eat stature lifted head and shoulders above the rest,
shouldering its way, not violently but gently, to the front and saying,
"Here am I; follow me." And his voice will be your voice, his thought
will be your thought, and you will follow him as if you were following
the best things in yourselves.

When I think of an association of Christian young men I wonder that it
has not already turned the world upside down. I wonder, not that it has
done so much, for it has done a great deal, but that it has done so
little; and I can only conjecture that it does not realize its own
strength. I can only imagine that it has not yet got its pace. I wish I
could believe, and I do believe, that at seventy it is just reaching its
majority, and that from this time on a dream greater even than George
Williams[F] ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulating
momentum of Christian men throughout the world. For, gentlemen, this is
an age in which the principles of men who utter public opinion dominate
the world. It makes no difference what is done for the time being. After
the struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt that
jury.

At one time I tried to write history. I did not know enough to write it,
but I knew from experience how hard it was to find an historian out, and
I trusted I would not be found out. I used to have this comfortable
thought as I saw men struggling in the public arena. I used to think to
myself, "This is all very well and very interesting. You probably assess
yourself in such and such a way. Those who are your partisans assess you
thus and so. Those who are your opponents urge a different verdict. But
it does not make very much difference, because after you are dead and
gone some quiet historian will sit in a secluded room and tell mankind
for the rest of time just what to think about you, and his verdict, not
the verdict of your partisans and not the verdict of your opponents,
will be the verdict of posterity." I say that I used to say that to
myself. It very largely was not so. And yet it was true in this sense:
If the historian really speaks the judgment of the succeeding
generation, then he really speaks the judgment also of the generations
that succeed it, and his assessment, made without the passion of the
time, made without partisan feeling in the matter--in other
circumstances, when the air is cool--is the judgment of mankind upon
your actions.

Now, is it not very important that we