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
Precisely the same principle holds with regard to the things that we
fight to-day. It holds with regard to the war on war. Some day we shall
slay it. The kingdom of heaven, said Jesus, is among you. Well, let it
loose. The kingdom of heaven will have no war in it; the kingdom of
heaven will have no brothers cutting one another’s throats in it; the
kingdom of heaven will have in it no vice and lust dragging its slimy
trail across men’s hearths and hearts. If the kingdom of heaven is
within, why not set it free, that we may live in it as well as have it
buried inside of us! The world that we are living in is calling us to
go back to that principle of Saturday morning and to believe that all
we need to do the will of God is made available for us by God’s grace
now, if we will but obey.
And if some men say that all this is only to put in other words the
theory of development, of historic evolution, why, what of it? Of
course it is, but what is development except the drawing out of what
has been folded in? What is evolution except the letting loose of what
the mind of God Himself at the beginning had planted within,――when in
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world He poured the blood of
Christ into humanity in order that humanity might be reinforced with
the adequate energies to enable it to accomplish the thing that was
God’s first dream for it? Of course it is, and that is precisely the
ground of Christ’s constant appeal. “Come unto me,” He said to men,
believing that they could. “Unless you hear My call and follow Me, you
cannot be My disciple.” What meaning was there to His summons unless
the power to respond was there in answer to His call? “I stand at the
door of your inner being,” said He, “and knock. I am there waiting.”
And so to us to-day, just as clearly as in those days, His voice
speaks: “Come out of your tomb, out of your chains, out of your
narrowness, out of your limitations, out of your despairs, out of your
dejections, out of your failures,――come out of them. The power of the
endless life is here for you, if only by faith and love you will lay
hold of it to-day.” Is that not, after all, the great central message
and the fundamental principle of Christ’s Gospel to us, which He
symbolized and illustrated in the shadow of the Saturday before the
Easter victory? It is in one of the old hymns:
“Low in the grave He lay――
Jesus, my Saviour!
Waiting the coming day――
Jesus, my Lord!
Death cannot keep his prey――
Jesus, my Saviour!
He tore the bars away――
Jesus, my Lord!
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes;
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to reign:
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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