I'

CHAPTER XXII

ROOSEVELT AND THE BIBLE

N 1903 I said to President Roosevelt: "I should

like to have from you, for a book I am writing,

something that expresses your religious faith, which is so strong and which I know from your sayings, actions and sentiments is the basis of your character and contains your ideas of individual and public morality." He said to me: "I will gladly do so. I think the address I delivered before the Long Island Bible Society in the Presbyterian church at Oyster Bay in 1901 is just the thing you want." I found it was exactly the thing I wanted, and this is what he said in the address about the Bible:

"There are certain truths which are so very true that we call them truisms; and yet I think we often half forget them in practice. Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very large number of people tend to forget, that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally-I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally-impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public

and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has by his life-work added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, of which our people are proud, almost every such man has based his life-work largely upon the teachings of the Bible. Sometimes it was done unconsciously, more often consciously, and among the very greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand. Lincoln, sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who after bearing upon his weary shoulders for four years a greater burden than that borne by any other man of the nineteenth century, laid down his life for the people whom living he had served as well, built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had mastered it absolutely; mastered it as later he mastered only one or two other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost 'a man of one book,' who knew that book, and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein; and he left his life as part of the crowning work of the century that has just closed.

"In this country we rightly pride ourselves upon our systems of widespread popular education. We most emphatically do right to pride ourselves upon it. It is not merely of inestimable advantage to us; it lies at the root of our power of self-government. But it is not sufficient in itself. We must cultivate the mind; but it is not enough only to cultivate the mind. With education of mind must go the spiritual teaching which will make us turn the trained intellect to good account. A man whose intellect has been educated, while at the same time his moral education has been neglected, is only the more dangerous to the

community because of the power which he has acquired.

exceptional additional Surely what I am say

ing needs no proof; surely the mere statement of it is enough, that education must be education of the heart and conscience no less than of the mind.

"It is an admirable thing, a most necessary thing, to have a sound body. It is an even better thing to have a sound mind. But infinitely better than either is to have that for the lack of which neither a sound mind nor a sound body can atone-character. Character is in the long-run the decisive factor in the life of individuals and of nations alike.

"Sometimes in rightly putting the stress that we do upon intelligence, we forget the fact that there is something that counts more. It is a good thing to be clever, to be able and smart; but it is a better thing to have the qualities that find their expression in the Decalogue and the Golden Rule. It is a good and necessary thing to be intelligent; it is a better thing to be straight and decent and fearless. It was a Yale professor, Mr. Lounsberry, who remarked that his experience in the class-room had taught him 'the infinite capacity of the human mind to withstand the introduction of knowledge.' Some of you preachers must often feel the same way about the ability of mankind to withstand the introduction of elementary decency and morality.

"A man must be honest in the first place; but that by itself is not enough. No matter how good a man is, if he is timid he cannot accomplish much in the world. There is only a very circumscribed sphere of usefulness for the timid good man.

"So, besides being honest, a man has got to have courage, too. And these two together are not enough. No matter how brave and honest he is, if he is a

natural born fool, you can do little with him. Remember the order in which I name them: Honesty, first; then courage; then brains. And all are indispensable; we have no room in a healthy community for either the knave, the fool, the weakling, or the coward.

"You may look through the Bible from cover to cover and nowhere will you find a line that can be construed into an apology for the man of brains who sins against the light. On the contrary, in the Bible, taking that as a guide, you will find that because much has been given to you much will be expected from you; and a heavier condemnation is to be visited upon the able man who goes wrong, than upon his weaker brother who cannot do the harm that the other does, because it is not in him to do it.

"So I plead, not merely for training of the mind, but for the moral and spiritual training of the home and the church; the moral and spiritual training that have always been found in, and that have ever accompanied the study of this book-this book which in almost every civilized tongue can be described as "The Book,' with the certainty of all understanding you when you so describe it.

"The teaching of the Bible to children is, of course, a matter of especial interest to those of us who have families and, incidentally, I wish to express my profound belief in large families. Older folks often fail to realize how readily a child will grasp a little askew something they do not take the trouble to explain. We cannot be too careful in seeing that the Biblical learning is not merely an affair of rote, so that the child may understand what it is being taught. And, by the way, I earnestly hope that you will never make your children learn parts of the Bible as punish