| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 19 |
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If we can but realize, even in the feeblest way, the feeling of Christ toward men, our bluntness and rudeness will soon change to gentleness. And this is true tact. It is infinitely removed from cunning. Cunning is insincere. It flatters and practices all the arts of deception. It professes a friendship and interest it does not feel. It seeks only to promote its own ends. It is selfish at the core, and utterly wretched and debasing.
True tact is sanctified common sense. It is Christian love doing its proper and legitimate work. It is that wisdom which our Lord commended so heartily to the disciples as they went out among enemies and into a hostile world. It is at the same time harmless as a dove. No one can read the New Testament thoughtfully without seeing how love moves everywhere as the queen of all the graces. Truth is everywhere clothed in the warm and radiant beauty of charity. Positive, strong and mighty, it is ever gentle as the touch of a child’s finger. Some one has said that whoever makes truth unpleasant commits high treason against virtue. The remark needs a qualification. There are unpleasant truths that must cause pain when faithfully spoken. Yet truth itself is always lovely, and we are not loyal to it when we present it in any way that will make it appear repulsive.
Christian tact is wise and loving thoughtfulness. It is that charity which is wisely gentle to all, which beareth all things, which seeketh not her own, which thinketh no evil. It has an instinctive desire to avoid giving pain. It seeks to please all men for their good. It knows very well that the surest way no to do men good is to antagonize them and excite their opposition and enmity; therefore, as far as possible, it avoids all direct attack upon the life and opinions of others. It shows respect for the views of those who differ in sentiment or belief. A wise writer has said, “When we would show an one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject – for his view of it is generally right on his side – and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment that he was not wrong in his judgment, though inadvertent in not looking at the whole of the case.” How much wiser and more effective this method than that of violently assaulting the position of one who differs from us, as if we were infallible and he and his opinions were worthy only of our contempt! We can accomplish by indirection what we could never do by direct methods.
In no class of work is this wise tact so much needed as in trying to lead men to Christ. There is somewhere a key to every heart, and yet there are good and earnest men to whom no heart opens. They have zeal without knowledge. Sanctified tact shows its skill in a thousand little ways which no rules can mark out, but which wins hearts and find acceptance for the living truth and for the wondrous love of Christ. I believe it will be seen in the end that many lives which might have been saved by the gentle methods which love teaches have drifted away from Christ and been lost through the unwisdom of workers.
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