New Orleans, Louisiana. July 31, 2009.

It is not in the measure of blessing nor the degree of resolution felt in some wonderful hour, when everything is favorable, that redeems the world. In the quiet of some holy sanctuary or the silence of some hour of meditation it is very easy to form high purposes. There are no voices to call us, and no influences to enter into competition with our better thoughts.

Out the in the worlds on the next day, however, it is very different. The quiet sanctuary has given way to the busy street. The spirit of meditation has suffered the inroads of the world’s many raucous voices. Conflicting interests bid imperiously for the major share of attention. It seems easier, often, to do the wrong thing than the right. There is greater immediate enjoyment in it; there is more certainty of popular approval in it; or there is more money in it. The busy brain and the tired body in the workaday life of the world do not find it nearly so easy to keep the spirit of their prayers it seemed would be the case in the stillness of the sanctuary.

Excerpted from The Educational Jubilee: A Chronicle and a Forecast, compiled and edited by John William Hancher. Published by the Methodist Book Concern, Cincinnati, 1918.