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 He arose once on Easter morning that on the Saturday before and
on every day, every one of us might also rise out of the old, low,
selfish, defeated life into the life through which are beating the
victorious energies and the sufficient strength of God. Shall it be so
with us?
“Rigid I lie in a winding sheet,
Which mine own hands did weave,
And my narrow cell is myself――myself,
Which yet I may not cleave.
“And yet in the dawn of the early morn,
A clear voice seems to say,
‘I am the Lord of the final word,
And ye may not say Me nay.
“‘Unloose your hands that your brother’s need
May ever find them free.
Unbind your feet from their winding sheet;
Henceforth they walk with Me.’
“And lo! I hear! I am blind no more!
I am no longer dumb!
Out from the doom of a self-wrought tomb,
Pulsate with life, I come.”
Yes, I may come if I will, by His life Who will live again in me.
But the trouble is men do not believe this. They do not believe in any
latent capacities adequate to the great task of life. They accept the
principle of surrender and incompetence. They have nothing for God and
God can make no use of them. And I imagine that it is such unbelief,
such misgiving as to whether after all we have any possibilities for
God in us, the undervaluation of God’s need of us and power to make and
use us, that lead many of us to live the futile, unfruitful, negative
lives which we do live. Men do not think their lives worth very much.
They do not deny that there are great men and that great work is to be
done in the world, but they think that God requires only those, that
He builds His kingdom on a few outstanding figures, that the common
men can look after themselves, and that they are not indispensable to
God. If we are to prevent this waste, and if we are to secure the life
without which God is impotent to build His kingdom in the world, we
must somehow bring home to men the recognition of the great truth that
God cannot get along without every man and all of that man, and that
every human life and all its buried powers are essential to God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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