by depending entirely upon insistence upon rights is worth a moment's consideration. First of all, insistence upon rights tends to minimize the idea of duty. In spite of the fact that when I assert my right I really assert your duty, your response to my demand is likely to be, not a recognition of your duty, but the assertion of some other right of yours, that is the assertion of my duty. Psychologically, the effect of a demand for rights is to stir counter-demands for rights. If there were a perfect balance, if every time I claimed a right you claimed an equally good right, then we would both be led to do our duty to each other. But that brings us to a second difficulty, namely, that the very habit of insisting upon my rights gets me into the mood of thinking that every man's hand is against me. It makes me still more inclined to fight for further rights. It tends to take away that keen sense of obligation which lies at the very foundation of human relationships.

Again we conclude that if we could persuade people to emphasize their own duties more strongly than they emphasize their own rights, and to give only minor attention to telling other

people what their duties are, human progress would be much more rapid, justice would be much more in evidence, and the Christian spirit would have greater sway.

I am quite mindful that we usually regard the word duty as something hard and unpleasant, something distasteful and cold-blooded, perhaps something even that constantly takes the joy out of life. Perhaps we might use the word love in place of duty if we had not become so habituated to thinking of love as something soft, merely good, sentimental. Of course love, as Jesus used the word, is virile, masculine, powerful, although perfectly sympathetic and friendly as well. Let us try to think of loving duty, or duty-centered love, as the first term in a Christian program, as the fundamental attitude of the mind of people belonging to a Christian community, as the main force to be released in the building of a real Kingdom of God.

Obligation as a Christian Principle

Have we not indicated the parting of the ways? Is not the main distinction between a non-Christian and a Christian attitude that the

one is motivated mainly by the love of power, the demand for privilege, the insistence upon rights; while the other seeks to know one's obligations, one's duties, one's chance to help, one's ability to serve? Self-getting and selfindulgence are essentially pagan; self-giving is essentially Christian.

There is, however, another approach to the answer to the question, "What makes a thing Christian?" or "What is a Christian program?" and this should now command our brief consideration. This approach has to do with something fundamental lying back of this distinction between rights and duties, between power and service, between self-indulgence and self-giving. Or perhaps it is really an analysis of the purpose of obligation. At any rate it has to do with purpose; for, as John Bascom has said, "The real solution of the problem of individual growth is the discovery of some adequate purpose to which all one's powers may be directed." And so we must ask ourselves, What are the ends of living?

Why Are We Here?

Is there any other adequate answer than that

we are here to grow, that each human being during his life on the earth should come to his largest possible capacity? And this is not only personal, but racial. The development of a race of men who represent the maximum possibilities of human character is the largest outlook for humanity which the mind of man has been able to conceive. We are on the road toward perfection, individually and collectively, or else there is no meaning whatever to life. This character building, on the part of every individual, calls for a healthy body, a clear mind, a firm will, a friendly attitude, a consciousness of the possibilities of the human soul.

There will be those who will say at once, "But this is a selfish objective; it assumes that the very thing you have objected to, the emphasis upon self, is to be erected into the main goal of life." Not so; for the moment we analyze the conditions of growth, we find that it must follow the law of indirection, that it is a by-product of many activities. We cannot by taking thought add unto our stature. We cannot indeed grow solely by a self-centered process of culture, or by forever seeking our

rights. The struggle for the life of others induces more growth than the struggle for one's own life. The development of a sound body and a clear mind and a firm will and a free spirit, not primarily for the sake of possessing those qualities, but primarily in order that the improved man may be of larger use to his fellow men, is the surest, sanest way to individual development.

However, a great stumblingblock fills our pathway. How often we hear it said, "Human nature is pretty much the same as it was two thousand years ago," or "You cannot change human nature." We cannot deny that oftentimes if we take the veneer off our civilization we find barbarism. And we are even sometimes moved to admit that if sufficiently tempted no man is safe. Another aspect of this same difficulty is exemplified in the statement of George Herbert Palmer when he said that ten per cent of all people are constitutionally sour, for we immediately ask what per cent of people are constitutionally critical, or mean, or hateful, or jealous, or impure. We are obliged to recognize these unlovely things about our human nature. They are here. Our