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the intercommunion of person with person; it is obedience, trust, love; and obedience must be to a person, trust must be in a person, love must be for a person. If we love the person and substitute therefor an Infinite and Eternal Energy, we lose religion, whatever we may gain in philosophy. Reverence and love toward X" are impossible. Nor can we substitute therefor Humanity, and worship man by spelling him in four syllables and beginning with a capital H. Humanity is Humanity is neither an Ideal to be followed, nor a Being to be reverenced, nor a Lawgiver to be obeyed. If we can find nothing to take the place of the humanized conception of God which our childish imagination furnished us, except an Infinite and Eternal Energy, we must strike the first and greatest commandment from Christ's law and we must eliminate worship from our life. It is because men in all ages have realized the need of a personified God that they have interpreted him to themselves in images, wood purely imaginative. This universal instinct is not without its divine significance.

or stone or canvas, or

The answer to this questioning of the heart is that God understands the instincts of the human race and adapts himself to them. He knows that we need a defined God, and therefore he defines himself; he knows that we need a human God, and therefore he interprets himself in humanity; he knows that the Infinite can be understood by the finite only through finite manifestations; that the universal Presence can be apprehended only in a Person; that he can be made known to men only as he is interpreted in the terms of a human experience. Therefore was he in Christ revealing himself to the world and reconciling the world to himself. What man needs God gives-an image of his Person, since his Person itself is too great for our acquaintanceship. For the fanciful image of a "slender man, of aquiline features, wearing spectacles," he substitutes in our experience the historic image of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus Christ the Great God is imaged, as the wide landscape miles in extent is perfectly imaged on the retina of the eye. What is the office of religion? Is it not to furnish an Ideal which we may follow, a Lawgiver whom we obey, a Friend whom we may trust and love? Nothing

can be called religion which does less than this. Out of the life breathed into us by the Eternal and Invisible Spirit we may form our own ideals, discover the divine laws, and find our inspiration. He who succeeds in this difficult task will have a religion which will not be in vain. - But surely all this and much more is done for him who sees in Christ the image of God reflected in humanity. To him the life of Christ becomes an ideal to be followed, the teachings of Christ a divine law of life to be obeyed; and if he believes in the resurrection of Jesus, Christ himself becomes a personal and ever-present Friend to be trusted and loved.

The nineteenth century has witnessed the overthrow of the latest and subtlest form of idolatry, the worship of an imaginary deity created by human fancy, but not put into material form. The science which has compelled us to substitute a doctrine of the universal Presence for the old mechanical idea of God is the Gideon which has destroyed this image-worship. Whether humanity follows Clifford and Nietzsche and Strauss and John Cotter Morison to the conclusion that there is no God, no worship, no invisible world, no ideal to follow, no object to reverence, no Friend to trust and love; or whether, rid of our refined and cultivated idolatry, we find God brought near to us in a human experience, so that following the Ideal becomes simple, understanding and obeying the Lawgiver becomes easy, rejoicing in and being made strong by the Friend becomes human, natural, and constant-this will depend upon the question whether the Church is in truth a Church of Christ.

For since the doctrine of the divine immanence has destroyed the mechanical conception of the Creator and the political conception of the divine Ruler, it is more than ever before essential that the message of the Church should be a message concerning the Christ. The story of his life must be set forth as the true ideal of life, his teaching must be expounded as the true interpretation of the laws of life, his character must be portrayed as that of the living, personal, ever-present Friend: because in his life is the divine ideal of humanity, in his teaching is the divine law for humanity, and in his presence is the personal God revealed because veiled, and made known to man because interpreted in

man. In Christ is God's answer to man's quest after God. In Christ is the divinely given personification of God to take the place of our childhood image, the true Humanity for which the idealized Humanity of the Positivist is but a poor substitute. In Christ is the Infinite and Eternal interpreted in a life finite and temporal that the finite and the imperfect may understand, follow, obey, serve, and love.

The Spectator

"I told Ned that I should not keep on telling him to stand up straight. I am deadly tired of it. But I told him also that I utterly declined to stoop down to him." This was said by a lady in a streetcar to a companion with whom she was evidently comparing domestic notes. The speaker was tall and slender and as erect as a sapling. The idea that she could stoop seemed improbable, the idea that she could stoop for more than a very brief moment impossible. If stooping was pleasant to Ned, it seemed perfectly plain to the Spectator that he would have to stoop alone, and in that pleasure he would never have either the companionship or the sympathy of his erect and very alert wife. It was impossible, however, not to speculate on what kind of a man this Ned was; and it was easy to reach the conclusion that he was short and stout and middle-aged, besides being easy-going and capable of becoming slipshod. His trousers probably bag at the knees, his boots have not the pristine polish of the dandy, and there are likely to be spots on the front of his waistcoat and the lapels of his outer garment. The world is monstrously full of such Neds; and they have had the good fortune, very, very fre. quently, to be mated with tall, fine women who face the world erectly and courageously and come in time inevitably to look down upon the husbands who are willing to stoop and to slouch during the elder half of life. Thackeray, the all-observing, did not note this exactly, but he did record another and similar fact that whenever we see a particularly large, fine woman we are very apt to find tripping in her wake a small and insignificant husband or lover. Whether the love of nature for contrasts is responsible for this, or whether

the incapable must be looked after by the capable, we do not know, but the arrangement seems to be as old as society.

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Erectness of bearing has a moral and mental as well as a physical effect. When the mind is alert, the head goes up and the shoulders are squared. So also when the spirits are high and the heart is full of pure aspirations. Physical wellbeing absolutely demands that we should not stoop. If we lean forward, we contract the chest, and the lungs have not wholesome full play. When we start out to do anything that is brave and noble, we do not slouch; we look danger, when we are brave, straight in the face and go at it with head high and shoulders back. That is the way soldiers march; that is the way the bridegroom leaves the church when the solemn words have been said and he goes out into the world to meet the sweet responsibilities of life. Er.ctness of bearing is the sign of courage, the evidence of hope; slouchiness indicates decadence and is evidence of incapacity. One dandy in this busy world is worth half a dozen slovens. The dandies are more prompt, they are braver, they are more courageous, they are more self-respecting, they are in every manly quality finer and more worthy of the respect of both men and women. The slovenly man who slouches through life is a severe trial to men who must be thrown with him; how women can put up with him is one of those inexplicable things past finding out.

But women do put up with slouchy men. Surely, however, this is not because the men are slouchy, but in spite of it. Women do not utterly rebel because the best and the gentlest women are so patient and charitable that they submit to every burden without complaint. Indeed, under the burdens imposed by incapable men women very generally improve, get stronger, and take the place which incapacity has abdicated. It is a very interesting thing to note that in many instances where a race is decaying the women seem to get stronger as the men get weaker and weaker. This is plainly observable in those Latin countries which are rapidly falling behind. The men are

often too mean and disagreeable for the contemplation of nice minds; but the women are still fine, struggling against the fate that is working the downfall of their people, and growing seemingly stronger in the struggle. There are instances of this kind of decadence, however, much nearer home and easier and more painful to study. In some of the very oldest American communities the seeds of decay were planted long ago, and now the weeds have grown rank and menacing. In such communities the men seem to cumber the earth; they slouch through life from generation to generation growing ever weaker, ever more worthless. But the women are as brave as the men are contemptible. They conceal the ravages of decay as best they can, they keep crumbling homes together, they hide despair in dark closets, and face the world with heads high in the air and the smile of courage upon their sweet and noble faces.

It is not a matter of sex that the male should be inefficient and the female efficient under adverse conditions of fortune. The same blood flows in the veins of the boy as in those of his sister. Sex has inherently nothing to do with this difference. Nor does a contrast between one bad and one good so bring the good into prominence as to make it seem more extraordinary than it is. No, it is not that, for these noble women in the communities to which allusion has been made would be strikingly noble and efficient in any surroundings in which they might be placed. They are nobler and stronger than the generality of women because they have found opportunities for the expansion and growth of the finer qualities of their nature. In a community which has reached the down grade all the evil influences which bear upon those who are coasting to disaster are brought to bear upon the men. They suffer from idleness and lack of opportunity; they succumb to the dissipations and the demoralization of stagnation; they embrace poverty as though it were something to be proud of; they stoop and they slouch, and are utterly undone without knowing what has happened to them. But the environment of the women is different.

They are at home. To be sure, poverty

comes to these homes, but not by any means as a welcome guest. Poverty, however, alone of the ills, except the men, enters these homes. The women know nothing in their lives of the idleness, the stagnation, the dissipations, and the other debasing things which do their sorry work upon the men. At home they have plenty to do, and the greater the poverty the harder the work, the greater the opportunity to get strong. And they do get strong. Their minds and their souls expand as the muscles do in the body of an athlete. Use and exercise in adversity make the women in such communities truly and superbly grand. There is much that is pathetic in their situation, but their nobility is also very inspiring. The pity of it is that their nobility, their sacrifice, their courage, will not suffice to change the general conditions which are working the extinction of every race which does not arrest decay immediately and radically as soon as it appears. The surgeons do this for the human body-now cutting off a leg or an arm, or taking a tumor from the intestines; what will arrest decay in the social body is another matter, a much more difficult matter, a matter not well understood.

This seems a far cry from Ned and the wife who would not stoop to him; but it really is not far, not farther than right next door. The stooping Ned who lives with his brisk wife in New York is closely akin, in temperament at least, to those incapables who have slouched away from their responsibilities and left the burdens to be borne by wives, mothers, and sisters. This metropolitan Ned may be all right with the exception of his stoop, but it is very likely that nothing has saved him except the good fortune of his environment. Had he been born in one of the stagnant communities, he would very likely have spent his days sitting on a box in a village store, spitting at the stove for hours at a time, and only going home now and again to sleep and to be fed by the efficient woman who, no matter what her lot, never would have stooped for anybody or anything. The stooping Neds, whose environment has saved them, have every reason to be grateful, but no reason whatever to be proud.

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Chapter X.-A Harder Task than Making Bricks Without Straw

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ROM the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined not only to have the students do the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them erect their own buildings. My plan was to have them, while performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labor, so that not only would the school get the benefit of their efforts, but the students themselves would be taught to see utility in labor, and also beauty and dignity; would be taught, in fact, how to lift labor up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for its own sake. My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make the forces of nature air, water, steam, electricity, horse-powerassist them in their labor.

At first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erected by the labor of the students, but I was 1 Copyright, 1900, by Booker T. Washington.

determined to stick to it. I told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that I knew that our first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their finish as buildings erected by the experienced hands of outside workmen, but that in the teaching of civilization, self-help, and self-reliance, the erection of the buildings by the students themselves would more than compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish.

I further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan that the majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the cabins of the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the South, and that while I knew it would please the students very much to place them at once in finely constructed buildings, I felt that it would be following out a more natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own buildings. Mistakes I knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach us valuable lessons for the future.

During the now nineteen years' exist

ence of the Tuskegee school, the plan of having the buildings erected by student labor has been adhered to. In this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of student labor. As an additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered in every part of the South who received their knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings. Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set of students to another in this way, until at the present time a building of any description or size can be constructed wholly by our instructors and students, from the drawing of the plans to the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off the grounds for a single workman.

Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of marring the looks of some building by lead-pencil marks or by the cuts of a jackknife, I have heard an old student remind him: "Don't do that. That is our building. I helped put it up."

In the early days of the school I think my most trying ex

and dirty, and it was difficult to get the students to help. When it came to brickmaking, their distaste for manual labor in connection with book education became especially manifest. It was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up to his knees. More than one man became disgusted and left the school.

We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but I soon found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the

burning of the bricks. After a good deal of effort we molded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once, however, on a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a failure. The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the students to take any part in the work. Several of the teachers, however, who had been trained in the industries at Hampton, volunteered their services, and in some way we succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for burning. The burning of a kiln required about a week. Towards the latter part of the week, when it seemed as if we were going to have a good many thousand bricks in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln fell. For the third time we had failed.

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MRS BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

perience was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts towards the industry of making bricks. We needed these for use in connection with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this industry. There was no brick-yard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.

I had always sympathized with the Children of Israel in their task of "making bricks without straw," but ours was the task of making bricks with no money and no experience.

In the first place, the work was hard

The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which to make another experiment. Most of the teachers advised the abandoning of the effort to make bricks. In the midst of my troubles I thought of a watch which had come into my possession years before. I took this

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