l against his master's breast and fell on the ground. What
did it mean? It meant that, though the bird had inherited the instinct
for flight, he had not inherited the capacity to stop, and if he had
not risked the shock of a sudden halt, he would have panted his little
life out in the air. Is not that a parable of many a modern
life,--completely endowed with the instinct of action, but without the
capacity to stop? Round and round life goes, in its weary circle,
until it is almost dying at full speed. Any shock, even some severe
experience, is a mercy if it checks this whirl. Sometimes God stops
such a soul abruptly by some sharp blow of trouble, and the soul falls
in despair at his feet, and then He bends over it and says: "Be still
my child; be still, and know that I am God!" until by degrees the
despair of trouble is changed into submission and obedience, and the
poor, weary, fluttering life is made strong to fly again.

{21}

VIII

"THAT OTHER DISCIPLE"

_John_ xx. 8.

About fifty years ago, one of the most distinguished of New England
preachers, Horace Bushnell, preached a very famous sermon on the
subject of "Unconscious Influence," taking for his text this verse:
"Then went in also that other disciple." The two disciples had come
together, as the passage says, to the sepulchre, but that other
disciple, though he came first, hesitated to go in, until the impetuous
Peter led the way, and "then went in also that other disciple."

There are always these two ways of exerting an influence on another's
life, the ways of conscious and unconscious influence. A few persons
in a community have the strength of positive leadership. They devise
and guide public opinion, and may be fairly described as personal
influences. But such real leaders are few. Most of us cannot expect
to stand in our community like the centurion of the {22} Gospel and say
to one man: Come, and he cometh; and to another: Go, and he goeth; and
to a third: Do this, and he doeth it. Most of us must take to
ourselves what one of our professors said to a body of students: "Be
sure to lend your influence to any good object; but do not lend your
influence until you have it." On the other hand, however, there is for
all of us an unavoidable kind of influence; the unconscious effect on
another's life, made not by him who preaches, or poses, or undertakes
to be a missionary, but simply by the man who goes his own way, and so
demonstrate