Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/156

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said: "No, I do not agree. I will not do it." And when the other lads urged him to come along, he still insisted that he would not. They asked him his reasons. He said: "Well, Thring would not like it, and what Thring would not like I do not intend to do." "Well, but Thring isn't here," they said; "he's back at Uppingham." "I do not care," said the boy; "Thring would not like it." He believed that he was living in a real sense—I mean in the most real sense of all, in the life of his personal will—before the standards of his master, and by those standards as in the light of his master's countenance he insisted that he would uncompromisingly live. Before the eyes of God a man will beware how he lives his life. If he knows that this life of his can find no darkness where he can hide himself from God, if he knows that all of his days are to be spent before His face, that all his deeds are to be done beneath the gaze of God, assuredly that will govern and control a man's decisions about his practical ways. The consciousness of a living God will give direction to a man's moral life.

And it will not only give direction. There is many a man among us who knows that the consciousness of a God Who is alive not only gives determination and direction to his ways, but puts a new power and inspiration in them.

A friend in New York tells a lovely story