without sin; and it was as if a fresh, west wind were blowing across a malarial plain, so that the germs of selfishness and bigotry, which still swarmed in the atmosphere of his nation, simply could not fasten on those whom his spirit blessed. Such is the therapeutics of the soul. The salvation of a life or of a world is to be found, not in the impossible abolition of evil, but in the overcoming of evil by good. The good life imparts itself; and then the germs of evil, though they still float in every breeze, find no room to enter. The contagion of the good has killed the poison of the bad.

Now take that doctrine into the affairs of daily life, and see how life opens into new courage and hope. Here is a college; and it has its sporadic cases of evil, just as it has its occasional cases of disease. These evils are to be deplored: they bring harm and shame on us all. It is impossible among three thousand men that offences shall not come; but woe unto those by whom they come! It were better if a millstone were hanged about their necks, and they were cast into the sea. And yet, in spite of such evils, most remarkable fact of our

what is the

moral condition? It is its general excellence. Just as one often wonders why contagious diseases get so little hold in our crowded life, so he should wonder that the contagion of evil, which blights a soul here and there, touches us so slightly.

Let us thank God for this great body of robust and fearless manhood, going its way through the temptations of youth, perfectly pure and clean. Here is the secret of our moral health, in this great body of immunized lives among us; and here is the moral problem of the University, not the impossible task of wholly exterminating the possibilities of evil, but the happier work of multiplying and developing and encouraging these fortified lives, these manly men, who can go up and down amid possibilities of contagion, and yet be perfectly safe and free. Each man thus freed becomes a medium of social immunity. The safety of the whole lies in the overcoming of the contagion of evil by the spread of the contagion of good. A young man cannot hide from evil, but he can become impervious to it. If he does no more than cast out the devil from his life, and leaves that life empty, back comes the devil,

with others worse than the first. But let him establish contact with immunized lives, let him take up with the interests which give no room for sin, and then his life comes to partake of that immunity. Spiritual bacteria, like physical ones, thrive only in the life which provides a soil for them. They cannot be barred out, but they can be starved out. The way to overcome evil is to be preoccupied with good.

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And it is the same in the larger world about us, with all its solemn problems and anxious fears. A great many people are dreaming of a different world from the one in which we happen to live, a world which shall have no contentions or competitions, no social disorders or temptations; a world where the germs of evil shall be no longer in the air. But that is not the world as it is given, or is likely to be given, to us; and a new social programme which depends on thus transforming the world is little more than a dream. Science is not sanguine of the extinction of the germs of disease. It turns to the more promising task of fortifying life against them. It may be possible some day to make this hard world soft; but the present problem is

to make this soft human nature hard, and strong enough to live in the world as it is. You look out into the world about you, and you see possibilities of evil on every hand. You see temptation and dissipation, drink and lust, restlessness and ambition, scattering their germs of desire about men's paths; and you wonder what is to banish all this evil from the world. Well, it is not likely to be banished, — that is probably the truth. Evil is here to stay. But then you look again, and you see what is possible, a miracle of the moral life, beside which these triumphs of medicine are but commonplace. You see that the evil is not to be exterminated, but that it is to become uncontagious. You see the pure life walking among these poisonous paths in perfect security, as a hospital nurse walks unscathed through her wards, fortified against disease by her healthy-minded consecration. And then you say: "That is the way of the healthy soul. Its perfect love casts out fear. It carries safety because it is safe itself. It is not afraid of life: it is the master of life. It is not overcome of evil: it overcomes evil with good."

XXI

FOLLOW THOU ME

Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. -John xxi. 22.

HERE is a look of severity about

this answer of Jesus, as though the question of Peter deserved rebuke. Peter has been receiving the solemn commands of Jesus, and is finally given that last great word, "Follow me." Then it seems as if he made himself overmuch his brother's keeper. He turns about to the other disciple, as if curious to know why John should not be called to join him in that great obedience, or suspicious lest some higher place should be given to another. "This man,

what shall he do?" he says, and Jesus seems swept into an indignant condemnation of this idle curiosity or jealousy as he answers: "What is that to thee? If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me."