The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 8

a man's religion is his working
hypothesis of life, not of life in some future world, but of life right here
to-day, the only day we have in which to build a life. It will not look
backward exclusively to "a dead fact stranded on the shore of the
oblivious years," nor will its rewards be found alone in the life to come.
The world of to- day will not be a "vale of tears" through which sinful
men are to walk unhappily toward final reward. It will be a world of
light and color and joy, a world in which each of us may have a noble
though a humble part,--the work of the "holy life of action." It will find
religion in love and wisdom and virtue, not in bloodless asceticism,
philosophical disputation, the maintenance of withered creeds, the
cultivation of fruitless emotion, or the recrudescence of forms from
which the life has gone out. It is possible, Thoreau tells us, for us to
"walk in hallowed cathedrals," and this in our every-day lives of
profession or trade. It is the loyalty to duty, the love of God through the
love of men, which may transform the workshop to a cathedral, and the
life of to-day may be divine none the less because it is strenuous and
complex. It may be all the more so because it is democratic, even the
Sabbath and its duties being no longer exalted above the other holy

days.
What sort of men does the century need for all this work it has to do?
We may be sure that it will choose its own, and those who cannot serve
it will be cast aside unpityingly. Those it can use it will pay generously,
each after its kind, some with money, some with fame, some with the
sense of power, some with the joy of service. Some will work hard in
spite of vast wealth, some only after taking the vow of poverty.
Those not needed you can find any day. They lean against lamp-posts
in platoons, they crowd the saloons, they stand about railway stations
all day long to see trains go by. They dally on the lounges of
fashionable clubs. They may be had tied in bundles by the employers of
menial labor. Their women work at the wash-tubs, and crowd the sweat
shops of great cities; or, idle rich, they may dawdle in the various ways
in which men and women dispose of time, yielding nothing in return
for it. You, whom the century wants, belong to none of these classes.
Yours must be the spirit of the times, strenuous, complex, democratic.
A young man is a mighty reservoir of unused power. "Give me health
and a day and I will put the pomp of emperors to shame." If I save my
strength and make the most of it, there is scarcely a limit to what I may
do. The right kind of men using their strength rightly, far outrun their
own ambitions, not as to wealth and fame and position, but as to actual
accomplishment. "I never dreamed that I should do so much," is the
frequent saying of a successful man; for all men are ready to help him
who throws his whole soul into the service.
Men of training the century must demand. It is impossible to drop into
greatness. "There is always room at the top." so the Chicago merchant
said to his son, "but the elevator is not running." You must walk up the
stairs on your own feet. It is as easy to do great things as small, if you
only know how. The only way to learn to do great things is to do small
things well, patiently, loyally. If your ambitions run high, it will take a
long time in preparation. There is no hurry. No wise man begrudges
any of the time spent in the preparation for life, so long as it is actually
making ready.
"Profligacy," says Emerson, "consists not in spending, but in spending
off the line of your career. The crime which bankrupts men and nations
is that of turning aside from one's main purpose to serve a job here and
there."

The value of the college training of to-day cannot be too strongly
emphasized. You cannot save time nor money by omitting it, whatever
the profession on which you enter. The college is becoming a part of
life. For a long time the American college was swayed by the traditions
of the English aristocracy. Its purpose was to certify to a man's personal
culture. The young man was sent to college that he might be a member
of a gentler caste. His degree was his badge that in his youth he had
done the proper thing for a gentleman