Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/145

 *promise does not mean as much to him as it does to men who have been climbing up. The nearer we come to Christ and the highest truth, the more perilous does compromise become. As Edward Thring said: "In proportion to excellence, compromise is impossible. A single leak sinks a great ship, a raft that is all leaks floats." That is just the deep lesson that men and women need to learn; that the higher and cleaner and more morally lofty or exacting the life, the more perilous compromise becomes to it. One has heard Christian men say sometimes that they thought they were safe in doing what this or that man, not as strong or experienced or mature, could do. It is a great mistake. The clearer and stronger a man's life, the more careful must the man be, the more solicitous, the more anxious, lest thinking he stands he falls. One of the greatest things about the life of Paul was the humility and self-distrust in which he walked, fearing lest when he had preached to others he himself might be a castaway. We have to learn that here lies power and duty, and that the cleaner Christ makes any human life, the more careful must that life be to keep all its habits pure and unsullied, and its convictions of truth unflinching and firm.

It was this principle that made our friend, S. H. Hadley, and that makes so many men who have escaped from the slavery of drink, go