The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

Now with that alternative in plain sight, the popular, the politic, the expedient thing was to get down and worship the image, or at least to go through the form. “In Rome you must do as the Romans do”—so the moral jelly-fish who have never reached the vertebrate level are ever saying. With a golden image ninety feet high and eighteen feet broad, with the king leading off in the worship and all his captains and counselors, his rulers and his governors backing him up, what could any ordinary man do but conform!

But there in that same country east of Suez there were three young fellows who knew about the Ten Commandments. They had learned them “by heart” as we say, which means much more than the mere ability to reel them off the tongue as one might repeat the multiplication table. It was a matter of principle with them not to worship images of any sort. When the multitude flopped down on its knees before the Thing that was ninety feet high the three young men stood erect.

Their defiant action was promptly reported to the king, and with all the fury of an oriental despot he caused them to be brought before him and again threatened with the fiery furnace. Then there came from the lips of uncalculating youth those ringing words of moral defiance which cause the heart of every man under forty to leap, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace! We believe that he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king! But if not”—there is the nub of the statement and there I want to rest my whole weight in this address—“but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, we will not serve thy gods!” No matter what might come, they stood ready to take the risk of obedience to the highest they saw.

The men who are really putting the world ahead in its business methods and in its civic affairs, in the quality of the ideals which dominate the work of education and in the standards which obtain in society at large, are not men who are always making shrewd calculations as to what will be most expedient. These royal leaders of the race sitting upon their respective thrones of spiritual usefulness endeavor to shape means to ends. They indulge in no sort of bluster or heroics. They seek as far as may be to avoid open disaster. They say frankly, “We believe that this course of action will bring us out all right, vindicating itself here and now, but if not,”—even though personal loss, popular opposition and apparent defeat seem to be the immediate result—“we will stand for the right as we see the right.” These men ready to take risks in doing their duty in the face of heavy odds, ready to make the moral venture of fidelity to the highest ideals in sight, are the only men who are really worth while.

Yonder on the coast at a life-saving station a group of determined men see a wreck off shore. They know all about the peril of the sea; it has been their major study for years. They quietly put on their storm clothes and their helmets, equipping themselves with all those appliances which experience has indicated as having value. They push their life-boat through the angry surf and are off. “We hope to bring those imperiled passengers and sailors safe to land and to get back ourselves,” they say; “but, if not, we go just the same. It is our duty.”

Here in the crowded city a fireman climbs up the longest ladder available on the side of a burning building. Through a window on the fourth floor he catches a glimpse of the body of a woman who has been overcome by heat and smoke. He has been thoroughly trained by years of stern experience with city fires. He knows that the floor of that room may drop at any moment, that, if he ventures in, he, too, may be overcome by heat and smoke; that if he leaves his ladder for one moment it may mean certain death. In the face of everything he climbs right in to rescue the woman. “I hope to get out all right,” he says; “but if not, here goes just the same. It’s my duty.”

Now the world will never be saved from its sin and shame until the rest of us who wear no uniforms of any kind are ready for that same sort of moral venture in the realms of business and politics, in educational and in social life. Here and there are small groups of men entering actively into the political life of the city, the state, the nation, ready to know machine politicians from the inside rather than from the outside, willing to get down and be muddied with their mud, in order that better men and better methods may prevail. Here and there are small groups of men who know that some of the methods in the world of business are fatal to that larger prosperity in which all classes may equitably share and fatal to the human values at stake. They are not sitting on the bleachers idly criticizing the players—they are in the game, but intent upon playing it according to finer rules and nobler methods. They are standing oftentimes at great cost to themselves for ideals which were not born in the counting-room, which do not receive their most accurate appraisement from the entries in the cash-book. These groups of idealists are not large as yet, but they are significant—they are the hope of the nation. They are the saving remnant in our modern Israel.

Only as men are ready to lash themselves like Ulysses of old to those enduring principles of righteousness and honor which stand erect like masts and sail on, no matter what alluring sirens of temporary expediency sing along the course, shall we make moral headway or at last make port.

You have read the history of those brave Dutchmen at the siege of Leyden. They were besieged by the powerful army of Spain. They were fighting for the safety of their city, for the freedom of the Netherlands, and for those principles of civil and religious liberty which they held dear. Unable to carry the place by assault the Spaniards undertook to starve the Dutchmen out. The Spanish commander demanded the surrender of the place coupled with the threat that if his demand were refused he would starve them all to death, men, women, and children.

The sturdy Hollanders sent back this reply—“Tell the Spanish commander we will eat our left arms first and fight on with the right.” But as the siege went on some of the less heroic souls finally suggested to the governor that the food supply was very low and that it might be well to make some compromise. “Never,” he cried; “eat me first, but do not surrender.” They held on until finally in their desperation a few of them stole out at night and opened the dikes to let in the Atlantic Ocean. It might mean death to them, but it would also mean death to their enemies. In the confusion which ensued when the enemy’s camp was flooded, the Dutchmen had their opportunity—they rushed forth and from apparent defeat wrested a splendid victory. The great victories by land or by sea, in the stirring times of war or in the slower, harder battles of peace, are won by men who stand ready for that sort of moral venture.