The Art of Public Speaking
government there shall be no end, And, Isaiah adds, that He shall judge
His people with justice and with judgment. I had been reading of the
rise and fall of nations, and occasionally I had met a gloomy
philosopher who preached the doctrine that nations, like individuals,
must of necessity have their birth, their infancy, their maturity and
finally their decay and death. But here I read of a government that is
to be perpetual--a government of increasing peace and blessedness--the
government of the Prince of Peace--and it is to rest on justice. I have
thought of this prophecy many times during the last few years, and I
have selected this theme that I might present some of the reasons which
lead me to believe that Christ has fully earned the right to be called
The Prince of Peace--a title that will in the years to come be more and
more applied to Him. If he can bring peace to each individual heart, and
if His creed when applied will bring peace throughout the earth, who
will deny His right to be called the Prince of Peace?
All the world is in search of peace; every heart that ever beat has
sought for peace, and many have been the methods employed to secure it.
Some have thought to purchase it with riches and have labored to secure
wealth, hoping to find peace when they were able to go where they
pleased and buy what they liked. Of those who have endeavored to
purchase peace with money, the large majority have failed to secure the
money. But what has been the experience of those who have been eminently
successful in finance? They all tell the same story, viz., that they
spent the first half of their lives trying to get money from others and
the last half trying to keep others from getting their money, and that
they found peace in neither half. Some have even reached the point where
they find difficulty in getting people to accept their money; and I know
of no better indication of the ethical awakening in this country than
the increasing tendency to scrutinize the methods of money-making. I am
sanguine enough to believe that the time will yet come when
respectability will no longer be sold to great criminals by helping them
to spend their ill-gotten gains. A long step in advance will have been
taken when religious, educational and charitable institutions refuse to
condone conscienceless methods in business and leave the possessor of
illegitimate accumulations to learn how lonely life is when one prefers
money to morals.
Some have sought peace in social distinction, but whether they have been
within the charmed circle and fearful lest they might fall out, or
outside, and hopeful that they might get in, they have not found peace.
Some have thought, vain thought, to find peace in political prominence;
but whether office comes by birth, as in monarchies, or by election, as
in republics, it does not bring peace. An office is not considered a
high one if all can occupy it. Only when few in a generation can hope to
enjoy an honor do we call it a great honor. I am glad that our Heavenly
Father did not make the peace of the human heart to depend upon our
ability to buy it with money, secure it in society, or win it at the
polls, for in either case but few could have obtained it, but when He
made peace the reward of a conscience void of offense toward God and
man, He put it within the reach of all. The poor can secure it as easily
as the rich, the social outcasts as freely as the leader of society, and
the humblest citizen equally with those who wield political power.
To those who have grown gray in the Church, I need not speak of the
peace to be found in faith in God and trust in an overruling Providence.
Christ taught that our lives are precious in the sight of God, and poets
have taken up the thought and woven it into immortal verse. No
uninspired writer has exprest it more beautifully than William Cullen
Bryant in his Ode to a Waterfowl. After following the wanderings of the
bird of passage as it seeks first its southern and then its northern
home, he concludes:
Thou art gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of
communication can be established between the Father above and the child
below. And who will measure the consolations of the hour of prayer?
And immortality! Who will estimate the peace which a belief in a future
life has brought to the sorrowing hearts of the sons of men? You may
talk to the young about death ending all, for life is full and hope is
strong, but preach not this doctrine to the mother who stands by the
death-bed of her babe or to one who is within the shadow of a great
affliction. When I was a young man I wrote to Colonel Ingersoll and
asked him for his views on God and immortality. His secretary answered
that the great infidel was not at home, but enclosed a copy of a speech
of Col. Ingersoll's which covered my question. I scanned it with
eagerness and found that he had exprest himself about as follows: "I do
not say that there is no God, I simply say I do not know. I do not say
that there is no life beyond the grave, I simply say I do not know." And
from that day to this I have asked myself the question and have been
unable to answer it to my own satisfaction, how could anyone find
pleasure in taking from a human heart a living faith and substituting
therefor the cold and cheerless doctrine, "I do not know."
Christ gave us proof of immortality and it was a welcome assurance,
altho it would hardly seem necessary that one should rise from the dead
to convince us that the grave is not the end. To every created thing God
has given a tongue that proclaims a future life.
If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless
heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison
walls, will he leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the
image of his Creator? If he stoops to give to the rose bush, whose
withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of
another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men
when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, tho
changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never
die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has
paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, I am
sure that He who, notwithstanding his apparent prodigality, created
nothing without a purpose, and wasted not a single atom in all his
creation, has made provision for a future life in which man's universal
longing for immortality will find its realization. I am as sure that we
live again as I am sure that we live to-day.
In Cairo I secured a few grains of wheat that had slumbered for more
than thirty centuries in an Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this
thought came into my mind: If one of those grains had been planted on
the banks of the Nile the year after it grew, and all its lineal
descendants had been planted and replanted from that time until now, its
progeny would to-day be sufficiently numerous to feed the teeming
millions of the world. An unbroken chain of life connects the earliest
grains of wheat with the grains that we sow and reap. There is in the
grain of wheat an invisible something which has power to discard the
body that we see, and from earth and air fashion a new body so much like
the old one that we cannot tell the one from the other. If this
invisible germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass unimpaired
through three thousand resurrections, I shall not doubt that my soul has
power to clothe itself with a body suited to its new existence when this
earthly frame has crumbled into dust.
A belief in immortality not only consoles the individual, but it exerts
a powerful influence in bringing peace between individuals. If one
actually thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more
easily to the temptation to do injustice to his neighbor when the
circumstances are such as to promise security from detection. But if one
really expects to meet again, and live eternally with, those whom he
knows to-day, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of endless
remorse. We do not know what rewards are in store for us or what
punishments may be reserved, but if there were no other it would be some
punishment for one who deliberately and consciously wrongs another to
have to live forever in the company of the person wronged and have his
littleness and selfishness laid bare. I repeat, a belief in immortality
must exert a powerful influence in establishing justice between men and
thus laying the foundation for peace.
Again, Christ deserves to be called The Prince of Peace because He has
given us a measure of greatness which promotes peace. When His disciples
quarreled among themselves as to which should be greatest in the Kingdom
of Heaven, He rebuked them and said: "Let him who would be chiefest
among you be the servant of all." Service is the measure of greatness;
it always has been true; it is true to-day, and it always will be true,
that he is greatest who does the most of good. And how this old world
will be transformed when this standard of greatness becomes the
standard of every life! Nearly all of our controversies and combats grow
out of the fact that we are trying to get something from each
other--there will be peace when our aim is to do something for each
other. Our enmities and animosities arise largely from our efforts to
get as much as possible out of the world--there will be peace when our
endeavor is to put as much as possible into the world. The human measure
of a human life is its income; the divine measure of a life is its
outgo, its overflow--its contribution to the welfare of all.
Christ also led the way to peace by giving us a formula for the
propagation of truth. Not all of those who have really desired to do
good have employed the Christian method--not all Christians even. In the
history of the human race but two methods have been used. The first is
the forcible method, and it has been employed most frequently. A man has
an idea which he thinks is good; he tells his neighbors about it and
they do not like it. This makes him angry; he thinks it would be so
much better for them if they would like it, and, seizing a club, he
attempts to make them like it. But one trouble about this rule is that
it works both ways; when a man starts out to compel his neighbors to
think as he does, he generally finds them willing to accept the
challenge and they spend so much time in trying to coerce each other
that they have no time left to do each other good.
The other is the Bible plan--"Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil
with good." And there is no other way of overcoming evil. I am not much
of a farmer--I get more credit for my farming than I deserve, and my
little farm receives more advertising than it is entitled to. But I am
farmer enough to know that if I cut down weeds they will spring up
again; and farmer enough to know that if I plant something there which
has more vitality than the weeds I shall not only get rid of the
constant cutting, but have the benefit of the crop besides.
In order that there might be no mistake in His plan of propagating the
truth, Christ went into detail and laid emphasis upon the value of
example--"So live that others seeing your good works may be constrained
to glorify your Father which is in Heaven." There is no human influence