of philosophy and intellectual life. Now he was to speak, not to uncultured barbarians, but to men who could understand and appreciate his best thoughts. He preached in Athens the grandest sermon, as far as argument is concerned, ever uttered. I doubt if ever a sermon of Paul's accomplished less. He could not even rouse a healthy opposition. The idea of a new god, Jesus, and a new goddess, the Resurrection, rather tickled the Athenian fancy. He left them, and, in deep dejection, went down to Corinth. There he determined to know only "Christ and him crucified," and thus preaching in material, vicious Corinth he founded a church.

Some of you will go through the same experience. You will preach to cultured and intelligent audiences, and they will listen courteously and eagerly as long as you tell them something new, and do not ask them to do anything. The only possible way of reaching Athenian intellect or Corinthian materialism and vice is by preaching Christ, "the power of God and the wisdom of God." And you will reach more Corinthians than Athenians.

You may preach sermons full of the grandest philosophy and theology, and of the highest, most exact, science; you may chain men by your logic, thrill them by your rhetoric, and move them to tears by your eloquence, and they will go home as dead and cold as they came. What they need is power, life. But preach "Christ and him crucified"—not merely dead two thousand years ago—but risen and alive for evermore, and with us to the end of the world, the grandest, most heroic, divinest helper who ever stood by a man, one all-powerful to help and who never forsakes, and every one of your hearers who is not dead to truth will catch the life, and go home alive and not alone.

So long as we preach a dead Christ we shall have a dead church, as hopeless as the apostles were before the resurrection. "But now is Christ risen from the dead," "alive for evermore." See how Paul and Peter and John, and doubtless all the others, talked with him and he with them, after he was taken from them, and you have found the secret of their power, and of that of all the great Christian heroes and martyrs who could truly say, Lord Jesus, we understand each other. Better yet, prove by experience that it is possible for every one of us.

And our Lord and Master is the connecting link between God and man, through whom God's own Holy Spirit is poured like a mighty flood into the hearts and lives of men, transfiguring them and filling them with the divine power. This is the biblical idea of Christianity; man, through Christ, flooded and permeated and interpenetrated with the Holy Spirit of God. And thus Paul is dead and yet alive, but fully possessed and dominated by the spirit of Christ. Alive as never before, and yet his every thought, word, and deed is really that of his great leader. Can you talk of self-denial to such a Christian? He had forgotten that such a man as Saul of Tarsus or Paul ever existed; he lives only in his Master's work, and is transfigured by it. This, and nothing less, is Christianity, and this is the very highest and grandest heroism. Paul conquers Europe single-handed, alone he stands before Caesar's tribunal, and yet he is never alone; and from the gloom of the Mammertine dungeon he sends back a shout of triumph. And Peter walks steadily, cheerfully, and unflinchingly, in the footsteps of his Master to share his cross.

Let us, before leaving this topic, notice carefully just what religion, and especially Christianity, is not.

1. It is not merely opinion or intellectual belief in a creed. This may be good, or even necessary, but it is not religion. "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble." We speak with pride, sometimes, of our puissant Christendom, so industrious, so intelligent, so moral, with its ubiquitous commerce, its adorning arts, its halls of learning, its happy firesides, and its noble charities. And yet what is our vaunted Christendom but a vast assemblage of believing but disobedient men? Said William Law to John Wesley, "The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus as with any other notion." The most sacred duty may degenerate into a dogma, asking only to be believed. "I go, sir," answered the son in the parable, "but went not."

2. It is not mere feeling. It is neither hope of heaven's joy, nor fear of hell's misery. It may rightly include these, but it is vastly more and higher. It is neither ecstasy nor remorse. The most resolutely impenitent sinner can shout "Hallelujah," and "Woe is me," as loudly as any saint. Now feeling is of vast importance. It stands close to the will and stimulates it, but it is not conformity. The will must be aroused to a robust life.

3. Christianity is these and a great deal more. Mere belief would make religion a mere theology. Mere emotion would make it mere excitement. The true divine idea of it is a life; doing his will, not indolently sighing to do it, and then lamenting that we do it not; but the thing itself in actual achievement, from day to day, from month to month, from year to year. Thus religion rises on us in its own imperial majesty. It is no mere delight of the understanding in the doctrines of our faith; no mere excitement of the sensibilities, now harrowed by fear, and now jubilant in hope; but a warfare and a work, a warfare against sin, and a work with God. Religion is not an entertainment, but a service. We are to set before us the perfect standard, and then struggle to shape our lives to it. Personal sanctity must be made a business of.[A]

[Footnote A: This page is mainly a series of quotations from Dr. R.D. Hitchcock's sermon on "Religion, the Doing of God's Will."]

A little more than thirty years ago a regiment was sent home from the Army of the Potomac to enforce the draft after the riots in this city. Some of you may picture to yourselves a thousand men with silk banners and gold lace and bright uniforms, resplendent in the sunshine. You could not make a worse mistake.

First in that gray early morning came two old flags, so torn by shot and shell that there was hardly enough left of them to tell whether the State flag was that of Massachusetts or Virginia. And behind these came scant three hundred men. All the rest were sleeping between Washington and Richmond, some on almost every battle-field. The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain. Only gun-barrel and bayonet were bright. And the men were scarred and tired and foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches. For these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the need was greatest. I do not suppose that one of them could have delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism. They were trained not to talk, but to obey orders. But they had stood in the "bloody angle" at Spottsylvania all day and all night; and in the gray dawn of the next morning, when strength and courage are always at ebb, faint and exhausted, their last cartridge shot away, had sprung forward at the command of their colonel to make a last desperate, forlorn defence with the bayonet against the advancing enemy. Numbers do not count against men like these. What made them such invincible heroes? It was mainly the resolute will and long training to obey orders. A Christian should never forget that he is a soldier in the army of the Lord of Hosts; that enlistment is easy and quickly accomplished; but that the training is long, and that he must learn, above all, to "endure hardness."

And so, my brothers, I beg of you to preach a heroic Christianity, for if there ever was a heroic religion it is ours. If you offer merely free transportation to a future heaven of delight on "flowery beds of ease," you will enlist only the coward and the sluggard. But everyone who has a drop of strong old Norse blood in his veins will prefer a heathen Valhalla, though builded in hell, to such a heaven. And his Norse instincts will be nearer truth than your counterfeit of a debased Christianity. But preach the city of God's righteousness on earth and now among men, and call on every heroic soul to take sides with God against sin within himself and the evil and misery all around him. There is an almost infinite amount of strength, endurance, and heroism in this "slow-witted but long-winded" human race waiting to leap up at the appeal to fight once more and win a victory after repeated defeats before the sun goes down. Appeal to this and point to the great "captain of our salvation made perfect through sufferings," and every man that is of the truth will hear in your voice the call of the Master and King. You will not be disappointed, but among the publicans and fishermen of America you will find heroic souls, who will leave all to follow, as faithfully and unflinchingly as those from the shores of Galilee.

And what of faith? Faith is the personal attachment of a soul to such a leader. Fortunately the Bible contains a scientific monograph on this subject. I refer, of course, to the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. And the whole result is summed up in a few words of the thirteenth verse. The great heroes, like Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, "saw the promises afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

They saw the promises afar off, dimly, on the horizon of their mental vision; as one looks into the distance and cannot tell whether what he sees be cloud or mountain. And until they could make up their minds that there was some substance in the vision, they did not embrace it. They were not credulous. Neither were they carelessly or heedlessly sure that there was and could be nothing in the vision but mist and fancy. They recognized that on their decision of the question hung the life of which they meant to make the very most. They looked again and again, and kept thinking about it. Thus they became and were "persuaded of them." And most people stop here with a merely intellectual faith in their heads, and very little in their hearts and lives. Not so these old heroes; they were not so purely and coldly intellectual that they could not do anything. They "embraced them." They said, that is exactly what I want and need, and I'll have it, if it costs me my life.

Now a promise is always conditional; if you want one thing, you must give up something else. It involves a choice between alternatives; you can have either one freely, you cannot have both. It was to them as to Christ on the "exceeding high mountain," God or the world; God with the cross, or the world with Satan thrown in. And the same alternative confronts us.

Moses could be a good Jew or a good Egyptian. Most of us, while resolved to be excellent Jews at heart, would have said nothing about it, but remained sons of Pharaoh's daughter in order to benefit the Jews by our influence in our lofty station. We should have become miserable hybrids with all the vices and weaknesses of both races, but with none of the virtues of either. And for all that we should ever have done the Jews might have rotted in Egyptian bondage. Enlargement and deliverance would have arisen to the Jews from some other place; but we and our father's house would have been destroyed. By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the children of God, etc. And certainly he did suffer for it.

They embraced the promises with their whole hearts. They were stoned and sawn asunder rather than give them up. And what was the effect on their characters? Having counted the cost, and being perfectly willing to accept any loss or pain for the sake of these promises, and hence inspired by them, they became sublime heroes. Through faith they "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. And others had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they wandered about in sheepskins and in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy." That is a faith worth having, and it is as sound philosophy as it is scripture.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises." Did they receive nothing? Moses and Elijah, Gideon and Barak gained power and heroism greater than we can conceive of. Surely that was enough. But they did not get the whole of the promise, or even the best of it. And the simple reason was that God cannot make a promise small enough to be completely fulfilled to a man in his earthly life. He gets enough to make him a king, but this does not begin to exhaust the promise. It is inexhaustible. This is the experience of anyone who will faithfully try it. And this experience is the grandest argument for immortality.

Therefore, "giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ([Greek: arete], strength), and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance ([Greek: enkrateia], self-control), and to temperance patience ([Greek: hypomene], endurance), and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity" (love).

And what of prayer? How can it be answered in a universe of law? We certainly could have no confidence that our prayers could or would be answered if ours were not a universe of law. God's laws are, as we have seen, his modes of working out his great plan. And the last and highest unfolding of God's plan is the development of man. And man is to become conformed to his environment, and conformity of man's highest powers to his environment is likeness to God.

The laws of nature, then, are in ultimate analysis and highest aim the different steps in God's plan of man's salvation from the disease of sin, not merely or mainly from its consequences, and his attainment of holiness. For this is the only true and sound manhood. Salvation is spiritual health, resulting also in health of body and of mind. If God's laws are his modes of carrying out his plan for godlikeness in man, then they are so thought out as to be the means of helping me to every real good.

The Bible declares explicitly that the aim of prayer is not to inform God of our needs. For he knows them already. It is not to change God's purpose, for he is unchangeable, and we should rejoice in this. We are to pray for our daily bread; we are to pray for the sick; and, if best for them and consistent with God's plan, they shall recover. Elijah prayed for drought and prayed for rain, and was answered. And Abraham's prayer would have saved Sodom, had there been ten righteous men in the city. "Men ought alway to pray and not to faint."

"More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

But could not all these things be brought about without a single prayer? Not according to the plan of man's education which God has adopted. Whether he could well have made a plan by which material blessings could have been bestowed upon men who do not ask for them, I do not know. The ravens and all animals are fed without a single prayer, for they are not fitted or intended to hold communion with God. But a prayerless race of men has never been fed long; it has soon ceased to exist. God's plan of salvation and ordering of the universe involves prayer as a means of blessing and good things as an answer to prayer. God says, I make you a co-worker with me. I will help you in everything; but you must call on me for help, or you will forget that I am the source of your help and strength, and thus having lost your communion with me will die. "When Jeshurun waxed fat he kicked." This is the oft-repeated story of the Old Testament and of all history. And thus, while material blessings are given in answer to prayer, these are not the chief end for which prayer is to be offered.

Prayer is a means of conformity to environment, of godlikeness. How do you become like a friend? Of course by associating and talking with him. And why does it help you to associate with a hero? Simply because you cannot be with him without being inspired with his heroism. And so while I may pray for bread and clothes and opportunities, and God will give me these or something better; I will, if wise, pray for purity, courage, moral power, heroism, and holiness. And I know that these will stream from his soul into mine like a great river. And so I may pray for bread and be denied; for hunger, with some higher good, may be far better for me than a full stomach. But if I pray for any spiritual gift, which will make me godlike, and on which as an heir of God I have a rightful claim, every law and force in God's universe is a means to answer that prayer. And best of all, if I pray for the gift of God's Spirit, that is the prayer which the whole world of environment has been framed to answer.

But this I can never have unless I hunger for it. I can never have it to use as a means of gaining some lower good which I worship more than God. God will not and cannot lend himself to any such idolatry. I must be willing to give up anything and everything else for its attainment. Otherwise the answer to the prayer would ruin me.

I cannot grasp the higher while using both hands to grasp the lower.

Thus religion is the interpenetration and permeation of my personality by that of God. And prayer is the communion by which this permeation becomes possible. And faith is the vision of these possibilities, the being persuaded by them, and the resolute purpose to attain them. And faith in Christ is confiding communion with him and obedience to his commands that his divine life may flow over into me and dominate mine. And common-sense, and the more refined common-sense which we call science, can show me no other means to the attainment of that godlikeness which is the only true conformity to environment.

And, holding such a belief and faith, we must be hopeful. And only next in importance to faith and love stands hope. The hero must be hopeful. And when times look dark about you, and they sometimes will, you must still hope.

"O it is hard to work for God, To rise and take his part Upon the battle-field of earth, And not sometimes lose heart!

"O there is less to try our faith In our mysterious creed, Than in the godless look of earth In these our hours of need.

"Ill masters good; good seems to change To ill with greatest ease; And, worst of all, the good with good Is at cross purposes.

"Workman of God! O lose not heart, But learn what God is like; And in the darkest battle-field Thou shalt know where to strike.

"Muse on his justice, downcast soul! Muse, and take better heart; Back with thine angel to the field, Good luck shall crown thy part!

"For right is right, since God is God; And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

Hope on, be strong and of a good courage. For in the dark hours others will lean on you to catch your hope and courage. To many a poor discouraged soul you must be "a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Every power and force in the universe of environment makes for the ultimate triumph of truth and right. Defeat is impossible. "One man with God on his side is the majority that carries the day. 'We are but two,' said Abu Bakr to Mohammed as they were flying hunted from Mecca to Medina. 'Nay;' answered Mohammed, 'we are three; God is with us.'"

And not only the race will triumph and regain the Paradise lost. The city of God shall surely be with men, and God will dwell with them and in them. But you and I can and shall triumph too.

We are prone to feel that the individual man is too insignificant a being to be the object of God's care and forethought. But we should not forget that it is the individual who conforms, and that the higher and nobler race is to be attained through the elevation of individuals, one after another. God deals with races and nations as such. But his laws and promises are made almost entirely for the individuals of which these larger units are concerned.

But there is another standpoint from which we may gain a helpful view of the matter. I may be the meanest citizen of my native state, and my father may leave me heir of only a few acres of rocky land. But, if my title is good, every power in the state is pledged to put me in possession of my inheritance. They who would rob me may be strong; but the state will call out every able-bodied man, and pour out every dollar in its treasury before it will allow me to be defrauded of my legal rights. And it must do this for me, its meanest citizen, else there is no government, but anarchy, and oppression, and the rule of the strongest. And we all recognize that this is but right and necessary, and would be ashamed of our state and government were it not literally true.