The Project Gutenberg eBook, Men in the Making, by Ambrose Shepherd

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Title: Men in the Making

Author: Ambrose Shepherd

Release Date: August 31, 2007 [eBook #22482]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN IN THE MAKING***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

MEN IN THE MAKING

by

AMBROSE SHEPHERD, D.D.

Author of
"The Gospel and Social Questions," Etc.

Hodder and Stoughton
London
MCMIX

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK

TO

TWO VALUED FRIENDS

JOHN GLAISTER, M.D.

PROFESSOR OF FORENSIC MEDICINE

UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

AND

CHARLES SCARTH, ESQ., J.P.

OF MORLEY, YORKS.

PREFACE

The addresses which make up this book are printed, almost exactly, as they were spoken from my pulpit in Glasgow. I have yielded to repeated requests that I would put them in a more permanent form than memory, or notes, can supply. There is always room for a book to young men; whether or not the book I now offer them is worth its room, is a matter about which I, possibly, am not the best judge. This I can say: There was a time in my life when I should have been helped, had I met through the spoken word, or printed page, some of the things I have tried to say as faithfully as I know how to say them, within the limits of taste and discretion. Whatever these addresses lack in thought, and in the handling of the subjects discussed, I have done my best to make them readable. In the case of the average young man of to-day, if a book does not interest him in the matter of style, any other merits it may possess will have a weakened chance of making themselves felt. If I have failed to meet this one condition of securing his attention—provided he give me a fair trial—I shall be disappointed and, to be candid, surprised. Should, however, his interest be tolerably well sustained through the ethical part of these addresses, say to the end of the chapter on "The Royal Law," I shall, perhaps, have no reason to complain. At the same time I would advise him to persevere with the rest, even at the cost of some effort.

There are one or two things which should be said by way of introduction to these addresses. When the manuscript was out of my hands and in those of the printer, I was informed that Archdeacon Wilberforce had, in one of his books, a sermon on much the same lines that are found in my chapter entitled "A Devil's Trinity." I have only to say that, so far as I know, I have never seen a line from the pen of Archdeacon Wilberforce. And in this connection I should like to quote a sentence or two from the Preface to my book on The Gospel and Social Questions. I remark there that, fortunately or otherwise for me, I have a tenacious memory which retains for long, not only a thought which arrests me, but the form in which it is expressed. Where I have made use of a quotation, or tried to paraphrase something I have read—and this applies to the following addresses—I have indicated the circumstances in the usual way.

The concluding chapter of this series is, in the main, a transcript of my booklet on The Responsibility of God, published by Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, of Edinburgh. I have to thank these gentlemen, and I do so heartily, for their permission to make this further use of it. Considerable changes are made in the reproduction; but I think this admission is due to any buyers the book may secure. I have also to mention my great indebtedness to Rev. J. F. Shepherd, M.A., of Manchester, for his help with the proofs, and for some valuable suggestions as to emendations of expression.

AMBROSE SHEPHERD.

6, Thornville Terrace, Glasgow.

CONTENTS

I

YOUTH AND AFTER

II

YOUTH'S STRATEGIC PLACES

III

THE WORSHIP OF LUCK

IV

A DEVIL'S TRINITY

V

TEMPTATION AND RESPONSIBILITY

VI

SELF-RESPECT AND COMPANIONSHIPS

VII

THE ROYAL LAW

VIII

'HE WAS DESPISED AND REJECTED'

IX

'WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?'

X

DOES GOD HAVE FAIR-PLAY?

YOUTH AND AFTER

"And Terah died in Haran."—Gen. xi. 32.

YOUTH AND AFTER

"And Terah died in Haran." This bit of prosaic information becomes suggestive by the emphasis of one word: "And Terah died in Haran." This was not his birthplace, but here he ended his days, and that for a reason over which it is worth our while to pause. "And Terah died in Haran." What of that? All people have died somewhere, who have lived and are dead.

When we first meet this man, he was a citizen of no mean city. Ur of the Chaldees was a great and representative centre in its day. Rising sheer from the midst of it, we are told, was an immense tower, or observatory, from the height of which men, reputed wise, watched the movements of the heavenly bodies; and especially the moon, for the moon was worshipped in Ur of the Chaldees as the great tutelary deity of this people. Here it was that Terah lived, at this time an old man, and "to trade," as the Scotch people would say, a maker of images. His craft was in things which symbolized some form of this lunar worship, and which people bought to put in their houses.

Terah had a son called Abram, who, as he came to years of thought, did not fall in very readily with this worship of the moon. He appears to have become very early in life one of an order of doubters to whom the world owes much; to have suspected, at least, that the moon was not, as the priests taught, a cause in itself, but the effect of a cause. What was that cause? What was the fashioning hand behind the effect? In other words, he had come upon the doubt which explains much of the faith and achievement of the reformers and path-finders of the world. Neither doubt nor belief has any virtue in itself; we must determine the moral quality by its expression in action. Had Abram merely begun and ended with his doubts about the moon, he would have died and been as soon forgotten as any other commonplace sceptic before or since his day. The trouble is not that men doubt, but that they are often content to do nothing else. It may be better that they should believe wrong things, than that