Part 9

¶First: “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” sixteenth, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”

¶“Judge not that ye be not judged.” That means, treat each of us his brethren with charity. Be not quick to find fault. Above all be not quick to judge another man who according to his light is striving to do his duty as each of us hopes he is striving to do his. Let us ever remember that we have not only divine authority for the statement that by our fruits we shall be known, but also that it is true that mankind will tend to judge us by our fruits.

¶It is an especially lamentable thing to see ill done by any man who from his associations with the Church, who from the fact that he has had the priceless benefits of the teachings of Christian religion, should be expected to take a position of leadership in the work for good.

¶The next quotation I wish to read is found in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, thirty-seventh to fortieth verses inclusive: “Then shall the righteous answer them, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, and fed thee, or thirsty, and gave thee drink?’

¶“‘When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, or naked, and clothed thee?’

¶“‘Or, when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?’

¶“And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.’”

¶That is what this brotherhood means; by trying to worship our Creator by acting toward his creatures as He would have us act; to try to make our religion a living force in our lives; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

¶The next text I wish to read is found in I Corinthians, thirteenth chapter, beginning, with the first verse. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity I am become as sounding brass, as a tinkling cymbal.”

¶“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I would remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

¶“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long and is kind, charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

¶“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.”

¶Let each of us exercise the largest tolerance for his brother who is trying, though in a different way to lead a decent life; who is trying to do good in his own fashion; let each try to show practical sympathy with that brother; not be too quick to criticise.

¶In closing I want to read a few verses from the Epistle of James, from the first chapter twenty-seventh verse:

¶“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted before the world.”

¶If a man will try to serve God the Father by being kindly to the many around him who need such kindness and by being upright and honest himself, then we have the authority of the Good Book for saying that we are in honor bound to treat him as a good Christian and extend the hand of brotherhood to him.

¶Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very large number of people tend to forget that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally—impossible for us to figure to ourselves what this life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has, by his life work, added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, of which our people are proud, almost every such man has based his life work largely upon the teachings of the Bible. Sometimes it has been done unconsciously, more often consciously, and among the very greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand.

¶Lincoln,—sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the Nineteenth Century, laid down his life for the people whom, living, he had served so well,—built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely; mastered it as, later he mastered only one or two other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost a man of one book, who knew that book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein; and he left his life as a part of the crowning work of the Nineteenth Century.

¶You may look through the Bible from cover to cover, and nowhere will you find a line that can be construed into an apology for the man of brains who sins against the light. On the contrary, in the Bible, taking that as a guide, you will find that because much has been given to you much will be expected of you, and a heavier condemnation is to be visited upon the able man who goes wrong than upon his weaker brother who cannot do the harm that the other does, because it is not in him to do it. I plead, not merely for training of the mind, but for the moral and spiritual training of the home and the church; the moral and spiritual training that have always been found in, and that have ever accompanied the study of this book; this book, which, in almost every civilized tongue, can be described as ‘The Book,’ with the certainty of all understanding you when you so describe it.

¶The immense moral influence of the Bible, though of course, infinitely the most important, is not the only power it has for good. In addition there is the increasing influence it exerts on the side of good taste, of good literature, of proper sense of proportion, of simple and straightforward writing and thinking.

¶The Bible does not teach us to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them. That is a lesson that each one of us who has children is bound in honor to teach these children if he or she expects to see them become fitted to play the part of men and women in our world.

¶If we read the Bible aright we read a book which teaches us to go forth and do the work of the Lord; to do the work of the Lord in the world as we find it; to try to make things better in this world, even if only a little better, because we have lived in it. That kind of work can be done only by the man who is neither a weakling nor a coward, by the man who, in the fullest sense of the word is a true Christian—like Great Heart, Bunyan’s hero. We plead for a closer and wider and deeper study of the Bible, so that our people may be in fact as well as in theory, ‘doers of the word, and not hearers only.’

REFERENCE NOTES.

The figures which appear in the text have reference to the source from which that particular extract was made, and the reader can refer here if need be to the occasion and time when such words were uttered. Of course everything of a purely local or ephemeral nature has been omitted, and only the more vital truths which concern our daily lives and the commonweal have been gathered here, and these the average reader will find a help and guide in which he will be inclined to put an abiding faith.

Footnote A:

National Teachers Association.

Footnote 1:

From an address before the Hungarian Club, N. Y. Feb. 14, 1905.

Footnote 2:

Extract from an address at Little Rock, Oct. 25, 1905.

Footnote 3:

From an address before the Republican Club, N. Y. Feb. 14, 1905.

Footnote 4:

Address at Symphony Hall, Boston, Aug. 25, 1902.

Footnote 5:

Address before N. Y. Chamber of Commerce, Nov. 11, 1902.

Footnote 6:

Address at Antietam, Sept. 17, 1903.

Footnote 7:

Extract from Message to 57th Cong. 1st Session.

Footnote 8:

Address to Brotherhood of Local Engineers, Chatt. Sept. 8, 1903.

Footnote 9:

Extract from Message to 57th Cong. 2nd Session.

Footnote 10:

Extract from Message to 58th Cong. 2nd Session.

Footnote 11:

Extract from Message to 59th Cong. 1st Session.

Footnote 12:

Address at Topeka, May 1, 1903.

Footnote 13:

Address at Bangor, Aug. 27, 1902.

Footnote 14:

Extract from Message to 59th Cong. 1st Session.

Footnote 15:

Address at Sioux Falls, Apr. 6, 1903.

Footnote 16:

From address at Logansport, Sep. 23, 1902.

Footnote 17:

Address at Grace Dutch Reformed Church, Washington, Nov. 12, 1905.

Footnote 18:

From Letter of Acceptance of Nomination, Sep. 12, 1904.

Footnote 19:

Address before Union League, Phila., Nov. 22, 1902.

Footnote 20:

Address at dedicatory exercises New High School, Phila. in honor of Dr. Nicholas Butler, N. Y. Apr. 19, 1902.

Footnote 21:

Nov. 22, 1902.

Footnote 22:

Address at Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Palo Alto, May 12, 1903.

Footnote 23:

Address at Univ. of California, Berkeley, May 14, 1903.

Footnote 24:

Spoken at Lincoln’s Monument, Springfield, Ill., June 4, 1903.

Footnote 25:

Address at Univ. of Pa. Feb. 22, 1905.

Footnote 26:

Extract from letter to Governor Durbin of Ind. Aug. 6, 1903.

Footnote 27:

Address at Atlanta, Oct. 20, 1905.

Footnote 28:

Address before Nat. Educ. Asso. Asbury Park, July 7, 1905.

Footnote 29:

Address in Alabama, Oct. 24. 1905.

Footnote 30:

Address at Chautauqua, Aug. 11, 1904.

Footnote 31:

Address at Pan Amer. Miss. Service, Cath. S. S. P. & P., Washington, Oct. 25, 1903.

Footnote 32:

Address at Chicago, Apr. 2, 1903.

Footnote 33:

Address before National Mothers’ Congress, Washington, May 13, 1905.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 122, changed “because they the” to “because they are”. 2. P. 129, changed “oppression of maltreatment” to “oppression or maltreatment”. 3. P. 155, changed “which give rise” to “which gives rise”. 4. P. 162, changed “But will” to “But it will”. 5. P. 166, changed “else count for” to “else counts for”. 6. P. 181, changed “announced that the” to “announced that”. 7. P. 182, changed “the Americans. We” to “the Americas. We”. 8. P. 193, changed “of unsurpassing efficiency” to “of unsurpassed efficiency”. 9. Footnotes 10. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 11. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 12. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.