The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-30

 tions, they may be made sources of strength instead of weakness. If we allow any of these things to blind us 50 that we cannot see things as they ire, then they will conquer us and lead us hopelessly astray; but if we hold our eyes open and keep our souls from blindness, be sure we have it in our power to conquer them and make them our servants. I am persuaded that most of the evil under which we suffer is of the nature of blindness. We, in common with the great body of men and women about us, mean to do right and to live for others as well as for ourselves. Most of the sins with which we allow ourselves to be iden- tified begin with faults of vision rather than faults Of intention. The man who is learning to see straight is on the road to moral improvement. The man who has learned this lesson and actual ly does see straight amid the confu- s,ons of life has the essential founda- ton of Christian character.
 "A boy or man starting out in life with the intent to do right finds his clearness of vision endangered from three sources; From his appetites, from his emotions, and from his selfish cal- culations. Excessive indulgence of any of the three always prevents a man from seeing clearly and often leads him to act wrongly
 Control Appetites.
 Appetite exercised in proper modera- tion is a means of bodily health. But let man give inordinate rein to any one of his many physical 'appetites, and he quickly gets this part of his nature So out of proportion to the other parts that his very reason may be over thrown And you remember the fable of Circe, who lured men to her palace and then turned them into the form of whatsoever animal they resembled be 1t lion or wolf or pig. It does not need a Circe to do this. The same thing is happening all about us every day, The Indulgence of the purely animal appe- tite to the exclusion of the reason and the spirit Is every day binding some mems vision of the higher things until they become animals in all but name; and fortunate are they if some clear Ulysses comes to break their entertainments, and to restore their vl- sion, and make them once more into men,
 
 "The man who gets under the donlin- ion of emotion does not sink quite So low as the one who gets under the do- minion of appetite. Indulgence in fear or anger or jealousy is not as directly as indulgence in drink or H. centiousness. The blindness which they intiict Is not so 'abjecti the view of all higher things is. not shut out so com pletely. But this subjection to paroX- ysms of anger or fear though 1t may leave man a man. forever units him to be a leader of men, When he Is by himself he is drived wherever the wind drives him when he is with a crowd he moves as the crowd moves, The little things that seem biz to them seem big to him. He mistakes his impatience for righteous anger, his distorted feeling for clear headed Observation. He be- comes one of those blind guides, lead CTS of the blind, whose end is the ditch and the quagmire.
 Danger of Self Calculation.
 Another danger to our clearness of intellectual vision, and more insidious than either of the others that I have named, Is the danger of selfish calcu- lation. Many man who sees and avoids the binding effects of appetite and passion gets into sort of self righteous state, where he thinks he has seen and avoided everything. He be- lieves in temperance, because temper ance Is the best policy. He believes in coolness, because coolness Is the best policy. And he thinks if he can only find out what is the best policy for him in every respect he has solved the nor al problems of the universe as complete ly as he needs to.
 But can he find out what is the best policy for him In every respect? The answer of history is that he, cannot. It Ia q ever been in all the world man wlio was wise enough or far-sighted enough to trust himself as to solve these prob lenfs in this way Men who take per- sonal ambition or personal selfshness as their guide are apt to seA enter upon own advantage large and the needs of others small, They compromise their honor for the sake of their personal ad- vaneement. Their eseifishness quickly becomes blind. Their judgment and foresight are as much, confused by this blind selfshness as they would be by anger or by appetite, Their fellow men do not trust them The objects of their desire either slip out of their hands or turn to Dead Sea apples in their pos session. These results may come soon or they may come late according to the degree of intelligence which man uses in his calculations; but the longer the catastrophe is averted, the greater becomes the complexlty of forces which the selfish player arrays against him. Even though he have the genius and the opportunity of a Napoleon, he sooner or later finds his Waterloo.
 Dull Clearness of Vision.
 "Now the evil that all these things have in oommon-the thing that is alike in the effects of appetite and emo tion and selfish calculation--is that they N.f lV ct nferlAt 4 the way to prevent ourselves from get ting under the dominion of any of these things is to insist on keeping our eyes open. This will make us first masters of ourselves and then leaders of others The man who gets consequences clearly In view has always a hand help fol being temperate, while others go to ex- cess; for being cool while others are under the dominion of passion or panic; and of serving the large ends of the world while others are carried away by false estimate of their own small ends This is what the great men whom we have admired and loved and. followed have learned to do; and 1t Is the thing which we in our own measure can learn to do ourselves
 Light of True Religion.
 q have been often asked whether mar by doing right can expect to rise above temptation so that 1t will cease to. have power over him or attraction for him do not know. It Is slow process at best, Perhaps he can, and perhaps he cannot. But what he can honestly ex- pect to learn to do Is to see the com sequences of yielding to temptation He can get the alternatives clearly be. fore him. All through the Bible, and especially all through the New. Testa ment, emphasis is laid on the light that true religion brings into the world. man has the opportunity either to use that light or not, as he will. In the former case he sees the snares and pit. falls which beset his feet. In the latter case he does not He may stumble into them in spite of all the light that car be given him, or he may just possibly have the good luck to keep out of then all in the dark. But either result i'