Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.—Rom. 13:10.
Another element of leadership is moral enthusiasm. The idealist in art is so for the love of art. He enters into the discussion of art subjects with enthusiasm. So with the moral enthusiast. Sin is hateful to him, and he seeks to crush it as he would a viper, and instinctively and spontaneously his denunciations come forth. Truth is his pole-star, and he will tell his best friend, "I will do anything but lie for you." Try to bribe him, and you will think that the central fires of the earth have been concentrated into his blistering rebuke. Suggest a compromise involving dishonor, and if you escape a blow you will be fortunate. Like Luther he says: "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me." He would not go with the crowd to moral destruction. Moral enthusiasm has been the virtue of all epoch-making men. Men do not die for fancies; they do not die for offices. They die for what they believe is right. Give them something that appeals to their moral nature and they will die for it. The grand martyrs were men who laid down their lives for what they believed to be right. There came to them those lines of James Russell Lowell:
"Once to every man and Nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood
For the good or evil side;
Love's great cause, God's new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand
And the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever
'Twixt the darkness and the light."
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.—Is. 66:13.
He who loveth God loveth his brother also.—1 John 4:21.
We must have leaders who possess the elements of leadership for the great task of making the world better—who possess the elementary virtues of honesty and truth. He had indicated some of the elements of moral leadership that these times demand. He did not mean to say that the political stage had not such leaders. Certainly there were a few; but we can make it possible to have a thousand. When we can see one we are surprised. In the past, thank God, we have had such leaders, and in the future we shall have such leaders again.
It is slumbering in the hearts of men and women all around us. It needs only some one to sweep the harp strings. The trouble is with ourselves. How can we be leaders with sensual and selfish appetites and desires? Does God no longer speak to man? Burns there no fire upon the altar? He did not believe God had exhausted himself. God had not exhausted himself by casting out a few bright stars from his own luminous presence. There is power for him to bring to the front the men we are longing and praying for.
He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea in seven there shall no evil touch thee.—Job 5:19.
In conclusion, he wished to say only these few words—that every leader is a man that must bring to us the message of hope. The prophets through all those weary years carried the torch of hope and handed it to their successors. Abraham believed with all his soul that he should have a posterity as numerous as the stars. He died leaving only one heir. Moses, the great law-giver, had a vision that a community of slaves should be made into a great nation. He went up into Pisgah and died, leaving them still slaves. Long ago a prophet looked over the sea at a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. Two thousand years have passed away and no new heaven or new earth has come—but as sure as truth is stronger than falsehood it will come—just so sure we shall one day see a new heaven and a new earth, where dwelleth no political corruption, but righteousness. Not in our time, perhaps, not in our children's time, shall the thing be; but it will come. Let us pray, then, that we may answer in the language of the great poet.
"Oh, well I know that to him who works, and knows he works,
This same glad year is ever at the door."