Life presents us with many anomalies that refuse to square with our theories. You find men exhibiting qualities of character, which any Christian might be proud to emulate, outside of the Church altogether. And you cannot simply label these—“glittering vices,” and pass on. God is not two but One, and goodness is His token wherever it be found. “The World,” says John Owen, “cannot yet afford to do without the good acts even of its bad men.” And the truth for us to learn is that the grace of God is not bound by our standards or limits. Make the circle as wide as you like, you will still discover fruits of the Spirit outside, where by all our canons they were never to be expected.
“And every virtue we possess,
And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness
Are His alone.”
It is for something more than tolerance I am pleading. For that may be a weak and a wrong thing, if it spring not from belief in the good. What our calling demands is something more, the rejoicing, hopeful recognition of the good deed or purpose anywhere, and the offer of a sympathy and a faith in which it can grow. That gift of yours may actually be the decisive factor in a life balancing perilously betwixt good and evil. Three times, the other evening, I tried to light my study fire, and each time it went out. The paper burned, but the sticks apparently would not light. At last in despair I flung in a burning match and went away—and when I returned I found a cheerful blaze: the brief glimmer of that last match had been the determining factor. You will smile perhaps at the illustration, but you will remember, all the better, that where the flax is even smouldering, there the angels are still fighting for a soul. And you will, maybe, remember also that even your warm sympathy may turn the scale, and fan the flicker to a flame.
Prayer
O Lord our God, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that the mind that was in Him may more and more be found in us. Help us to offer to what is good anywhere a sympathy in which it may grow and increase. Grant us a helpful faith in the struggling good in every man, even as Thou, our Father, dost call us sons while as yet we are but prodigals, afar off. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
XI
Culpable Goodness
“Let not then your good be evil spoken of.”
Romans 14:16
In his letter to the Christians at Rome, the Apostle Paul counsels them not to let their “good be evil spoken of.” And at first we ask ourselves if this is a possible thing. Can you have good that is evil spoken of? Since this is a matter that ought to concern us all, I want to suggest one or two ways in which this very result may be brought about, that those of us who are trying to follow an ideal of goodness may be on our guard.
First, we can very readily have what is good in us evil spoken of because of our censoriousness. When men come upon some fruit that grows upon a goodly-looking tree, or one at least that has a trustworthy label attached to it, and find it sour or bitter to the taste, they are apt to be particularly resentful. And it is with precisely such indignation that they observe men and women who profess themselves followers of Christ exhibiting a censorious and critical spirit. Where ought you to find the broadest charity, the kindliest judgment, the most Christlike forbearance and restraint? Among Christians, of course. And yet—alas! alas!
Just keep your ears open with this end in view for a week, and you will be surprised at the appallingly hard judgments that come tripping daintily from the lips of some of those you know best. And if that line of investigation be not very handy, just watch yourself for the same time, and you will learn what a rare thing Christian charity is.
We talk a lot about it, but in real life we “forbid” men very readily “because they follow not us,” we belittle things which we do not understand, we speak rashly about people whom we do not know, and we are ready, without the least consideration, with our label for the movement or the man, who happens to be brought to our notice.
Ah, if we could only see how far astray we often are, what a libel our label is, and how unChristlike many of our speeches appear! We don’t know enough of the inner life of any man to entitle us to pass judgment upon him. A critical spirit never commends its possessor to the affection or the goodwill of men. Besides, it blinds him to much that is really beautiful, and cuts him off from many sources of happiness. You will see evil in almost anything if you look for it, but that is not a gift that makes either for helpfulness or popular esteem. “I do not call that by the name of religion,” says Robert Louis Stevenson, “which fills a man with bile,” and, on the whole, the ordinary man is of the same mind with him.
“Judge not; the workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see.
What looks, to thy dim eyes, a stain,
In God’s pure light may only be
A scar brought from some well-won field,
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.”
Sometimes one must, in the interests of true religion, pass judgment, but these times are not so frequent as we suppose. And if there are occasions more than others when the disciple needs an overflowing measure of Christ’s spirit, it is when it is his clear duty to diagnose, disapprove, and condemn.
Secondly, we may have our good evil spoken of by our extremeness. I should be very chary of saying
