Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/160

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thing that this great conviction will do for a man: it will make a troubler of him. "Art thou he," said Ahab when he met Elijah in the midst of the great famine, "art thou he that troubleth Israel?" "No," said Elijah; "thou art he who troubles Israel." And yet they were both troubling Israel, the one with the iniquities into which he was leading the people, the other because the principle of the living God dominating his life drove him as a great moral force against the evils of his time. A man cannot live in a college or university with a faith that God is living and that he himself is living in front of God, and be quiet before the moral iniquities and evils he will find. It is not enough for a man to say, "I will simply be myself, live my own clean life, and let my silent influence count." If his silent influence does not count, no other influence of his will count. But the silence is not enough. A little while ago I copied from one of the letters of Mandel Creighton, late Bishop of London, written to his boys who were away at school, this bit of advice. "You will see, then," he writes to one son, who had just been made a monitor in his school, "you will see, then, that the chief influence of a monitor is in his example. But this is the point on which I have seen many people deceive themselves. They trust to what they call the force of silent example. That is most pernicious. If you content yourself with