type of
person drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not
be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts constantly tend to float away
from her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. She
is confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of
converging many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into
one accomplishment, the value of which no one can foresee.

On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her
social compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider
social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only
increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts
her social ideals. She is chagrined to discover that in the actual task
of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble beneficiaries are
far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in
self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue of humility by
a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of
the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite sinner,
but she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen
in the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with
her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only through a social
aim but by a social process.

The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the
great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at
the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first
requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving
with all its disastrous results; to fulfil the second solely is to
obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary
lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is
impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be
attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement--"to walk humbly
with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the
lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the
company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with
the pangs and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected
whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.

CHAPTER III

FILIAL RELATIONS

There are many people in every community who have not felt the "s