Part 23 (1/2)
One who has dealt with such folk becomes aware that to estimate an isolated deed is superficial; one must know the motive. A cup of cold water or a widow's penny may awake the Master's spirited approval, and millions rung into the temple treasury by showy Pharisees meet only scorn.
Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because, while we are more than body, _our bodies are the instruments of all that visibly we do_. Many a man in spirit is like a swift mill race, eager for service, but the flesh, a battered mill wheel, ill sustains the spirit's vehemence; it breaks before the shock. One must shut the gates and patch up the wheel, before the spirit, impatient for utterance, may have its way again; and some mill-wheels never can be mended. Says one of Robert Louis Stevenson's biographers: ”When a temporary illness lays him on his back, he writes in bed one of his most careful and thoughtful papers, the discourse on 'The Technical Elements in Style.' When ophthalmia confines him to a darkened room, he writes by the diminished light. When after hemorrhage, his right hand has to be held in a sling, he writes some of his 'Child's Garden'
with his left hand. When the hemorrhage has been so bad that he dare not speak, he dictates a novel in the deaf and dumb alphabet.” When one has lived with handicapped folk, discerning behind the small amount of work the infinite willingness for more, and in the work done a quality that makes quant.i.ty seem negligible, he perceives that deeds are no sufficient measure of spiritual value. Only an eye that pierces behind the unwrought work to the _man_, willing while the flesh was weak, can ever estimate how much some spirits are worth.
Deeds alone are an insufficient basis for judgment because _men face unequal opportunities_. Some start with one talent, some with ten.
The cherished son of a Christian family ought to live a decent life; how favorable his chance! But if a vagrant wharf-rat by some mysterious vision of decency and determination of character makes a man of himself, how much more his credit! The worth of goodness cannot be estimated without knowledge of the struggle which it cost. When one considers the smug, conventional respectability of some, possessing every favorable help to goodness, and the rough but genuine integrity of others who have fought a great fight against crippling handicaps to character, he sees why, in any righteous judgment, the last will be first, as Jesus said, and the first last. Only G.o.d, with power to understand what heredity and circ.u.mstance some men have faced, what enticements they have met, what a fight they have really waged even when they may have seemed to fail, can tell how much they are worth.
”What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted.”
Judgment based on deeds alone can never truly estimate a man, because in every important decision of our lives an _”unpublished self”
finds no expression in our outward act_. Duty is not always clear; at times it seems a labyrinth without a clue. Perplexed, we balance in long deliberation the opposing reasons for this act or that, until, forced to choose, we obtain only a majority vote for the decision. Yet that uncertain majority alone is published in our deed; man's eyes never see the unexpressed protestant minority behind. And when the choice proves wrong, and friends are grieved and enemies condemn and what we did is hateful to ourselves, only one who knows how much we wanted to do right, and who accounts not only the published but the unpublished self can truly estimate our worth. Peter, who denied his Lord, it may be because he wanted the privilege of being near him at the trial, is not the only one who has appealed from the outward aspect of his deed to the inner intention of his heart: ”Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:17).
Moreover, even when we choose aright, _no deed can ever gather into utterance all that is best and deepest in us_. A mother's love is as much greater than any word she speaks or act she does, as the suns.h.i.+ne is greater than the focused point where in a burning gla.s.s we gather a ray of it. We are infinitely more than words can utter or deeds express. No adequate judgment, therefore, can rest on deeds alone. A machine may be estimated by its output, but a man is too subtle and profound, his motives and purposes too inexpressible, his temptations and inward struggles too intimate and unrevealed, his possibilities too great to be roughly estimated by his acts alone.
”Not on the vulgar ma.s.s Called 'work' must sentence pa.s.s, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world's coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb, So pa.s.sed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.”
V
If, however, we are to understand the Christian's meaning when he speaks of being saved by faith (Rom. 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 3:24), we need to see not only that men are worth more than they _do_, but as well that they are worth more than they _are_. Some things always start large and grow small; some things always start small and grow large; but a man may do either, and his value is determined not so much by the position he is in, as it is by the direction in which he is moving.
Even of stocks upon the market in their rise and fall this truth is clear. The figure at which a stock is quoted is important, but the meaning of that figure cannot be understood unless one knows whether it was reached on the way up or the way down. How much more is any static judgment of a man impossible! One starts at the summit, with endowments and opportunities that elevate him far above his fellows, and frittering away his chance, drifts down. Another, beginning at the bottom, by dint of resolute endeavor climbs upward, achieving character in the face of odds before which ordinary men succ.u.mb.
Somewhere these two men will pa.s.s, and, statically judged, will be of equal worth. But one is drifting down; one climbing up. The innermost secret of their spiritual value lies in that hidden fact. _When, therefore, one would judge a man, he must pierce behind the deeds that he can see, behind the present quality that he can estimate, back to the thing the man has set his heart upon, to the direction of his life, to the ideal which masters him--that is, to his faith._ There lies the potential future of the man, his ultimate worth, the seed of his coming fruit. If one has eyes to see what that faith is, he knows the man and what the man is bound to be.
When, therefore, men set their hearts on Christ, lay hold on him by faith as life's Master and its goal, that faith opens the door to G.o.d's forgiveness. In Augustine's luminous phrase, ”The Christian already has in Christ what he hopes for in himself.” He is Christ's brother in the filial life with G.o.d, young, immature, undeveloped--but the issue of that life is the measure of the stature of Christ's fulness. G.o.d does not demand the end when only the beginning is possible, does not scorn the dawn because it is not noon. He welcomes the first movement of man's spirit toward him, not for the fruit which yet is unmatured, but for the seed which still is in the germ; he takes the will for the deed, because the will is earnest; he sees the journey's end in Christlike character, when at the road's beginning the pilgrim takes the first step by faith. There is no fiction here; G.o.d ought to forgive and welcome such a man. All good parents act so toward their children. This divine grace corresponds with truth, for a man is _worth_ the central, dominant faith, that determines life's direction and decides its goal. And the Gospel that G.o.d so deals with man, announced in the words of Jesus, ill.u.s.trated in his life, sealed in his death, has been a boon to the race that puts all men under an immeasurable debt to Christ.
VI
This method of judgment which all good men use with their friends and families has been often disbelieved, in its Christian formulations, because it has been misrepresented and misunderstood. But human life, far outside religious boundaries, continually ill.u.s.trates the wisdom and righteousness of so judging men by faith. Roswell McIntyre deserted during the Civil War; he was caught, court-martialled, and condemned to death. He stood with no defense for his deed, no just complaint against the penalty, and with nothing to plead save shame for his act, and faith that, with another chance, he could play the man. On that, the last recourse of the condemned, President Lincoln pardoned him.
”EXECUTIVE MANSION, Oct. 4, 1864.
Upon condition that Roswell McIntyre of Co. E, 6th Reg't of New York Cavalry, returns to his Regiment and faithfully serves out his term, making up for lost time, or until otherwise discharged, he is fully pardoned for any supposed desertion heretofore committed, and this paper is his pa.s.s to go to his regiment.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
Was such clemency an occasion for lax character? The answer is written across the face of Mr. Lincoln's letter in the archives: ”Taken from the body of R. McIntyre at the Battle of Five Forks, Va., 1865.” Five Forks was the last cavalry action of the war; McIntyre went through to the finish.
Any one who knows the experience of being forgiven understands the motives that so remake a pardoned deserter. The relief from the old crus.h.i.+ng condemnation, the joy of being trusted again beyond desert, the grat.i.tude that makes men rather die than be untrue a second time, the unpayable indebtedness from which ambition springs, ”whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto him” (II Cor. 5:9)--this is the moral consequence of being pardoned. Goodness so begotten reaches deep and high, has in it conscious joy and hope, feels vividly the value of its moral victories, possesses great motives for sacrificial service in the world. The Apocalypse is right. There is a song in heaven that angels cannot sing. Only men like McIntyre will know how to sing it.
The vital and transforming faith that saves is always better presented in a story than in an argument, and in the Scripture the best description of it is Jesus' parable of the Prodigal. As the Master drew that portrait of life in the far country, all the watching Pharisees thought that such a boy was lost. The Prodigal himself must have guessed that his case was hopeless. His friends, his character, his reputation, his will were gone, and in the inner court-room of his soul with maddening iteration he heard sentence pa.s.sed, Guilty. Only one hope remained. If he was unspoiled enough by the far country's pitiless brutality to think that at home they might bear no grudge, might find forgiveness possible, might offer him another chance as a hired servant, if he could think that perhaps his father even _wanted_ him to come home, then there was hope. With such slender faith the boy turned back from the far country. He had the same lack of character, the same weakened will, the same evil habits. Only one difference had as yet been wrought. Before, he had been facing toward swine, now he was facing toward home. The _direction_ of his life was changed by faith. And when the father saw him, homeward bound, ”_while he was yet afar off,_” forgiveness welcomed him. No pardon could unload from the lad's life all the fearful consequences of his sin. As long as he lived, the scars on health, repute, and usefulness were there. But forgiveness could take the sin away _as a barrier to personal friends.h.i.+p with the father_; the old relations.h.i.+ps of mutual confidence, helpfulness, and love could be restored; the glorious chance could be bestowed of fighting through the battle for character, not hopelessly in the far country, but victoriously at home.
One of the chief glories of the Gospel is that it has so reclaimed the waste of humanity, made sons of Prodigals and patriots of McIntyres.
Its Pauls were persecutors, its Augustines the slaves of l.u.s.t, and its rank and file men and women to whom Christ's message has meant forgiveness, reinstatement, a new chance, and boundless hope.