But we want to go far beyond the question as to whether the consequences may ever appear to justify acts of compromise. A course of action is right or wrong, not according to the consequences, but according to its conformity or unconformity to the character of God. And the point now raised is whether it is ever right for us to compromise our own firm convictions of truth and principle. Now, the world tells us that such compromise is to-day absolutely unavoidable. Men and women, we are assured, cannot get along in a world like this without adaptations. If it is meant by this only that we are often obliged to adapt ourselves to that with which we do not agree, why, of course, we have to assent, because we are in a world of give and take of which we have to be a part, and it is necessary for us to live our life and do our work in this world. Here in many of our communities, for example, the saloons flourish. There is not one of us here in this audience who believes that it is wise that the saloon should exist under the protection of the government, but we have to live in a land where the principle with which we disagree prevails, and the only way we can escape is to go to some other land, and we would only find there some other principle with which we could not agree. We cannot live at all unless we are willing to adjust ourselves to an actual world. “Compromise” when used as the principle of such adjustment means simply that we must of necessity find room for ourselves among the crossing strands of life. “All government,” says Burke, “indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every vital and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.” “It cannot be too emphatically asserted,” says Spencer, “that this policy of compromise alike in institution, in action and in belief which especially characterizes English life is a policy essential to a society going through the transition caused by continuous growth and development.” And Emerson remarks, “Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other.”