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 we see in this story of Elijah another thing that this great
conviction will do for a man: it will make a troubler of him. “Art thou
he,” said Ahab when he met Elijah in the midst of the great famine,
“art thou he that troubleth Israel?” “No,” said Elijah; “thou art he
who troubles Israel.” And yet they were both troubling Israel, the one
with the iniquities into which he was leading the people, the other
because the principle of the living God dominating his life drove him
as a great moral force against the evils of his time. A man cannot live
in a college or university with a faith that God is living and that
he himself is living in front of God, and be quiet before the moral
iniquities and evils he will find. It is not enough for a man to say,
“I will simply be myself, live my own clean life, and let my silent
influence count.” If his silent influence does not count, no other
influence of his will count. But the silence is not enough. A little
while ago I copied from one of the letters of Mandel Creighton, late
Bishop of London, written to his boys who were away at school, this
bit of advice. “You will see, then,” he writes to one son, who had
just been made a monitor in his school, “you will see, then, that the
chief influence of a monitor is in his example. But this is the point
on which I have seen many people deceive themselves. They trust to what
they call the force of silent example. That is most pernicious. If you
content yourself with merely keeping school rules and doing what is
right yourself and keeping out of the way of any fellows who you know
are doing wrong, or if you stand by and listen to them saying what they
ought not, without reproof, you are doing wrong. No, that won’t do. It
is part of the essence of good to fight against evil. You must set your
face strongly against all that is bad, and must put down not only all
that you find in the course of your walk, but you must go out of your
walk to find it in order to put it down.”
There has been much complaint these last years because in high places
in this land there have been men who were troublers of the nation.
The great need of the nation has been men who were prepared to make
trouble in order that, at last, righteousness might come. Things that
have thought themselves secure will be shaken; long vested interests
that have believed themselves to be sacred will have their sanctity
scrutinized; and men will come at last into their rights and their
righteousness, if we are prepared, following the old Tishbite, to live
our lives before the God Who is alive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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