“Let my early dreams come true
With the good I fain would do;
Clothe with life my weak intent,
Let me be the thing I meant.”
Christian life is more than a tender sentiment. Christian character is more than gentleness, patience, meekness, humility, kindness. There are some men who have these qualities who lack the more robust characteristics of manhood. They are weak, nerveless, and spiritless. They are wanting in courage, force, energy and that indefinable quality called grit. Their gentleness is the gentleness of weakness. They are not manly men. Their virtues are of the passive kind, and they lack those active, positive traits that give men power and make them strong to stand and resistless when they move. Such persons have no strength of conviction. Holding their opinions lightly, their grasp of them is easily relaxed. They are remarkable for their forbearance and meekness, thus illustrating one phase of true Christly character, but they serve only as moral buffers in society to deaden the force of the concussion produced by other men’s passions. They generate no motion, they kindle no enthusiasm, they inspire no courage, and they make no aggression against the world’s hosts of evil. They are good men. They have the patience of Job, the meekness of Moses, the amiability of John, but they want the boldness of Peter, the enthusiasm of Paul and the moral heroism of Luther superadded to their passive virtues to make them truly strong men.
There is another class of defects sometimes found in men of very gentle spirit. They possess many of those qualities of disposition that are most highly commended in the Scriptures. They are not easily provoked. They speak the soft answer that turneth away wrath. They endure well the rough experiences of life. They are gentle to all men and full of kindness, and yet they are wanting in the quality of perfect truthfulness. They are neither false nor dishonest in great matters, but in countless minor matters they are characterized by a disregard of that exact truthfulness which the religion of Christ requires. They are not careful to keep their engagements. They are ready to promise any favor asked of them – they have not the courage to say “No!” to a request – but they frequently fail to fulfill what they so readily promise. They are unpunctual men, late at meetings, keeping others waiting at appointments, and often failing altogether to appear after the most positive engagement to attend. We can readily forgive the cruelty of that facetious editor who recently wrote a tearful “In Memoriam” of one of these unpunctual men, speaking of him as the “late Mr. Blank.”
These late people are frequently careless, too, about paying little debts. In charity, I think, “careless” is the proper word, for they do not intend to defraud any one, but have permitted themselves to grow into a loose habit of doing business. They make little purchases or borrow little sums of money from friends, faithfully promising to pay or return the amount in a day or two, but neglecting to do so, until by and by the matter fades altogether from their memory. They borrow books also, if they chance to be of a literary turn of mind, and other articles of various kinds, pledging themselves to return the same in a very little time; and many an empty place in a library and many a missing article in a household proclaim either a great many bad memories or a painful want of conscientiousness in borrowers.
Page 1