e found my cross and it is a heavy one, but I shall
never be satisfied until I take it up and carry it." Maxwell was
silent and the President went on.

"Your sermon today made clear to me what I have long been feeling I
ought to do. 'What would Jesus do in my place?' I have asked the
question repeatedly since I made my promise. I have tried to satisfy
myself that He would simply go on as I have done, attending to the
duties of my college work, teaching the classes in Ethics and
Philosophy. But I have not been able to avoid the feeling that He
would do something more. That something is what I do not want to do.
It will cause me genuine suffering to do it. I dread it with all my
soul. You may be able to guess what it is."

"Yes, I think I know. It is my cross too. I would almost rather do
any thing else."

Donald Marsh looked surprised, then relieved. Then he spoke sadly
but with great conviction: "Maxwell, you and I belong to a class of
professional men who have always avoided the duties of citizenship.
We have lived in a little world of literature and scholarly
seclusion, doing work we have enjoyed and shrinking from the
disagreeable duties that belong to the life of the citizen. I
confess with shame that I have purposely avoided the responsibility
that I owe to this city personally. I understand that our city
officials are a corrupt, unprincipled set of men, controlled in
large part by the whiskey element and thoroughly selfish so far as
the affairs of city government are concerned. Yet all these years I,
with nearly every teacher in the college, have been satisfied to let
other men run the municipality and have lived in a little world of
my own, out of touch and sympathy with the real world of the people.
'What would Jesus do?' I have even tried to avoid an honest answer.
I can no longer do so. My plain duty is to take a personal part in
this coming election, go to the primaries, throw the weight of my
influence, whatever it is, toward the nomination and election of
good men, and plunge into the very depths of the entire horrible
whirlpool of deceit, bribery, political trickery and saloonism as it
exists in Raymond today. I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a
cannon any time than do this. I dread it because I hate the touch of
the whole matter. I would give almost any thing to be able to say,
'I do not believe Jesus would do anything of the sort.' But I am
more and more persuaded that He would. This is where th