indifference to the group. Most of us strongly object to being called selfish, but it is always possible to justify ourselves in not caring for people in general. The "crowd" has always been a favorite word among young people, and a favorite term of reproach among older people. That is because younger people like to belong to something, while many older people have come to have a sense of personal independence which makes cynical indifference to numbers seem a virtue. The continued struggle over high school fraternities turns on that issue, so far as students are concerned. No one argues very seriously for the abiding value of fraternities at that stage of education, but we all like to belong to a group just then and it seems most important to us that we be not disturbed. Many men never leave that stage, but most do, and if it is left too far behind, the personal mood becomes mere selfishness. Under it we hold ourselves aloof from the group because we are not interested in the group. The writers of the psalms walk always in sight of that danger and do not fall into it. The crowd from which they are compelled to stand aloof in the interest of personal integrity is a matter of constant concern with them. They are not contemptuous even when they condemn. A later study (Chapter V) will suggest how they could stand against their social group and yet not be indifferent to it.

II

The essence of the personal mood is the feeling of our feet under us, no matter how unbalanced men or conditions may be around us. In this mood we share the need of the crowd without its nervousness, the danger of the crowd without its dread, the ambitions of the crowd without its anxiety. Men in this mood do not have their environment changed by it, but they find themselves encouraged with strength in their souls (138:3). They walk in the midst of dangers, but are constantly revived by the help that comes from above, but is felt within them. Read the 91st psalm and see how a man can face a perfect storm of troubles with a sense of being protected. That is the personal mood which leaves a man fit to take his place in the world with a good spirit.

You see it in Joshua and his challenge to Israel to choose

between Jehovah and other gods, but refusing for his own part to wait for their decision. Let them choose as they would, "as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah❞ (Josh. 24:15). Strong men do not take their color in religion from their environment; they get it from within. Their hearts are fixed (108: 1). You see it also in the three friends of Daniel who were brought before the king and required to bow before the image, with the threat that they would be thrown into the furnace if they refused. It did not feeze them: "We have no need to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king; but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up" (Dan. 3:16-18). If it be so-but if not; it is all one to these men. Suffering is merely a matter of detail with them. They feel their feet under them and the waves break around them without unsettling them. You see it again when Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:18) and charged not to speak in the name of Christ-which arouses more of their amusement than any other feeling: "Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye: for we cannot but speak the things which we saw and heard." Chrysostom was exiled for his faith. He said, "When driven from the city, I cared nothing for it; but I said to myself, If the empress wishes to banish me, let her banish me; 'the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof,'" so he would be at home wherever he was sent. That is characteristic of the personal mood. It has learned to see conditions without depending on them.

In American history two fine instances of it are familiar. One is the Faneuil Hall meeting which Webster was addressing, the crowd standing, as used to be the custom there. The hall was densely packed and a swaying movement began which seemed uncontrollable and would certainly have injured hundreds of people if it had continued. Webster called out, "Let every man stand firm!" Instantly the swaying stopped. Each man took his own stand, regardless of the crowd. Then Webster exclaimed, "Gentlemen, that is democracy, every man learning to keep his own feet!" The other instance is the fine record made by the Wellesley

students on the morning of their great fire in 1914. After the line was formed and it was found that some names were not answered in the roll-call, the line stood quietly while the search was made for the missing students and teachers, stood quietly until sparks came down the stairways and had to be brushed from dressing gowns, and not a member of it broke ranks nor fainted nor cried out. When the order came for the line to move, the fire was on the floor above, but the line moved steadily, each student keeping control of herself. When it was over, some said it proved the value of fire drills in colleges, and it did, but it proved also the power of young people to keep self-control under test. It was the emergence of the personal mood in a large group. Each was helped by the others, but none could have been held by the others if there had not been something stronger holding each one.

III

Most of us feel too much the pressure of the opinions that surround us. It is part of the new accent on social responsibility; some of it is that accent carried too far. We are not the less individuals with personal responsibility, because we are also in a social group. The idols of the market place, of which Bacon wrote, are not to be worshiped by men with personal characters. Campus ideals have to submit to judgment like any other ideals. Mere chesty opposition to traditions is foolish, of course, and it usually has its reward at the hands of fellow students. But there are few colleges in the land which are not needing a few healthy-minded students who are not blinded by traditional arguments and who will feel their own feet under them and refuse to be swept into nonsense of a bad sort because the current runs that way. It may be impossible to take active and successful steps against traditions that are damaging the real life of the college, but it is always possible to hold one's self free and to do it so that favor is not lost where favor is worth having. There are hoary notions in almost all fields which need nothing so much as to have some one say "Booh❞ to them; then they would disappear. Are there any traditions or conditions in your community life, which have come to be taken for granted, but which are bad and hurtful,

regarding which you ought to take your own adverse stand and be yourself rather than the crowd which generally you can safely be? If there are and you will face them honestly, you will soon know the difficulties of the personal mood, for you will need to avoid mere stubbornness and love of controversy on the one hand, and mere supine acceptance of bad conditions on the other. Indeed, in the purely personal mood you may need to see that you cannot hope to change conditions at all; they may seem to you too fixed for alteration; but you refuse to submit yourself to them; you will be yourself and take the consequences without a whimper.

That last is an important part of it. No whimpering over consequences. These psalmists cry to God, but to no one else, and even to him their cry is rather for strength to stand up to the strain than for praise for themselves. That is the secret of their insistent committing of the whole case to divine inspection, which has appeared in the daily studies of this week. In the latter part of the 139th psalm is a swift and revealing change in thought. For some verses the writer has been speaking strongly against the men who are mistreating him, speaking to God, to be sure, but none the less strongly. Suddenly he turns away from that and remembers that these people are not his main business, concerned as he must always be with them. He turns from them and says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” That is a healthy reversion. The evils of other people impress us greatly at times. We want to serve them if we can, but we need to look after ourselves in order to be fit to serve them.

The same swift turn comes in the 116th psalm. Finding himself hastily declaring that all men are liars, the writer suddenly realizes that he can think too much about "all men," and becomes personal again: "What shall I render unto Jehovah for all his benefits toward me?" Here the personal mood has large value in helping us to cast out the beam from our own eyes before we pick the motes from other people's eyes. It is the healthy mood of a man who stands up to his duty, not against other people, not even for them, but just because it is his duty, doing that without criticism of others or else with that criticism soon over. Indeed, it must be over before the spirit is fine. Counting

all men liars and hypocrites because they do not do so well as we are trying to do ourselves is the mean streak in us, and the best way to get away from that mean streak is to ask what our own duty is and get down to doing it.

When Phillips Brooks graduated from Harvard he had one experience of dismal failure as a teacher. Everybody agreed that he had not the qualities of a classroom leader. For some time neither he nor anyone else could decide what qualities he had for any kind of leadership. He had a gloomy six months wandering around Boston, wandering mentally as well as physically, trying to find what his place in life might be. Dr. Allen ("Life of Phillips Brooks," p. 26) tells that he was much impressed with Souvestre's "Attic Philosopher," which he read just then. It is the story of a man who in the midst of the fever, restlessness, and ambition of the times continues to live his humble part in the world without a murmur. He has a small clerkship which keeps him from real distress and he learns not to covet riches nor to dread failure. So for a time Phillips Brooks decided to give up all ambition for himself and take the humblest, lowest lot he could find. When, later, he found that he had a message for his fellows, that spirit of being himself, no matter what the circumstances might be, never departed from him. The same thing is only waiting to be true of any man who will be himself, the self whom God will approve, no matter what conditions challenge him to be anything else.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT AND STUDY

Work out the difference between this personal mood and the mood of the hermit or the misanthrope. How do you estimate Thoreau and his experiment at Walden Pond?

If you were voting alone on a jury against the other eleven members, how would you defend refusing to surrender to their judgment? How would you defend yielding to their judgment?

Jesus was compelled to stand alone at his trial. Think over the spirit he showed under the circumstances and try to imagine similar conditions in your own life and the spirit which you would be likely to show.