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never had behind the flying ball, and such fun, too, as they never had in driving it beyond the line of victory.

But I must not draw my illustrations too exclusively from the political field. Every young man should be a politician in some sort. He should be interested in politics; he should understand them, not merely as they are rendered in the high lights of a political canvass, but as they are rendered on the historian's juster page. But for most men politics must be an organ of self-sacrificing devotion to the common weal. They must look elsewhere for a livelihood. And there are those who tell us that it is impossible for any one to amass a fortune within the limits of our industrial system, and be at the same time an honest man. I do not believe it. I should be most miserably unhappy if I did. But then, if you think so, or you, or you, there is your work cut out; there is your opportunity for heroic action plain enough,— to go without the fortune that cannot be honestly amassed. The thing that most impresses me is this: to what a vast extent, for all our checks and balances, the stability of the business community depends upon "the unbought grace of life," the spontaneous honesty of innumerable men. But there can, I think, be no doubt that, with the increasing intricacy and complexity of our modern business organization, the temptations to wrong doing are much greater than they were formerly. The prizes contended for are much greater. The avoidance of personal responsibility appears to be much less difficult. Now let the man who mourns the loss of such great opportunities for personal courage as the military age could boast, and who thinks that our athletics cannot be too brutal if haply they may furnish something of the chance to be heroic and enduring that the men of old enjoyed,— let such a man be set well in the midst of our great business field, its splendid prizes shining in his eyes, opportunities offering continually to make ten dollars instead of one dollar by doing something just a little bit "irregular," or winking at another man's irregularity, and if he does not have all the opportunities for the exercise of a manly courage that he wants

he must have a stomach for such things of Falstaffian proportions. The temptations which beset the business man are many. One of the most common is to depreciate the value of his goods, once he has got his market, and so double his profits for a few years before he is found out. But this is one of the most gross, and the man who succumbs to it must be pretty nearly dead already in trespasses and sins. There are others which are very subtle in their operation. Subtle or gross, their name is legion; and the man of business who is to meet them and to conquer them has no holiday affair upon his hands. The decision may mean poverty instead of riches, or, at the best, the merest competency instead of "growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Let him who thinks there is no opportunity for courage in the sphere of business keep well the law of perfect honesty and truth in all his dealings for one uneventful day.

New types of courage are developed by new conditions in the political and industrial and religious world. The ethics of theological transition furnish one of the most conspicuous of these in our own time. Nothing is more popular and attractive in our time than the preaching of heretical doctrines in orthodox pulpits, the preacher generally finding some ingenious excuse for damning those who have said his good things before him. Nothing is more popular and attractive than this sort of thing, but nothing is more dangerous. There came to me last Sunday evening, after Dr. Savage's installation, an Episcopal clergyman, who said: "I am as good a Unitarian as you. But I asked President

Eliot," he continued, "how his university methods would do for little children. Little children must have their kindergarten, and, as an Episcopalian clergyman, I am a religious kindergartner." And he seemed to think I would applaud him for thus making himself accursed for his brethren's sake. But I could not find it in my heart to do so. What I said was, that the religious kindergartner should believe in his own toys. But what I wished to say was

something you know pretty well, the great adjuration of Carlyle,—“Go to perdition if thou must, but with a lie in thy mouth? by the Eternal Maker, no!"

On the one

Moral athletics here in great abundance; chances for the exercises of good courage not a few. The story of "Robert Elsmere" was written that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed. To-day there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ministers, standing in orthodox pulpits, who do not believe the traditional orthodoxy any more than you or I. What shall they do? They can stay where they are, and preach what they like, so long as they do not say, "This is the thing called heresy, and it is what it is called." But it takes courage, a great deal of courage, to do that. hand is comfort, ease, applause; on the other, nobody knows what. Heresy in orthodox pulpits is the taking and the paying thing. Heresy in heretical pulpits is quite another matter. And do not imagine for a moment that all the "good courages" in the religious sphere are reserved for the heretical preachers. The most orthodox have their opportunities of standing on the weaker side against the vested wrong; and laymen, young and old, can follow their convictions into the unpopular church, and work for it, and make sacrifices for it, or "bow down in the house of Rimmon",-go with the multitude that keep holy day,. having an eye to windward, whence may blow to them some social or personal advantage, some business connection, or some eligible match.

There is an aspect of this matter of moral athletics, athletic morals, which is more strictly personal. Men, young and old, have their besetting sins. I need not specify. You know the motley crew. Now if a man really wants a good fight, a good opportunity for courage and endurance, let him stand up to one of these and fight with it till he is standing with his heel upon its head. And the parable is not for men alone. The athletic figure of speech may not be well adapted to the feminine gender. But women, too, have their besetting sins, and no metaphor is needed to exagger

ate their ugly force, nor can exaggerate the courage which it takes for them to overcome them and from the sordid conflict rise into that height of glorified and perfect womanhood which is the brightest boon that heaven has for earth.

In these personal conflicts one of the hard conditions is that they have no spectators to applaud the things well done, to nerve the wavering strength. My friend is thoroughly convinced that he or I could furnish all the courage needed for such a game as that which Princeton won the other day if we had twenty thousand people shouting like devils in our ears. He might, but as for me,- well, I would rather not be tried. But that the twenty thousand shouters make all courage easier there cannot be a particle of doubt. It is of the very essence of the situation that in so many of our personal conflicts with temptation we have to stand up to our work alone. Alone, yet not alone; else was Apollos, or whoever wrote the great Epistle to the Hebrews, much mistaken when he said, "Therefore, seeing that we are compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race set before us." And in these struggles of the inner life, these battles with inveterate faults, with selfish dispositions, with impure desires, is it not as if we were Childe Roland in the desperate pass, and all around us were the friends, alive and dead, who have always expected us to do well and to whom we have given bonds of memory and hope and secret tears never to disappoint their gracious trust? Seeing that we are compassed about by such a cloud of witnesses, how dare we play our parts unworthily?

"Here eyes do regard you

In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness

Ye brave to reward you:
Work and despair not.".

A LIBERAL FAITH.

SAID Phillips Brooks in one of his discourses, “We talk a great deal in these days about a liberal faith. What is a liberal faith, my friends? It seems to me that by every true meaning of the word, by every true thought of the idea, a liberal faith in one that believes much, and not a faith that believes little." With this expression of the great preacher's personal conviction I find myself heartily agreed; and what I wish to do this morning is to expand his thought, to distinguish a faith that believes much from one that believes little, and to distinguish certain forms of thought and feeling that are considered liberal from certain others that have a better right to be considered so. But if a liberal faith is the faith that believes much and not little, who are there that believe so much as the most credulous people? I know that many will say this, and I am the more glad on this account that I find Phillips Brooks declaring, "It is true, indeed, that, as soon as a man becomes eager for belief, for the truth of God, and for the mysteries with which God's universe is filled, he becomes all the more critical and careful. He will no longer, if he were before, be simply greedy of things to believe, so that if any superstition comes offering itself to him, he will gather it in indiscriminately and believe it without evidence, without examination. He becomes all the more critical and careful the more he becomes assured that belief and not unbelief is the true condition of his life." Here I must bid Phillips Brooks good-by and go the remainder of my way alone. The truth would seem to be, that, in the best possible meaning of the term, a liberal faith is not a liberal disposition in the matter of belief; that is, a disposition to believe much, and especially much of that

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