The next rule is social:  the direction of personal energy that shall leave a distinct impress on other lives.  It is long before we realize that for each exertion we are responsible; that what we do is held against us in strict account, not only by fate, which builds our destiny for us out of our own deeds, but by every other person with whom we come in contact.  Our fellows check off daily against us so much vitality, so much magnanimity, so much idleness, cruelty, spite, goodness, selfishness, meanness, or loving-kindness.  Life holds a record of our every deed, and from no least responsibility can we make our escape.  We are the prisoners of events which we ourselves have brought about.

The discipline of ethics, of home-training, of the Church, and of religious teaching is addressed fundamentally to this social consciousness of ours, this responsibility which we cannot evade.  To bear rule aright is to go forth into the world to build up, in authority, talent, and influence, the kingdom of God.

1.  There is the agricultural phase of social rule.  A man tills a farm.  It has upon it trees, streams, woodland, and meadow-land.  He may rule—­to what end?  If he rules it for his own personal ends—­merely to fill his granaries, and lay up gold—­he rules it for miserliness, with a sort of thrift that is as passing in inheritance as the flying April rain.

Or he may say:  I will keep my land in trust for God.  I will hold rain and frost, heat and cold, storm and sun, in fee simple for the race.  My grain shall pass out into the world’s mart, sent forth with love and prayer.  Such a farmer is the incarnation of moral grandeur.  Let men laugh, if they will, at his overalls and plough, his wide-brimmed hat, his simple manners, and his homely, racy speech.  His feet are by the furrow, but his heart is in heaven, and his treasure is there also.  Says the author of Nine Acres on the Hillside, “The agriculturist walks side by side with the Creator.”

There is a fine integrity which lies in land.  There is a resolution which is concerned with crops.  There is a wisdom born of wind and weather.  There is a power which comes from the constant revival of life in seed and fruit and flower.  This man is King of God’s Acres.  Let him not despise his kingdom, and may the succession not depart from his house!

2.  There is a rule which is industrial.  A man is sent into the world to wield a hammer, a saw, and run an engine.  If his rule over his hammer is weak, if he does not know how to use it well, if its blow is uncertain and its result unskilled, then he passes from the line of kings, and is subject, instead of in authority, in his own domain.  He is captive to a piece of steel or wood.  So with every tool of trade.  Each man who conquers his tool is a ruler—­is in control of elements of human happiness and good.  The roof-mender, the furnace-builder, the cloth-weaver, the yarn-spinner, the steel-worker, the miller—­do not these all keep the race warmed, and clad, and fed?