Men in the Making — Background and Themes

A Preacher’s Craft and Audience

Shepherd’s preface reveals a careful attention to readability. He notes that “if a book does not interest him in the matter of style, any other merits it may possess will have a weakened chance of making themselves felt.” This concern for the reader’s engagement shapes the addresses: they are direct, anecdotal, and occasionally personal. Shepherd also mentions that he has “a tenacious memory which retains for long, not only a thought which arrests me, but the form in which it is expressed,” and he acknowledges a possible overlap with Archdeacon Wilberforce’s work, though he claims no direct influence. The addresses are thus positioned as both original and deliberately crafted for oral delivery, with a rhythm that suits listening.

Self-Respect as the Central Virtue

The excerpt on James Garfield develops the idea that a man must “above all things, have the good opinion of himself.” Shepherd warns against a “double existence” and “secret sin,” using Garfield’s own words to argue that integrity is the foundation of success. He distinguishes between worldly achievement and moral worth: “That I do or do not make money is a question of gift or the favour of circumstances; that I am an honest man haps neither upon accident nor contingency.” The passage echoes Polonius’s advice—“To thine own self be true”—and Shepherd frames self-respect as an asset that outlasts material gain. He also admits to having “been through a hard mill,” which lends credibility to his insistence that a clean conscience matters more than external success.

The Tension Between Worldly and Moral Success

Shepherd does not dismiss worldly success outright. He writes, “I would have you succeed; and by success I mean, for the moment, what the world means by the term.” Yet he immediately qualifies this: there is “no necessary connection between a straight life and failure to win the kingdoms of this world.” The addresses thus navigate a tension between ambition and integrity, urging young men not to blame honesty for lack of ability. Shepherd’s own experience as a former factory worker who became a minister exemplifies this trajectory. The closing line of the excerpt—“I would rather be beaten in the right than succeed in the wrong”—encapsulates the book’s ethical stance, though the full context of the addresses may develop this theme further.

Readers approaching Men in the Making should expect a series of spoken-style exhortations, not a systematic treatise. Shepherd’s personal disclosures—his factory past, his memory for phrasing, his desire to be readable—offer clues to his rhetorical strategy. The addresses are best read as occasional pieces, each likely tied to a specific biblical text or moral problem. The excerpt on Garfield suggests that Shepherd uses historical figures as concrete examples, but the full range of his references is not evident from the sample. Those interested in early twentieth-century homiletics or the moral instruction of young men will find this a direct, unadorned example of the genre.

That rainy afternoon, Shepherd’s insistence that character outlasts reputation lingered longest. I closed Men in the Making thinking how easily we mistake a man’s outer story for his inner one, and somehow my hand wandered to an old pamphlet questioning whether Rowley’s poems were genuine. Both books, in their quiet way, ask whose voice we trust. Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) — Themes and Context felt like the same conversation, shifted sideways.