no remedy for the evils he deplored except education, and the saving of
the old ideals through the remnant of the faithful who had not bowed
the knee in the temple of Mammon. But he pointed out no way by which to
protect the tender blossoms of academic idealism, when they meet their
inevitable exposure in due time to the blighting and withering blasts
of the commercialism that to him seemed so little reconcilable with the
good, the true, and the beautiful.

To all this the practical man can only reply, that if, indeed,
commercialism itself cannot be made to furnish a soil and an atmosphere
in which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear glorious
fruit,--then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. If it be not possible
to promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercial
and industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the social
moralist and the political purist.

It is not a defensive position that I propose to take. I should not
think it needful at this time even so much as briefly to reflect any of
those timorous and painful arguments _pro_ and _con_ that one finds at
times running through the columns of the press, particularly of the
religious weeklies, on such a question as, for example, whether
nowadays a man can at the same time be a true Christian and a
successful business man; or whether the observance of the principles of
common honesty is at all compatible with a winning effort to make a
decent living.

I am well aware that the thoughtful and intellectual founder of this
lectureship, under which I have been invited to speak, takes no such
narrow view either of morality on the one hand or of the function of
business life on the other. His definition of morality in business
would demand something very different from the mere avoidance of
certain obvious transgressions of the accepted rules of conduct,
particularly of that commandment which says: "Thou shalt not steal."
Nor, on the other hand, would his definition of the functions of
business life be in any manner bounded by the notion that business is a
pursuit having for its sole object the getting of the largest possible
amount of money.

Those people who are content to apply negative moral standards to the
carrying on of business life remind one of the little boy's familiar
definition of salt: "Salt," said he, "is what makes potatoes taste bad
when you don't put any on." According to that sort of definition,
morality in busin