Men in the Making

E-text prepared by Al Haines
Author of The Gospel and Social Questions, Etc.
Hodder and Stoughton London MCMIX
The addresses which make up this book are printed, almost exactly, as they were spoken from my pulpit in Glasgow. I have yielded to repeated requests that I would put them in a more permanent form than memory, or notes, can supply. There is always room for a book to young men; whether or not the book I now offer them is worth its room, is a matter about which I, possibly, am not the best judge. This I can say: There was a time in my life when I should have been helped, had I met through the spoken word, or printed page, some of the things I have tried to say as faithfully as I know how to say them, within the limits of taste and discretion. Whatever these addresses lack in thought, and in the handling of the subjects discussed, I have done my best to make them readable. In the case of the average young man of to-day, if a book does not interest him in the matter of style, any other merits it may possess will have a weakened chance of making themselves felt. If I have failed to meet this one condition of securing his attention—provided he give me a fair trial—I shall be disappointed and, to be candid, surprised. Should, however, his interest be tolerably well sustained through the ethical part of these addresses, say to the end of the chapter on The Royal Law, I shall, perhaps, have no reason to complain. At the same time I would advise him to persevere with the rest, even at the cost of some effort.
There are one or two things which should be said by way of introduction to these addresses. When the manuscript was out of my hands and in those of the printer, I was informed that Archdeacon Wilberforce had, in one of his books, a sermon on much the same lines that are found in my chapter entitled A Devil's Trinity. I have only to say that, so far as I know, I have never seen a line from the pen of Archdeacon Wilberforce. And in this connection I should like to quote a sentence or two from the Preface to my book on The Gospel and Social Questions . I remark there that, fortunately or otherwise for me, I have a tenacious memory which retains for long, not only a thought which arrests me, but the form in which it is expressed. Where I have made use of a quotation, or tried to paraphrase something I have read—and this applies to the following addresses—I have indicated the circumstances in the usual way.