You have had this afternoon to speak to you so far a business man and a minister. I think I shall speak to you as a workingman, and what I say to you I will probably say from that viewpoint. I want to congratulate you first of all, for I dare to do it, on the fact

A. O. HOLMES.

that you not only have a men's meeting to-day, but you have dared to have it at the same time that they have a women's meeting.

      The kingdom of God will not advance by standing still. Many Christians act as if it would. They seem to believe that nothing more is demanded of them than lives of mediocre righteousness; to be just as good as the standards of their communities happen to demand. They believe in anchoring to the rock of salvation and staying there. They adopt the defensive rather than the offensive, the negative rather than the positive, the passive rather than the aggressive policy.

      My plea is for an active campaign. My belief is that while the kingdom may be maintained by every good man's living up to the accepted standards of his world, it will never be advanced an inch by such living. Jesus was lifted up that he might draw all men unto him, and every advance the world has made has been by bloody stairs, every step of which was a dead body of martyr-prophet. The contribution of every Christian man to the advance of the kingdom is some degree of martyrdom.

      Begin with the man in the shop. What contribution can he make? Is he a good mechanic? Does he do his work well? Does he do a fair day's work for his wage? Is he sober, industrious, thrifty, a providing husband, a sacrificing father, a good neighbor, an intelligent citizen? If he is all these, then he merely maintains the kingdom; he has not elevated the standard one whit; he is not pointed out in his shop as an outstanding and brilliant example of a Christian man. Even the Gentiles do the same.

      He must do more than all this. He must do as well as they, and then add to it a positive piece of work, voluntarily, at some cost to himself, without reward, and through it raise the standard of right living in that shop.

      For example, let me tell you about a nickelplater, Thomas French, and a blacksmith, Peter Rule. Both of these men are church-members. They are active committeemen in the religious work in the railroad shops. They held services at noon, sang hymns, prayed and did all the conventional things Christian men do. They were asked to enter a mechanic labor organization. Most righteously they shook their heads. That organization was an ungodly, worldly, drink-loving body of men with whom no decent Christian man ought to have anything to do. Later on they saw a great light. They entered that society and resolutely used their influence for righteousness. At the yearly banquet, for the first time in its history, liquor was ruled out. Thomas French was invited to perform the unheard-of service of opening the repast with grace. They secured a local option resolution in that particular lodge, and finally carried the local option [83] plank into the national organization, where it is being considered to-day.

      Thus, by their efforts, they changed the spirit of that whole organization; they eliminated drink from that order; they compelled the members to stand for a far-reaching movement; they distinctly set a new standard for the men of their shops, and to-day they stand as the apostles of a new order, prophets of God in their world.

      Business and professional men are prone to excuse themselves from active campaigns in advancing the kingdom, by saying they are too busy to attend church, act on committees or be present at the special meetings. They are sometimes charged with permitting business to interfere with their religion.

      To such charges the average man is either silent, accepting the tacit assumption that the kingdom of God can be advanced only through church activities, or he replies that he is doing his Christian duty every day of his life.

      The lawyer, for example, will point to his probity and respectable standing in his world; the physician will exhibit his roll of free patients or his hospital services; the business man will refer you to his list of contributions to all sorts of religious and philanthropic enterprises. To all these things I say "Amen." Thank God for the increasing belief that religion is not confined to the four walls of any building, however holily dedicated. All praise be given to that man who withstands daily the terrible suction of the undercurrents in his business, and nobly lives clean and strong before his fellow, a righteous man and one without reproach.

      Contrast, if you please, the career of two young lawyers. Both of them began poor; both of them secured political positions. One of them kept close to the bosom of the "organization." In everything he "went along" with the bosses. He kept his skirts clear, of course. Respectability covered him with her bleached rags. Promotion came as a matter of course. To-day he is pointed out as an example of smug righteousness and the prosperity that covers a multitude of sins.

      The other young man was speedily faced in his political position with the question of his position on civic righteousness.

      He stood at the forking of the roads. One led to ease and low ideals; the other to his relegation to private life, the struggle for a practice and obscurity. Owen Roberts chose the latter, and through that choice raised the standards of his profession.

      Time forbids detailed illustrations, but the importance of the business man, however, demands at least a word in passing.

      I am not hardy enough, I must confess, to throw myself into the seething caldron of present-day industrial problems. I do dare to state, though, that it is my conviction that in this field, rather than in men's clubs, brotherhoods or laymen's missionary enterprises, will business men find their ultimate and their real grappling with the foes of the kingdom. These other named enterprises are good. They are the skirmishes which will lead to the real battle.

      For the kingdom's advance, the question of "How does a man make his money?" is just now of more importance than how he spends his money. He may tell the truth, lose $100,000, and do more good than by giving $1,000,000. Possibly he may save a soul for five dollars and damn two souls making that five dollars.

      Whatever else is true, gentlemen, the kingdom of God is not a money-giving proposition. It can't be bought or sold. It is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. It spreads by contagion. Somebody must have it first, then give it. It is a fever of the soul, a zeal that eats a man up, and whenever anybody comes near him, he gets it. Now and then a case is so severe that an epidemic results from it alone.

      The contribution of the business man, then, is not alone his dollars, but himself; not in giving his dollars, but in making his dollars. I would like to see every business man inspired with something of that zeal for extending the kingdom which actuated Columbus in his discovery of a new world; or something of that fiery fanaticism which changed the scattered hordes of Arabians into a mighty army and sent them over the world to take all [84] kingdoms for Islam. I would like to see every Christian business man undertake to establish the kingdom in the business world; to substitute spiritual standards of success for material, co-operative methods for competitive, unselfish motives for selfish. Between our modern business organization and the day when savage hunters brought down some great beast, fell upon the carcass with hatchets and knives, tore off each his selected piece, fought knee-deep in gore for choice bits, and finally scurried away to his but with his booty, there is a long and glorious history of advancement. To me it seems that the future holds in store just as glorious and just as far-reaching advances in industrialism before the kingdoms of this earth become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this consummation, the business man can have just as vital a part as the preacher in the pulpit. To him is equally presented the issue.

      Will he ignore moral standards and spiritual values and bend all his energies toward material success?

      Or, dare he play the mighty game of business according to the Golden Rule--place men above dollars, right above gain, law above power, honor above everything, and leave behind him the moral example of a moral pioneer?

      If he dares to choose the latter, whether he dies rich or poor, counted a success or a failure, he has made his contribution to the kingdom.

      If the contribution of the business man, avowedly devoted to material things, shall be a higher spiritual ideal for this world, what towering demand for the extension of the spiritual kingdom shall be made of the minister, the professed apostle of unseen and eternal things.

      For the sake of argument, I will beg you to admit that the minister, like every other man, does not promote the kingdom of God by doing what he gets paid for. To be sober, pious, godly, learned in the Scriptures, to advise, comfort, visit the sick, bury the dead, preach two good sermons a week for forty years--all these things are matters of pay and taken for granted. Beyond these things, in whatever divine fire he may deliver his message, in whatever holy sacrifice beyond what is required by the expectation of the people, in whatever he may endow the supererogatory of grace, in these he actually moves forward the divine work in the world.

      To do this, if I had the practical power, I would organize every minister in this country into a labor union and then declare a strike. That strike would demand the right of every minister to be a man.

      That means, in general, that he shall steer a course somewhere between a sympathetic old woman and a strait-laced ecclesiastic. It means that he shall be free to engage in hearty, human, wholesome interests; that he refuses to be cabined, cribbed, confined within the traditions and customs of sainted platitude and pious inaninity. It demands that he shall come into his birthright; enter upon his rightful, robust career; refuse to talk squaw-talk with women and chuckle babies under the chin.

      Particularly it means that the minister shall lay aside his professionalism. There is a vast difference between a business man and a man. One may be a clean, crisp, new-dollar-bill sort of character when you meet him in his office. The other may be a hale fellow, well met, with his feet on the porch-rail and cigar in his mouth when business hours are over. One is the man on duty; the other the man off duty. Something like that is what is wanted in the minister. He is always on duty, always on parade. He never forgets who he is. He ought to forget it. He ought to loosen up, unstiffen, lose his oratorical voice, change his clothes, wash off the odor of sanctity, hand the universe over to the Creator, step down into the crowd, run the risk of losing his job by some supercilious critic's charge of worldliness, take the Ladies' Home Journal out of his pocket and read the Saturday Evening Post.

      If he dares to do that, he will come to his other fight of mixing with men. That involves the art of knowing men's sins without estranging them. That is a hard thing to do. One church overcomes it by screening off the confessor from the sinner. They can not look into each other's eyes. But the true minister, transformed by the alchemy [85] of human love, who can look his fellow sinner in the eye, hear his pitiful strivings with overmastering passions and still walk this earth with him as a brother--that minister has learned the secret of searching men's hearts as with fire. If he can do that, he can help men without humiliating them. The Son of God can do no more.

      The present-day American idolizes success. Success means material possession. A hundred cents is his standard of value and a hundred million cents his measure of success. Conversely, spirituality means failure. Failure means weakness. The greatest possible sermon the preacher can preach to-day is the manhood of himself. The representative of heaven should be a great, strong, healthy, happy, care-free soul. When he walked abroad, I'd have him the envy of the richest man alive, the example of happiness to the poorest, the hero of the strongest.

      To do this he must turn his weakness into power. To-day, in the order of success, come, first, the business man with his modern methods and jungle ethics; second, his ally, the politician; third, his apologist, the corporation lawyer. These are the three great successful evils of America. After these come the failures: First, the doctor; second, the teacher; third and last, the preacher. The doctor, the teacher and the preacher are poor, and the poorest of these is the preacher.

      Far be it from me to make a plea for poverty in the ministry. There is no need. If I had my way, I would make the least salary of a minister $30,000 a year. Every minister is at least as good as the President of the United States.

      But since poverty is a necessity I'd make it a virtue. In a land where material prosperity was pointed out to men as the only road to happiness, the poverty of the man of God should enter its protest by the incomprehensible peace of poverty and the inexhaustible power of poverty. The peace of poverty lies in its seeking spiritual riches and the power of poverty in its possessing spiritual riches. To my mind, the most pitiable object this world affords is an old man beguiled in his youth into paths of material prosperity, seeking happiness in material things, succeeding at last, and finding when the solitude and weakness of old age comes, he has not laid up for himself one living, lasting interest. To my mind, the most inspiring, most envied sight is the man whose soul is rich as a bending orchard tree with life's best fruitage, who has sung all his days:

      A triumphant spiritual life is then the contribution of the minister to the advance of the kingdom.

      To some extent, at least, this is the contribution of every man. My plea is not that men shall change their work, seek usefulness in withdrawing from the world or entering another profession, but that each one, in the place he finds himself, will raise the standards of righteousness amongst his fellow-workers. No man is too poor nor too rich to cast in his mite toward such an advance.

[CCR 83-86]