The herald., 1897-11-22

announcement of law Of life as mex
orable as any other law Of nature.
Wholly alive to nature and to man,
Jesus saw how there was established
between the man and his environment
an action and a reaction. Further. He
saw there was q fixed principle in the
process, a rigid reciprocity.
I'VE all go about calling ourselves
victims, discussing the cruel world, and
wondering that 1t should treat us so.
when we are really meeting the rebound
Of our own lives. That which determines
what shall issue from circumstances and
environment is the nature of the life that
Is placed in them. Two men work side
by side in the same conditions, the same
surroundings. The one is growing large
and strong and sweet, showing forth the
nobler and higher traits Of a divine man.
hood; the other is becoming more mean
and sordid and low. What is the reason
OF this difference?
1.-The world, like nature, gives back to
us only what we bring to it. There is
a deep and awful sense in which every
man is not only the architect of his own
fortune. but the architect Of his own life.
Society does not build mans life-with
to him again.
"There is everywhere this tendency to
shift the responsibility of what we are
upon the poor, dead world. If any dis
tinction is made it is usually this: that
the nobleness that rises in our life we
claim as the fruits Of our own person.
ality; while the meanness and the wrong
we lay at the feet Of circumstances. The
doors of every mans life are latched on
the inside. No wickedness can enter
save as he himself opens the door to it.
There Is no power in the world of
things. The root Of temptation lies in
the man, not in the environment. The
strength Of temptation is determined by
the mans weakness. Overt evil is only
the reply to covert sin. Every mans
life stands as the unerring utterance of
what he is in himself.
1--WE are trying to make ourselves be-
1ieve that our personality is the raw ma
terial out of which Fate is grimly and
arbitrarily molding US after it's own
whim. The truth is that personality is
the agent; that we make ourselves, and
the world gives into our hands only the
material we ask for.
"a complete realization Of that social
ideal which Jesus called the Kingdom of
God can issue only as the men Of the
world, each claiming for himself the
right to live the holiest life possible,
each meeting the forces of his time
with a manly assertion Of the power Of
his own personality, lives his life cour-
ageously and divinely, bearing the bur-
den Of his individual and social RESPONSE
bility without shirking.
1.-The iron law of reciprocity is in
flexible and unchanging. No man can
expect to come to the world grasping,
mercenary. with ideals that are low and
motives that are mean, and, casting
these factors of characters into lie, eX-
pect to get back anything but the same
qualities uttered in visible form. Instead
OF coming boldly to a clean, true man.
hood and escaping from the conse-
quences of sin by avoiding the sin itself,
we try to save ourselves by hiding our
neanness in our bosoms and backing
under a creed.
$50 the only hope for any of us is in
q perfectly honest manliness to claim
our sins. Let us refuse to listen for one
moment to any voice which should make
our sins less ours-it is the only honest,
hopeful way, the only way to know and
be ourselves. So the care Of every man
should be to determine the personal