Dr. Tucker Speaking...

Continuing the series of excerpts from the chapel talks and college addresses of President William Jewett Tucker.

TEMPTATIONS

WHY do so many men who promise well in public life fall out of the reckoning in times of moral stress? I find one explanation in the nature of the temptations which beset them. There are three kinds of temptations, first those which attack the natural man, his appetites and passions; second those which reach the social man, leading to the jealousies and envyings born of the competitions of our social life; and third the temptations which seem to leave the man out of account in the attempt to undermine a righteous and aggres- sive purpose.

Follow the temptation of Jesus and you will see the method of this kind of temptation. It tempts us at the outset to surrender ourselves to things which are necessary. Bread was a necessity to Jesus in his hunger, but if he had surrendered to that in the circumstance he would have crossed the line between self-denial and self-indulgence. Necessity runs upon a sliding scale. Our luxuries may become our necessities. If we can once be made to feel that an increasing amount of material good is necessary to us we can be held back from the waiting purpose, which always must be wrought out in self-denial.

Then if we intrench ourselves in selfdenial the tempter suggests compromise, some concession which will rob the purpose of its moral power. You want to make money to use for the public good. That is your motive. Why not make it by questionable means that you may reach your end more quickly? So millions of money have been made which in the making have lost all moral power in the after use. So positions of power have been gained which have no moral power when once they are occupied.

And still if we hold ourselves in steadfast self-denial, and in honorable resistance to compromise, the temptation reaches further yet, and seeks to allure us to do the right thing for effect. Some vain men are good men, but vanity takes the firm edge off from the best deed. Vanity leads to unreality. It puts the show above the substance. Jesus would not take the risks of vanity. He would not "tempt the Lord his God" by using the pinnacle of the temple for display.

To you, men with a purpose, however vague it may yet be, I speak the word of warning, that you be not put out of the reckoning when your time of trial comes.

October 6, 1907

GETTING INTO YOUR WORLD

THE subject of the evening is taken from the story and book of Joshua describing the march of the children of Israel into the country which they were about to possess. Ahead of them went the ark of the covenant containing the ten commandments, but at such distance that the people would not lose their perspective.

I am to speak to you of the meaning of getting into your world. My first thought is that, in some very real way, you are to make your world coincide with the world. The educated man has no right to be provincial, least of all the educated man of the next generation.

Provincialism comes from three sources—ignorance, conceit and self-interest. No man, as things are now, and as they are to be more urgently for the next years, can afford to live within the limits of mere self-interest, or under the blight of conceit. If a man is not a citizen of the world, he is no longer in any broad and efficient sense a citizen of his own country.

But I suggest to you, in the second place, that in entering upon your world you enter by the right perspective. The way of this old time people into their world was broken for them by the ten commandments. These were sufficiently in advance of the people to assume the position of leadership. Be sure that you enter your world under tire leadership of great principles. Make justice and honor and charity in some way real to you. Do not lose sight of the greatness of duty in the midst of its details.

In the third place, let me remind you that getting into your world is something very different from going through the world. In the latter case, a man has nothing to show for the fact that he has been here. The man who gets into the world and makes a place for himself in its abiding principles, in the affairs which move it, in the hearts of men—he has really entered into his world. Here, as always, the supreme question in the relation of a man to his world is this—not what he gets out of it, but what he puts into it.

May 6, 1906