The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1908-06-04
MINNESOTA
HISTORICAL
SOCIETY,".
VOLUME XXI. NO. "a

been educated or drawn out. You
have acquired more or less learning
some more, some less. The natural
question for you to ask as you stand
upon the threshold of broader life
is, what shall do with my powers?
If you seek further knowledge and
wisdom at the college or the school of
technique, the question is only post
poned. It is a question of life-how
to make the most of it. It underlies
your choice of a particular way of
earning your daily bread or making
fortune. For the man who merely
makes living or a fortune does not
truly live. How to live and so as to
make the most of our talents or talent.
That is our question tonight.
There is but one answer. I might
rattle around Il may anyway, give
you advice on little things, quote the
moral precepts of Confucius or
Emerson, read from Lord Chester
fields, or somebody's letters of ad-
vice to his son Ia father never gives
advice to his daughter, he takes it),
and end by referring you to a PAM
phlet, GLOW to Succeed" But if we
are earnest and anxious to travel this
highway of life we will find that it
leads to Jesus Christ, the source of life.
Others may give us partial answers,
but the complete answer to this ques-
ton, how to live, is found in the full,
complete, perfect life.
I am we'll aware that this is a very
ordinary and commonplace practice
OF the preacher. He is all the time
saying, "be Christians" ''live the
Christ life," and you may be just a
little tired OF it. But how, upon this
epochical time in your lives when you
are most seriously looking out into
the new world God has given you to
conquer, how can the preacher who is
anxious to give to you the biggest,
truest, most inspiring thought God
has given him, how can he possibly
steer clear of the master mind of
the master teacher?
The Talmud has the story of the
ring of Solomon engraved with the
divine name, most sacred to Jew.
Everyone toward whom Solomon
turned the ring was forced to speak
out whatever he was thinking. The
greatest fact in human history is the
fact of Christ, and such is the peculiar
attractive power of his life that, as he
predicted, be is drawing all men unto
himself. All men good and bad are
forced to come out into the light of
his life and show what sort they are
all men are compelled to stand in the
living presence of the ever living and
ever present Christ and answer his
question, "Whom say ye that the
son of man am?"
I have purposely chosen to emphasize
this particular faculty of the master
teacher, "The Mind of Christ" first
because you are students, and second
to correct an entirely erroneous esti-
mate some have Of Christ. They
come to His gospel in a patronizing
way-they call him a "good man" the
'best man" they even say, "the son of
God" But taking the sermon on the
mount, the golden rule, the beatitudes
and like passages, they look upon Him
as an idealist, an impractical
dreamer whose words are nice to read
and talk about and hope for, especial
ly good for women and children-cer-
tainly "they can do no harm.' But
they pride themselves on being practi-
cal men and women of the world and
are free to express their intellectual
superiority in the practical, hard.
matter of fact experiences of life, in
the judgment that the golden rule and
the sermon on the mount have nothing
to do with business and politics and
that a general who loses battle
through the activity of his conscience
would be the derision and jest of his
tory. How many of us who call our
selves Christians have got into the
habit of speaking of Christ and his
doctrine in tone half apologize and
associating with Him the weakness of
the average reformer?
It is we'll for US all to come to the
mind of Christ to attempt to take the
message of it., the height and the depth
and breadth, that we may understand
something of the strength and virility
and vitality of his thought and it's
universal application to all the ex-
periences of life. It's the kind of
thought that makes men broad without
being loose, profound without losing
the simplicity of faith, strong and ro-
bust yet tender and sympathetic.
Such a man was Abraham Lincoln,
whose mind was saturated with the