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
This faith in a God Who is alive, before Whose face a man is to live
his life, is no mere theory. You cannot find any conviction that will
more really mould and transform all our conduct and put uncompromising
stiffness in it than the conviction that we are living our lives
thus before the eyes of a God Who observes. In the life of Thring of
Uppingham we are told of an incident that pleased him greatly. It is
a story that came to him regarding a little group of boys who were
spending the summer in France. A visitor saw these English schoolboys
and overheard their conversation as to what they should do on Sunday.
Some of the boys were proposing a certain course of action, and all
seemed to agree until one fellow spoke up and said: “No, I do not
agree. I will not do it.” And when the other lads urged him to come
along, he still insisted that he would not. They asked him his reasons.
He said: “Well, Thring would not like it, and what Thring would not
like I do not intend to do.” “Well, but Thring isn’t here,” they said;
“he’s back at Uppingham.” “I do not care,” said the boy; “Thring would
not like it.” He believed that he was living in a real sense――I mean in
the most real sense of all, in the life of his personal will――before
the standards of his master, and by those standards as in the light of
his master’s countenance he insisted that he would uncompromisingly
live. Before the eyes of God a man will beware how he lives his life.
If he knows that this life of his can find no darkness where he can
hide himself from God, if he knows that all of his days are to be spent
before His face, that all his deeds are to be done beneath the gaze of
God, assuredly that will govern and control a man’s decisions about his
practical ways. The consciousness of a living God will give direction
to a man’s moral life.
And it will not only give direction. There is many a man among us who
knows that the consciousness of a God Who is alive not only gives
determination and direction to his ways, but puts a new power and
inspiration in them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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