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V.—On Doing Well for One's Self.

There was living in the neighbourhood of Rome a short time before Christ was born a gentleman of moderate means and great taste. His dinner parties were exquisite for their wines and their conversation; no man could turn such neat sentences; his good sense taught him what was right; and his easy philosophy did not wholly silence his conscience. His own description of himself shows that Horace, in the midst of all his placid enjoyments, could not escape the voice within: "I know the better and I do the worse."

About a century afterwards there was living as a visitor at Corinth a learned but heretical Jew, who had given much attention to the moral problems of life. The city was thronged with business men and a large luxurious community. "Push" and "Pleasure" were the chosen habits of the people. In the midst of such a field for observation, one might have expected the moralist to have turned his thoughts quite away from himself. He was too conscientious and frank to do this. He saw in Corinthian Society a conflict similar to that in his own breast, only they succumbed, while he held the secret of victory. "When I would do good, evil is present with me. Who shall deliver me? I thank God, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Again, some weeks since, a detective was talking with a discharged prisoner—when the latter used some such language as this: "I mean to do well for myself this time; but if I do break loose I shall be like a tiger for ferocity in Dunedin." These words are remarkably significant to the observer of man's mental and moral movements. I do not think they were false words, they just described poor Butler's state of mind—that phase of the perilous conflict between moral hope and moral despair, when the battle may turn to either side.

Now the value of these three cases of self-dissection, by a literary heathen gentleman, by the Apostle of the Gentiles, and by one whose life has been that of a confirmed criminal, lies in the presentation of a similar struggle going on in men of such contrasted training and diverse character as Horace, Paul, and Butler. In fact, such a struggle is common to all at times, and is most severe in those whose habits are not yet fully formed, or in those who have chosen a course of conduct opposed to the opinions of earlier days. This moral conflict is being waged in 30,000 souls about Dunedin to-day; and the struggle is most fierce in the hearts of the 6000 young men who either know the better but do the worse, or who find their victory in their faith, or who hover miserably between the two. It is to men who know the severity and strain of this conflict, I wish to speak to-night. God helping me, I may help you—may arrest you in some evil course, may confirm you in some good one, or may turn you to the right path in some critical moment of life. "I will teach you the good and the right way: only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things He hath done for you."

This struggle is never the same in any two men, for it depends both on what a man is—his physique, his intellect, his morale, and also on where he is—and these are quite different in everyone. Now many who have set about what is before us to-night, have tried to help their fellows to do well for themselves by laying down fixed rules for daily conduct. This may be desirable in a boarding-school for the sake of order only—it is one of the evils of boarding-school life, but you have got beyond that. It may be necessary for the existence and discipline of a monastery, but your lot is not cast there, and probably never will. Your calling lies among the busy occupations of life. At the outset then, let me assure you that I will not inflict upon you an impossible diary of action from the moment you tumble into your tub of a morning, till the moment you tumble into bed at night. Men must make these bye-laws for themselves. And the best service another can render you is to show on what well considered principles these rules should be drawn, and on what lines of thinking each man can best beat out the music of his own life. There is the more hope of doing some good in this way as there is the more need of trying, because so many make a fresh start when they come out to the Colonies, and old principles as well as new ones hang even more loosely about our minds than habits do about our conduct. Conscious of some independent power to fashion your lives, you do now and then sit down and consider what you can be and do, and how these objects can be obtained. Let me take you in that attitude of reflection.

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Consider your ancestry. You live at the close of the nineteenth century. It is absurd to suppose that thousands of years have transmitted no thoughts and notions worth our holding with tenacity. The history and traditions of the past are stored with experience and observations, that we shall neglect at our peril. There are behind us the facts of the Gospel, the story of Christianity, and the growth of the British power. All these have conspired to make you what you are. To ignore the spirit of the very air you have been breathing, is simply to throw away some of your inheritance. Now, mark you, I don't say cling fast to all these without reason and without thought. What I urge is this, that you should not thoughtlessly and irrationally fling them overboard as worthless lumber. Some reverence is due to these old things before you part from them. They have served others well and may serve you too. Least of all can you afford to forget the principles which ruled in your father's home. Whether these were good, bad, or indifferent, they have had much to do with making you what you are. In these your early life was rooted as in its native soil; and it never answers in transplanting to shake off all the mould—a good gardener lifts the tree with as large a bole of earth as possible. Not that young men should be always under parental tutelage and never think or act otherwise than their father would; not that young men should always be tied to their mother's apron strings, or be dandling about their sister's trains; but that no young man can afford to disallow the influence of home. Yet how changed is your life from what it was being moulded to in the old country! Perhaps you have done so well for yourself as to improve on the old paths. Have you done so well as to improve on the old principles? Have you not rather done like Horace—chosen the worse when you knew the better? "Your father was a large-minded man; his moderate means did not prevent his honourable and useful life; his business was conducted under the control of other motives than besides those of money; deceit, trickery, and ventures at other men's risks were an abomination to him; games were common at his table and in his fields, but there was no betting book in his pocket; while to crown all, his daily life was suffused with a devout and manly regard for religion. By his side there was a gentler nature, who spoke oftener of what she would have you be; she it was who first instilled the lessons of life's duties into your infant mind; your first prayers were at her knees; your last sad memory of that sacred circle is her parting kiss. Now, they have grown old together; they sit in the familiar corner by the fireside, and each hope their "boy" has done well for himself—there are a few grey hairs about your beard, but to the old folks you are always "our boy." All they know about you is from your letters. What about your real life? Ought you, can you, in a fair estimate of it, and the struggle to do well, obliterate the picture I have drawn, or leave out of your plans and your judgments its powerful incentives and touching influence. Has not that memory saved you in some perilous hour, swerved you to the side of righteousness, and may it not do so again?

"Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!"

Consider your present relations—how you are cast into the midst of certain currents of speculation, tones of thought, and modes of action. You do not breathe the same atmosphere here that you would in a similar town and population at home. Matthew Arnold charges it against modern Christianity that we have lost the sweet reasonableness of Jesus, and do not appreciate the spirit of our own times. The change is false, but if Christianity does this, it is ready to perish and vanish away. A manhood that does not understand and recognise the character and habit of current opinion is approaching a second childhood. Now the spirit of the times here in the Colony, is marked by freedom, by rapidity of mental movement, and by the vulgarizing influence of absorbing material pursuits. It is marked by freedom; for the old restraints are left behind, and the influence of them has been loosened by a long sea voyage or a residence in a boarding-house. Some happily have not gone through these, but the temper is contagious. You shake off the traditional trammels of earlier years; you question whatever is old; you criticise whatever is new; while authority is not strong enough to impose a healthy silence till you are sure that you can safely shift your moorings. Hence what at home is but an undercurrent comes here to the surface, what in an old country would be a temporary phase of doubt is early fixed as unbelief by the process of utterance. The deep-rooted earnestness of a calmly thought out or long tried faith is rare. A bubbling activity and an energy that wastes itself in rapid changes are but too common. The last novelty draws all over the town to-night, and the most ignorant are ready with a cut-and-dried opinion upon it to-morrow page 23 morning. There is a stream of variety, movement, excitement, in this revision of old notions and in this out-spoken frankness as to the results. It gives a painful shock to many staid folk; is very bracing to the men of strong will and clear heads; and very dangerous to those who throw themselves into it in ignorance of its existence or its strength. Thought on all topics here is like the shingly rivers on the Canterbury plains; it changes its bed every year, rises and falls with great rapidity, and is for the most part shallow, shifty, and deceptive. This is not the case with religion only, but with political, social, and commercial matters too. This you must consider if you would do well for yourself and not lose your nerve in some critical hour of life.

Consider how you are thrown into the midst of a sentiment that makes far too much of material interests and monetary gain. It was not always so. I do not admire the "dour" temper of the earlier settlers here; but I would remember with all honour to them that, in founding this settlement, they thought of religion and education-even in its higher forms. We have not improved in that thought fulness, but the contrary. It is true that in our Churches the ten commandments and the Lord's Prayer are visible, or audible, or both. But we are going far to forget the majesty of Jehovah and the love of our Father in Heaven in pursuit of daily bread and the practice of an expedient morality. Even where the worth of Heaven is not forgotten, it is separated by a long distance from the claims of earth. You will often hear it said, "Oh, that's very well in morals, but it won't do in politics or in business;" and so, by degrees, a clear line of demarcation is drawn between the two parts of life—to the injury of Piety and the degradation of Business. Piety becomes speculative and sentimental Business becomes hard, narrow, and base. Now, one object I have had in view in these Plain Talks has been to protest against this divorce of what God has joined together. And I shall think all the trouble they have cost me, and the hesitancy and surprise they have caused others, but a cheap price to pay, if only I have done something to establish and confirm the position that Religion and Common Life are wedded together under a Divine sanction.

This absorbing regard for material interests has another danger. The border land of science and art becomes an unknown and uncultured region—not to say a despised one. It is grievous to see how the University is mocked at and its professors condemned as useless ornaments, because, forsooth, an immediate financial profit is not secured by their existence. This is the most flagrant illustration of the vulgar materialism which is abroad. The Churches, happily, do not sanction this spirit; they take their young men through literary societies at the bottom, and their ministers through a college curriculum at the top. Here and there are signs of better things. The Institute and Museum, the Shakespeare and Burns' Clubs, the Choral and Glee Societies, the Caledonian Classes, and the School of Art, are all moves in the right direction. It is on this border land we must look for one of the most effective checks to money-grubbing in business and money-waste in gambling, to dogmatic narrowness in theology and unpractical dreaminess in religion.

Consider yourself. In such an atmosphere of freedom, movement, instability, and vulgarity, you cannot escape slipping the cable that anchors you to the old associations and the old home, and drifting on to the sandbanks of hard-cash unless you practice both self-respect and self-control. Without these you will be lost in the crowd—you will win nothing worth the name. I am almost afraid to say: "Think of yourselves;" because there is a short stage in young men's lives when their self-importance is simply intolerable. Yet what you must do is to make a true and careful estimate of your nature, your capabilities and your dignity. There is a proper pride nursed in a due regard for oneself that has a saving power in life. This self-regard will save you from pushing into positions for which you are utterly unfit; it will guide you to such lines of self-improvement as you discover that you need, and can accomplish; it will preserve your independence, keep you from being a nobody, and secure for you a distinctive character of your own. In this way you shall also serve your companions, for true self-love is the very opposite of selfishness; and the men who do not fitly love themselves will not practically love their fellows.

No man who respects himself will allow any popular custom to lead him into evil habits. His life becomes too sacred to be saturated with whisky at night, and dulled with headaches and soda-water of a morning. Have you ever marked the number of blood-shot eyes you meet in the city? Blood-shot eyes are not natural to mankind; with women they are very rare. They may be caused by the glare of the page 24 sun, by much reading, by bad spectacles, by indigestion, sleeplessness, and by old age. But these causes will not apply to all the young men that suffer in this way. They sleep as sound as a top, they can digest the soles of their boots, they read little, and suns are not so brilliant in Dunedin. There are other causes: Drink and Dissipation. These would never operate, did you only practice the self-respect and self-control you can and you should practice. How shall I speak of these things, but with bated breath and in tones of solemn warning? There is a limit to speech even in Plain Talks—"Let them not be once named among you."

Consider how a man and his habits are inseparable in character, risk, and destiny. The words of Christ about treasures are often misread and oftener half ignored. He says that we should not lay up treasure where moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. This is held, and properly held, to be a caution against worldliness, on the ground that the world and the fashion thereof passeth away—while what is treasured in Heaven is not eaten by moth, nor destroyed by rust, nor stolen by thieves. But Christ goes further than this, and gives another and deeper reason in the fact, that the worldly man may not only lose his possessions but may also lose himself; "for where your treasure is there will your heart be also." If your treasure is in the range of corruption and loss—within reach of moth, rust, and thief—then your heart will also shrivel in dry rot and dwindle into nothingness—it also shall be in reach of moth, and rust, and thief—it too shall consume away and be lost. A man grows like what he practices, loves, and serves. It is true of modern idolatry as of ancient—of worship of all kinds—that the worshipper grows like his god. There is a fine touch of sarcastic irony in one of the Psalms. The writer first ridicules the idols themselves: "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. Eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not; feet have they, but they walk not." Then he delivers a scornful lunge at their worshippers: "So"—helpless, useless, absurd—"so is everyone that trusteth in them." Consider this doctrine of assimilation:—Whatever you care for, with that you are linked for weal or woe. In moments of critical choice—in times when the struggle between right and wrong is most fierce, do not only ask what you shall get, but also what you shall become.

And the inferences from this are plain that, since man shares the fate of what he reverences and serves, he must respect himself above his possessions, must serve the community in which he lives, and must fear God and serve Him with all his heart.

But the moment you admit the idea of God into your mind you stand at the crossways of a dozen paths that traverse the problems of existence. Life, responsibility, sin, penitence, righteousness, mercy, faith, retribution, and "bright gleams of everlastingnesse" intersect at the point where there is the thought of God. The only light, in which they can be followed up, is the knowledge of God. And the fullest unveiling of His majesty is given us in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. Hence the life that is most worth living is one of hearty devotion to the Christ in set imitation of His methods.

His marvellous combination of power and tenderness—of self-respect and self-sacrifice—have set Him before the world as the undisputed chief of all our moral teachers. His compassionate help of the sorrowful, and His pitiful friendship for the outcast, and the wicked, have armed earth's sadness with patience, and infused earth's miseries with hope. His sturdy demolition of outward formalities, and His severe reproof of all pretence, have saved mankind from many a hypocrisy and imbued their conduct with an open and frank sincerity. His perfect life reveals, in vivid contrast, the exceeding sinfulness of sin. His death enhances, but relieves, the terror of this revelation by providing for the gift of pardon to the penitent, while His resurrection from the dead gives promise of our continuance and a far-reaching scope to all our endeavours.

"In such rich offices as suit
The full-grown energies of Heaven."

So, when you stand on some dizzy edge, tempted to draw back and hesitating to step forward, remember these things:—That the old folk would have you worthy of them—that freedom must not be thoughtless, and movement must not be reckless—that self-respect and self-control are true manhood—that society has some claim upon you—and above all, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has lived to show you where to tread, and died that you might be set and kept upon the right road in life and through eternity. Thus only can you do the best for yourself.