The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1912-06-06
THE CHALLENGE OF LIFE
Address of Dr. Mabie Before the Students Religious
Societies.
Societies.


all of these things and a Thousand
things more II, instead of being mere
dexterity of the hands, It becomes
AL expression Of your personality.
Now we think of business, which
is the organized form of work, as
simply a means OF getting money
Our people have been up to their
nccks, so TO speak, in amassing
wealth; but they have thought of
1t largely as process of making q
fortune, and now, because they have
thought Of IL that way they are 60
ing through a period of stress, doubt,
questioning and uncertainty because
divine providence is driving it home
to them that business is not a pro-
cess of making money ultimately but
a process of making character, that
what you find at the bottom is not
fortune but a character, unless the
man has lost himself. We think Of
our schools and our colleges and our
universities and all our vocational
and professional schools as the only
methods or instruments of education,
and want to say to you tonight
that far beyond all OF them In the
reach of its influence and the pene-
tration of its influence is the bust
ness world. 1t is the business of the
world that educates the majority of
men and women, and always has edu
Gated them. And tomorrow morning.
when the factory bells ring and hun
dreds of thousands of doors Of shops
are thrown open and men and wo-
men over the whole continent come
pouring in from their homes, they
imagine they are going to work.
They are, but they are also going
to the school which has drilled into
society the fundamental virtues by
which it exists. 1t is in the factory
and the shop, on the farm and in
the store, everywhere where men and
women work, that the primary les
sons are taught. integrity, fidelity,
| unctuality. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. great
without which all knowledge
is a vain thing and all culture but
pretense and a sham. 1t is in bust
hess that the foundation is laid, and
cur colleges and schools can only
copy then SO far as they can those
traits. Show me a boys
work, whether of a carpenter or q
blacksmith or a piece of sculpture or
a book or a painting. and / will tell
you what the man is behind it, for
there is no revelation of the human
spirit that is so sincere and so I'M
disguised and SO unmistakable as a
mans work. A man may speak false
ly, he may with his lips deceive for
a time a majority of people, he may
even deceive himself. But he can
not deceive himself with his work.
And the more individual a mans
work is, the more free it is, the
more powerful it is, the more does
il show what manner of man is be-
hind it. When it ceases to be me-
chanical, that is to say, something
that is done with the hands, only
when it becomes spiritual and arts
tic in the sense that it is done with
FREEDOM and power, then it becomes
4 revelation. If tomorrow in some
island of the South Sea vase should
come TO light that had been buried
Tor three or four centuries, if We
IAN imagine it being taken there
by some early explorers; If it were
10 come to light tomorrow, men
,ould tell, experts could tell, what
ace had fashioned it. If it were q
ireek vase, then, without any word
II record or contemporary evidence,
he expert would know whence II
anne, what part of Greece fashion |
d 1t, what age produced it, because |
he stamp of that race would be I'M
upon it. Today you cannot /
ook at a Greek temple standing, |
/ may be, half dismantled, without
'ecoming aware Of what manner of I
nan or architect built 1t. You saJ
Certainly, We know their sense of
proportion, their sense of relation,
{ subordination of the parts to the
Whole, their temper, their self-res-
RANT, all these things are exhibit
d, as Ruskin long ago pointed OUT,
n every great building" Or, if /
GU were 10 come tomorrow upon
ONE portrait of Rembrandt at the
cry end of the world, you would in
family recognize it as the work of a
reat man and you would know what
manner of man it was and you wCul
ecognize that you were in the
resehce Of great personality and
gu would know something of the
ace behind him. You would know
hat they were not dreamers, vision
Ties, but men of action, men Of
apaclty for dealing strongIv u,;,h N