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, lastly, we believe in no compromise because the truth is bound
to prevail, and it will triumph the soonest when it is least hampered
and tied up with error or with qualification. One might stop here to
make a defense on this ground of the fanatics and devotees, but it
is enough to say that the truth is going to prevail because it is
God’s truth, and hell and all hell’s power in the world cannot stand
against it. What is the use in delaying the day of that triumph by
compromising with error? The right will prevail all the faster if we
make no compromise with error, if we go out and preach unflinchingly
and courageously with no compromise, with no surrender or economy or
adaptations, the hard, plain truth of God as we see it. If what we
think is truth is really error, it will be the sooner beaten down for
being made to stand up for itself. But if it is indeed the truth we
know it will prevail the more in the world as we keep it free from all
connection with anything that will weaken or becloud it.
I know how much danger there is in such an attitude as this if we take
it up towards the truth that we hold. It lies in our human nature to go
to violence or extremes with everything. Martin Luther used to say that
human nature is like a drunken man trying to ride a horse, you prop him
up on one side and he topples over on the other. It is that way with
us. We try to be firm and we become hard-hearted. We pride ourselves
on uncompromising loyalty to the truth and we lack the tenderness
and sympathy. Moreover, as Bushnell said in his essay on “Christian
Comprehensiveness”:
“It is the common infirmity of mere human reformers that, when
they rise up to cast out an error, it is generally not till
they have kindled their passions against it. If they begin with
reason, they are commonly moved, in the last degree, by their
animosities instead of reason. And as animosities are blind,
they, of course, see nothing to respect, nothing to spare.
The question whether possibly there may not be some truth or
good in the error assailed, which is needed to qualify and
save the equilibrium of their own opposing truth, is not once
entertained. Hence it is that men, in expelling one error, are
perpetually thrusting themselves into another, as if unwilling
or unable to hold more than half the truth at once.”
And yet these dangers are lesser dangers than the danger of
surrendering the truth. And we can be guarded from them by the great
and unselfish love that guarded Paul. The man who loves others more
than he loves himself, who holds human lives sacred and free from
invasion, who is seeking not his own glory, but the glory of God and
the good of men, is in little danger from an absolutely uncompromising
loyalty to the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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