THE MAKING OF MANHOOD THE MISSION OF THE NATION. (A thanksgiving sermon.) BY REV. JAMES M. BARKLEY,* Pastor of the Forest Avenue Presbyterian Church, Detroit. Text: "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace." Psalm 144:12. This psalm is the production of Israel's inspired king. And this fact alone entitles it to be regarded, in some sense, as a national psalm. But further still: its essential contents carry a decided flavor of nationality. This is apparent all through the psalm, from its opening burst of praise to its final swell of triumphant satisfaction. It is Davidic and personal only as David the person is representative and royal; as he stands for incarnate nationality. Another thing is noteworthy in largest part this national psalm is a national prayer. After the first outburst of grateful blessing the psalm becomes petition * James Morrison Barkley was born near Statesville, N. C., Nov. 22, 1846. Prepared for college at Hillsboro Academy, Hillsboro, Ill., and at Freehold Institute, Freehold, N. J. Graduated from Princeton University 1876, and from Princeton Theological Seminary 1879, receiving the degree of A. M. from the University, 1879. Pastor at Newark, N. J., 1879–82; at Hillsdale, 1882–85; State Sec'y of the Y. M. C. A., 1885-87; pastor of Forest Ave. church, Detroit, 1887-. ary. The royal singer becomes a royal suppliant; and mission of the nation. I am inclined to this indicated line of thought, not alone by the evident teaching of the text, but by apparent tendencies of the times. In many quarters there is a manifest tendency to unduly value the worth of material prosperity, to make of material progress a fetish. There be many excitable enthusiasts who, pointing to our national material achievements, would say, "These be thy gods, O America!" These priests of a practical materialism have a revised rubric for the modern worship of the golden calf. Now, God forbid that I should pose as a pulpit pessimist! God forbid that I should seem to frown when prosperity seems to smile! She has been a shy goddess these past recent years has prosperity. Material plenty has not made prosperity. While banks hoarded capital and granaries burst with wheat, labor stood idle in the market-place all the day, and then at nightfall begged bread from door to door. Pale, pinched children and patient, toiling wives went hungry in this land burdened with breadstuffs. Amid material plenty real prosperity retired. God, as it seemed, touched the nerve of our national vanity at its most sensitive point, just to demonstrate the feebleness and fickleness of this goddess, prosperity, which so many are so prone to worship. I But now, this goddess again unveils her welcome face; and God forbid that I should seem to scowl at her approach. But, beloved, I would have you take her at her true worth. I would have you think soberly and righteously on this subject. I would have you place prosperity in its proper relation to higher things. would have us all come into the spirit and temper of this national prayer-psalm; and while we praise God for the favors of the past, and entreat for their enlargement for the future, I would have us realize that these material prosperings are but means to that higher mission of this nation which I have already indicated. Let us not prostitute our national powers to the raising of stock, the shipment of wheat and the weaving of woolens. But let us make all these things, powers and productions alike, minister to the mission of the nation -the making of manhood and womanhood. I. This is a nation's noblest production. For illustration of this fact look at the nations of antiquity. What survives of them save the memorials of a mighty manhood which they reared, and which, in its turn, glorified them? We delve into the mounds of entombed cities like those of Memphis that once shone with the splendors of its stately temples; of Babylon whose hanging gardens excited the wonder of the world; of Thebes with its hundred gates. And we do this not merely for the sake of seeing the still shapely stones that lie there in buried confusion, but we do it in an endeavor to estimate fairly and fully the great genius that once wrought these mighty monoliths into stately temples and tombs. It is the achievements of manhood imprisoned in these buried cities that attract us. Who knows or cares how much wheat Egypt exported in those historic years? Or how it fared with the Goshen dairies? No one. But the genius, that is to say, the highest manhood of Egypt, that graved her history "with an iron pen in the rock forever;" that framed the funeral liturgies in her "Book of the Dead," is imperishable. We can not always call its name, but we can discern its essence. Who knows how many beans or currants or olives were gathered in Attica in any single year? Or how much honey was harvested on Hymettus? Or how much commerce flowed through Corinth in any given time? Who ever figured out how much marble was mined from Mount Pentelicus? No For no one cares a farthing for all those things. But oh, the manhood whose genius chiseled those marbles into classic forms and sang its epics amid the sunny isles of Greece! The manhood whose eloquence charmed the Agora and aroused the nation as it "fulmined over Greece to Artaxerxes' throne;" the manhood whose courage battled at Troy and Thermopylae and Salamis and Marathon; the manhood whose philosophy has made the Academy, the Grove and the Porch the synonyms of thoughtful wisdom,-that manhood is the thing that lasts. Alexander's empire faded away and left little map modification of the world. It was, in fact, a huge conquest without an empire. But the manhood that fought Alexander's battles sowed the eastern world with ideas. Those ideas were localized at Alexandria, the Athens of the East. They gave an idiom to gospel and epistle. They pioneered the pathway of Scripture translation, and lent a new language to law-giver, prophet and psalmist. These are some of the mighty residua of that Alexandrian Empire. And you notice they are resident, not in material things, but in mental. And it is in the manhood which made such things possible that the world rejoices. And so wherever we go amongst the remains of the nations of antiquity, we see that the most persistent things, the things that have survived the rack and ruin of empires, are the essential qualities of manhood. We see that these are a nation's noblest product, the only things that remain real and permanent. And if we are to live as a nation potential in human affairs, or are to survive in story and song, then we must give higher heed to the making of manhood than to the production of material things. We must do more than build big ships. Tyre did that. But long ago her ships with their embroidered sails and royal rowers were forever swept from the seas. Her wharves, once crowded with a world's commerce, long since rotted away. And she who sat "at the entry of the sea," the commercial queen of the world, ages ago became as "the top of the rock," "a place to spread nets upon." We must do more than cut lumber and dig ore; for the lumbermen of Lebanon, the miners of Cyprus and the smelters of the Hittites are all gone, leaving no memorials save bared mountain slopes, buried furnaces and abandoned mines. We must do more than raise wheat and make wine; for the husbandmen of Egypt and the vine dressers of Eshcol are without monument. We must do more than fatten hogs and export cattle; for the cattle kings of Goshen and the swine herds of Galilee have perished without name. These material things are all well in |