“The greatest legacy the hero leaves his race Is—to have been a hero.” Such a person will be eager to decrease that his kindling power may increase. He will not care to save himself, or to reap a reward for his service. He may not even know that he is shining, like the early saint who “wist not that his face did shine.” But for all that, men will see the way by his light and will catch the glory of living because he exhibits it. He can no more be hid than can a hill-top city, or the headlight of a locomotive, or the newly risen sun. That is Christ’s way of spreading the life of the Kingdom, that is His method of propagating the inner spirit, and of producing a society of blessed people. V THE SECOND MILE It may seem to some incongruous to be writing about an inner way of life in these days when _action_ is felt by so many to be the only reality and when in every direction outside there is dire human need to be met. “Leave, then, your wonted prattle, The oaten reed forbear; For I hear a sound of battle, And trumpets rend the air.” But more than ever is it necessary for us to center down to eternal principles of life and action, to attain and maintain the right inner spirit, and to _see_ what in its faith and essence Christianity really means. Precisely now when the Sermon on the Mount seems least to be the program of action and the map of life, is it a suitable time for us to endeavor to discover what Christ’s way means, by looking through the literal phrases in clairvoyant fashion to the spirit treasured and embalmed within the wonderful words? There is one phrase which seems to me to be, in a rare and peculiar degree, the key to the entire gospel—I mean the invitation to go “the second mile”: “If any man compel you to go a mile, go two miles.” It is always dangerous, I know, to fly away from the literal significance of words and to indulge in far-fetched “spiritual” interpretations. But it is even more dangerous, perhaps, to read words of oriental imagery and paradox as though they were the plain prose speech of the occidental mind, and to be taken only at their face value. There will probably always be Tolstoys—great or small—who will make the difficult, and never very successful, experiment of taking this and the other “commands” of the Sermon on the Mount in a literal and legalistic sense, but to do so is almost certainly to be “slow of heart,” and to miss Christ’s meaning. Whatever else may be true or false in our interpretations of the teachings of Christ, it may always be taken for certain that He did not inaugurate a religion of the legalistic type, consisting of commands and exact directions, to be literally followed and obeyed as a way to secure merit and reward. To go “the second mile,” then, is an attitude and character of spirit rather than a mere rule and formula for the legs.