Deviltry cannot be overcome by diplomacy. Not embassies, but regiments, overcome intrenched oppression. Men of integrity and refinement can have but one attitude toward corruption, drunkenness, parasitism, gilded iniquity—the attitude of uncompromising hostility. Languorous, emasculated manhood may silently endure great wrongs for the sake of peace and quiet; but robust manhood never. One of the dangers of our age and nation is a tendency to conciliate wrong and smooth over wickedness through a spurious sense of charity. Genius gilds vice, and wit and brilliancy transform evil into an angel of light. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned; but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as when clothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil, to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right and beautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. No man has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked world the only people who are justified in peaceable living are the people in graveyards. In an age and land like ours only men of mush and moonshine can be friends with everybody.
In view of the crime, poverty and ignorance of our age, for a man to live so that his friends can truthfully write on his tombstone, "He never had an enemy," is for him to be eternally disgraced. Such a man should never be guilty of showing his face in heaven, for he will find that the angels, at least, are his enemies. Looking toward integrity, Christ came to bring peace. Looking toward iniquity, Christ came to bring the sword. Not until every wrong has been turned to right, not until every storm has been stilled into peace, not until the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man have been incarnated in institutions, will conflict cease and smooth living toward all men become an actuality.
Ambition and the clashing of interests also mitigate against smooth living. Perhaps no age has offered more powerful stimulants to ambition. The field is open to all, and the rewards are great. Therefore Emerson's phrase, "infinite aspiration and infinitesimal performance." Contentment is the exception, aspiration is universal. Indeed, the national temptation is ambition. An American merchant lives more in a year than an Oriental in eighty years; more in an hour than an Indian merchant in twenty-four. So powerful are the provocatives to thinking and planning that cerebral excitement is well-nigh continuous. Moving forward, the youth finds every pathway open and is told that every honor and position are possible achievements; the result is that the individual finds himself competing with all the rest of the nation. How fierce the strife! What intense rivalries! What battles between opponents! What conflicts in business!
In politics, coveting national honors, men spend months in laying out a campaign. A vast human mechanism is organized with ramifications extending through the nation. As in the olden times in the court of King Arthur, knights entered the tournament and some Lancelot clothed in steel armor rode forth to meet some Ivanhoe in mortal combat; so it is to-day when one plumed knight meets another in the political arena—one conquers, and one is killed, in that he suffers a broken heart.
In commerce the strife is not less fierce. Men literally stand over against each other like gunboats, carrying deadly missiles. If to-morrow conflict and strife should spring up in each garden—if the rose should strike its thorn into the honeysuckle; if the violet from its lowly sphere should fling mire upon the lily's whiteness; if the wheat should lift up its stalk to beat down the barley; if the robin should become jealous of the lark's sweet voice, and the oriole organize a campaign for exterminating the thrush, we should have a conflict in nature that would answer to the strife and warfare in society. The universality of the conflicts in society is indicated by the fact that England's national symbol is not a dove, but a lion; America's is an eagle, and other nations' are the leopard and the bear. In national wars, where men by years of toil have planted vineyards, reared orchards, builded houses and cities, they proceed to burn up the homes, destroy the granaries, cut down the vineyards and orchards; and these periodic public quarrels do but typify the equally destructive private feuds and troubles. Darwin thought that men have descended from animals, and some men have so literally descended. Some seem to have come through the wolf; some have the fox's cunning; some have the lion's cruelty, and some are as combative as bull-dogs. Now, it is not easy to maintain one's dignity when a little cur nips your heels behind, and a mastiff threatens you before. And some men seem to unite both elements; they run behind you and nip, they go before to bark and threaten. Under such circumstances it is not easy to live smoothly and charitably. It is easy to tame lions, but to tame men is not easy. It is easy to breast the current of rivers, but to stand against the full force of public opinion is hard. But midst all life's conflicts and clashings this task is upon us. We are to maintain peace, love our enemies, and ultimately master the art of right living with our fellows.
To all persons interested in the betterment of society comes the reflection that getting on with men is life's abiding aim and end. Schools can teach no other knowledge comparable to this. It is important to train the child in music, to drill him in public speech, to teach him how to handle the horse and dog, how to swim and ride, the use of tools and engines, the nature and production of wealth; but it is of far greater importance that youth should be given a knowledge of men, and become a skillful student of human nature; to learn how to read the face as an open book. If the jurist studies men and their motives to find out the truth; if the physician studies men for reasons of diagnosis; if the merchant studies thinking of his profit, and the politician thinking of preferment, the citizen must understand his fellows in the interest of securing their happiness and highest welfare. Incidentally, it is important that a man should be well groomed and well kept; should be educated and refined, just as it is proper that the pipes of an organ should be decorated on the outside.
Nevertheless, the test of an organ is the melody and harmony within. And the test of manhood is not outer polish, but inner skill in carrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in those stages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannot buy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing, discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been written similar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature," and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready for life's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against the tournament. When the schools have trained the child to the use of tools, given the tongue skill in speaking and the mind skill in thinking, it remains to teach him the study of men, the peculiarities of each of the five temperaments; the nature and number of the animal impulses; the use of the social and industrial impulses; the control of the acquisitive and the spiritual powers. For man's carriage of himself in the presence of fire and forest is the least of his duties. That which will tax him and distress, and perhaps destroy him, will be the carriage of his faculties midst all the clash and conflict, the din and battle of market and street. And midst all the strife, this is to be his ideal—to bear himself toward his enemies and toward his friends, after the pattern of Him who "makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust."
The measure of manhood is the degree of skill attained in the art of carrying one's self so as to pour forth upon men all the inspirations of love and hope, and to evoke good even from the meanest and wickedest of mankind. Passing through life, the soul is to be a happiness producer and a joy distributer. Without conscious thought the violets pour forth perfume; without volition the magnet pulls the iron filings; with no purpose the candle pushes its beams of light into the darkness; and such is to be the weight of goodness in each man, that its mere presence will be felt. For the soul carries power to bless or blight; it can lift up its faculties for smiting, as an enemy lifts the hammer above the fragile vase or delicate marble; through speech man can fill all the sky with storms, or he can sweep all clouds from the horizon. The soul can take the sting out of man's anger, or it can stir up anger; it can allay strife or whet the keen edge of hatred. The thermometer is not so sensitive to heat, the barometer to weight, the photographer's plate to light, as is the soul to the ten thousand influences of its fellow men.
For majesty and beauty of subtle influence, nothing is comparable to the soul. Not the sun hanging upon the horizon has such power for flower and fruitage as has a full-orbed Christian heart, rich in all good influences, throbbing with kindness and sympathy, radiant as an angel. Great is man's skill in handling engines of force; marvelous man's control of winds and rivers; wondrous the mastery of engines and ideas. But man himself is greater than the tools he invents, and man stands forth clothed with power to control and influence his fellows, in that he can sweeten their bitterness, allay their conflicts, bear their burdens, surround them with the atmosphere of hope and sympathy. Just in proportion as men have capacity, talent and genius, are they to be guardians, teachers, and nurses for men, bearing themselves tenderly and sympathetically toward ignorance, poverty and weakness. All the majesty of the summer, all the glory of the storms, all the beauty of galleries, is as nothing compared to the majesty and beauty of a full-orbed and symmetrical manhood. Should there be in every village and city a conspiracy of a few persons toward this refinement and culture, this beauty and sweet Christian living, the presence of these Christ-formed persons would transform the community. One such harvestful nature carries power to civilize an entire city. We no more need to demonstrate the worth of the sane, sound, Christ-like character than we need to prove the value of the all-glorious summer, when it fills the earth with fragrance, the air with blossoms, and all the boughs with luscious fruit. Each Christian youth is to be a man-maker and man-mender. He is to help and not hurt men. This is to walk in love. This is to overcome evil with good. This is to be not a printed but a living gospel. This is to be a master of the art of right living and a teacher of the science of character building.