The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character — John Shaqi
The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American CharacterSpeer, Robert E. (Robert Elliott)
Philosophy
The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character
Speer, Robert E. (Robert Elliott)
Character; Christian life; Conduct of life; Moral education
And the same thing is true of the inwrought and enshrouded capacities
for ill. Jesus Christ laid off His limitations as well as His
activities that Saturday in the grave; and He left His limitations
there when He came out. Out of such Saturday graves in man’s character
it may be only the limitations that emerge. Out of many a man’s life
it is the dog that ought to be chained that is allowed to roam free,
while all the possibilities for good and sacrifice and ministry are
still-born inside. And sometimes, thank God, men discover all this
latent ill within and lay on it the restraining and throttling hand.
As godly old John Newton said when one day he saw a criminal being
led by, “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Newton.” He knew
that everything that had escaped in that brother of his lay latent in
himself, and he thanked God that a hand had been laid on all those
inner capacities for evil and wreckage and that that hand held them in
check and let only the good and the true and the pure go free.
There is something infinitely hopeful and encouraging in the principle
of that Saturday in our Lord’s last week for every man and woman of
us, as we think of life’s work and what we are trying to get done in
the world. So many times a thing seems all vain. The teacher tried to
breed in the boy whom he taught a hate of lies and a love of the truth,
and he wrought with tears and blood at his task, and the boy went out
from him and it seemed to him to have been futile, this that he had
done for him. We put ourselves out in this or that effort of service
in the hope of achieving this or that great end. Every little while it
seems to us to have been all fruitless. But wait. It is only Saturday.
Easter morning is going to break and the seed that was sown in the
ground in darkness and obscurity will come forth then. The life that
was let go for a little while, all that we did not see and therefore
thought had run sheer to waste, we shall discover then will come
pulsating back. “No effort is wasted,” said Pasteur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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