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CHAPTER II

THE SPIRIT OF LEADERSHIP

HERE was heard a few years ago, in one

of our eastern cities, an address from

the Secretary of one of our laymen's Brotherhoods, in the interest of revivifying the Churches. The climax of the address was a bitter passage in which the speaker charged that ministers are cowards and not to mention the lack of rugged moral living fear to hold up a standard that would rebuke even the wicked lives of their people; contended they have great regard for the holding of their places which real enthusiasm for God would endanger, and declared that the office had become mere gilding upon achieving society; decorative but useless. There was truth enough in the charge to

more than sting it was challenge that had to be answered. The reply came from a minister of rank, and with some feeling, but few could have been prepared for the words. "It is no easier for a minister to starve than it is for any other man," ran the apology, and no franker acknowledgment of the charge could be framed; no more sweeping denial of the minister's function could be made; no baser slander of the Christian disciple could be implied.

But what is disavowed in this infidel defense is exactly what should be, for real religion is the spring of the most valorous life; it is adequate fact and reason and feeling for sustaining one in any kind of loss for righteousness. The minister is the very mediator of the Gospel. If he cannot dare for righteousness, which is his field, what does he more than others. Lacking this, the good of the Gospel is but empty phrase. If he is prudent and calculating, putting place

before the truth, and ease before righteousness, his religion is no better than the worldly wisdom before which he bows. He thus actually has no gospel and no power in, or respect of, society; for he has no saving from sin and its misery; no great comfort for sorrow, or in any abasing; no adequate impulse for daring; no superior incentive for serving; no surpassing and constraining righteousness.

To do more than the rest to stand when others fall; to have peace at the center of life, however disturbed the circumference, and when others fret; to suffer without complaining; to starve if need be for Christ's sake and gladly; to fear not death nor poverty nor what man can do, for the glory of righteousness this is the aim, and ample for this is the power, of the Gospel. The Life expresses itself in manifold ways according to occasion, but the essence is such a bounding enthusiasm for God, that it overmounts or removes the greatest obstacles. It

is a passion for righteousness that esteems the reproach of Christ greater riches than life.

He alone can lead who cares enough for goodness to suffer for it. The condition is simply that single-mindedness which, daring to be a slave to love, is exalted master over all. A double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, receives nothing of the Lord. The most constraining and admirable thing is enduring a cross for righteousness. If we only dared to die for men, we could lead and save them. Such real faith is the Christly magnetism. All real love has in it the compulsion of the love of Christ.

No one can open the record of the words and deeds of our Lord and not feel at once the charming vigor of its moral tone, nor fail to note the presence of a power nerving to undertake and to endure for righteousness. The Master is blind to nothing of the might of evil, and Himself felt its cruel hate, but

His spirit notwithstanding is victorious the majesty of enduring love.

The Gospel is a challenge and a stirring call to arms. Unflinching loyalty to the most perfect righteousness is its demand, in the balance with which life itself nor pain nor poverty nor shame, can count at all. It presents a life scornful of ease and praise and possessions, which things, according to its word, might only be enemies, of which one need rather beware. If one, to gain the world, lost his soul, it was a fool's venture, while he who gave up his life for Christ, was praised for wisdom and rewarded a thousandfold. Christ's anger burned against evil men who for their comfort oppressed their brothers and by their exaltation of a worldly glory caused little children to stumble, but praised with stintless words one who had left houses and lands and wife and children for His sake and the Gospel's. He laid upon His disciples the conversion of the world by a