Duty-knowing and duty-doing

Preface

Lessons from one man's experiences and observations will not be of value to all. But lessons from any man's experiences and observations will be of value to some. No man stands, in his feelings and sympathies, for his entire race. But every man, in his sympathies and feelings, stands for a class.

Hence it is, that whatever truths have made a profound impression on a man in the progress of his life-course are likely to make a correspondent impression on others who are like him, if he can bring those truths with any vividness before them. And when a series of related truths have excited interest in their detached separateness, they will hardly fail to excite fresh interest in their exhibited relation to one another and to a common central truth.

6 PREFACE.

The essays in this volume are an outcome of their writer's observings and experiencings in his varied life-course. They were received with interest as editorial contributions in the pages of The Sunday School Times, while appearing there, one by one, during a term of ten years or more; and their republication has been urged by many who desire them for preservation in a permanent form. They are now presented in a new light, in a logical order for the elucidation and emphasis of a truth which is common to them all.

The gaining of the thoughts of this volume has not been without cost to its writer. His hope is that the considering of them will not be without stimulus and profit to

its readers.

H. C T.

Philadelphia,

Resting Between Heart-Beats 189

XX. The End is Not Yet ......< 199

L

WHAT IS DUTY?

There are two sides to every word and to every thought, — an attractive side and a repellent side. In the case of some words and their correspondent thought, the attractive side becomes the more prominent one in their popular estimation, while in the case of other words and thoughts it is the repellent side which has chief prominence. The terms "love" and "duty" are illustrations of this truth. " Love " is a winsome thought, with a suggestion of gentleness and warmth in its meaning. "Duty" has an unwelcome aspect, with a suggestion of a harsh and cold manner in its demandings. Yet the underlying thought of love and of duty is a thought common to both. Love is the "royal law" of duty; and duty at its best is only the right exercise of love.

All duty, God-ward and man-ward, is summed up in the injunction, "Thou shalt love." And he who is controlled by a spirit of love has a supreme purpose of doing his duty. The essence of love is the holding dear, or the counting precious, that which is brought into comparison with other objects of desire. The essence of duty is the performance of that which is rightly due in a given case. Love is the recognition of another's due. Duty is the rendering to another of that which is his due. Love is due to God supremely; and, under God, love is due to every creature of God, to one's self, to one's fellows, and to one's country. Duty is the obligation of being and doing toward God and toward God's creatures that which love demands as the due in every case.

He who gives God his simple dues does all that love for God would prompt to, and all that God asks any creature of his to do toward him. He who loves God can never be satisfied with anything short of rendering to God his simple dues. He who gives to his

DUTY-DOING. II

fellow-man that which is due to his fellow-man does all for his fellow-man that God requires or that man could desire in that direction. Duty-doing is, in fact, the limit of God's requirements of man, or of man's possibility of right performance, God-ward or man-ward.

" Duty," in its old English form, is " duetee ; " it is the due, or the debt, which one owes to another. It may be a debt of money, a debt of service, a debt of praise, a debt of sympathy, a debt of pity, a debt of gratitude, a debt of affection. It may be a debt of counsel, or a debt of censure. In any case, it is simply a due. It is to be paid, not as an act of grace, but as an act of justice and right. That which is rightly due to ourselves, is a debt which ought to be discharged by us in its time and place. We have no right to neglect this duty because of a supposed duty in any other direction ; for " duties never conflict;" there are never two duties which are both supreme for the moment to any individual. That which is rightly due to our neighbor, is a debt to our neighbor which cannot be avoided or evaded through any plea of a superior duty to ourselves. If it is his due from us, he is entitled to it as his due. And herein is the duty of loving our neighbor as ourselves. That which is rightly due to God is a debt to God, and, as we owe everything to God, we owe it to God to be his wholly and unreservedly; and so our simple duty to God is an obligation to love him supremely, and to serve him gratefully and forever.

Our tendency is to limit the demands of duty to the requirements of law and custom, instead of extending them to the farthest reach of the obligations of love. We are prompt to admit that it is our duty to pay or to repay money which is due to another, or to perform a service for another which grows out of an existing relation, or which has been agreed upon for an equivalent. So, also, we freely acknowledge the duty of being respectful and courteous and kindly to others within the bounds of conventional propriety.

We would reproach ourselves with a failure in duty if we were to be lacking at any one of these points. But we do not always realize that voluntary assistance on our part, or heartfelt sympathy, or outspoken praise, or faithful counsel, or kindly warning, from us, may be another's rightful due, and that, when it is so, our failing to give it to him is as truly a failure of duty, on our part, as would be our refusing to return to him a sum of money which he had loaned to us. Yet because duty is that which is due, and because that which is due is duty, therefore a failure to render that which is due from us is always a failure of duty on our part

A shipmaster notes a signal of distress from a sinking vessel near him. He sees that the decks of that vessel are crowded with imperiled passengers. They need his help. He recognizes their claim upon him as their only hope of rescue. The assistance which they need can be given only at the risk of his own vessel and cargo; but he believes that it is possible for him to save them without losing the ship of which he is in command. To his mind, an effort by him to rescue them is their due, and he makes the effort successfully. He has done, as he says, nothing but his simple duty. Ay; but now his due from all is grateful and unstinted praise; and they who do not join, as they have opportunity, in according him that praise, are as truly recreants to duty as he would have been, had he sailed away from that sinking craft, leaving it with its precious cargo of life to go down to death in mid-ocean. When effort is due, its making is a duty. When praise is due, a failure to praise is a failure in duty.

Duty often calls to that which is not recognized as duty. A passive neglect to give to another that which is really his due as a benefactor, as a well-doer, as a sufferer, as a needy fellow-creature, is, more often than we are accustomed to consider, a neglect of imperative duty. "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due/' — or from them to whom it is yonr duty to render it — says the inspired Book of Proverbs ; and the same Book, in suggestion of an important phase of duty, adds: "A word spoken in due season," — when duty demands a spoken word, — "how good is it!" In illustration of the neglect of duty by the simple failure to volunteer aid where it is known to be due, the Apostle of Love asks earnestly : " Whoso hath this world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him?" And no one has been able to answer that question unto the present day. He who does not give to his fellow-creature that which is his fellow-creature's due from him, whether that due be of money, of sympathy, of affection, of counsel, of commendation, or of personal service, has no right to claim that he is one who does his duty in this life, or whose life is controlled by the love of God.

We have no right to separate the claims of duty and the claims of love; for they belong together. To one whom we love, there is due the fullest exhibit and expression of our love that is fitting. To whomsoever there is anything due from us, we ought to love to render all that which is due. The law tells us what is our duty toward God and toward man; and love is the fulfilling of that law. God asks of us, for himself or for his creatures, nothing but that which is obviously due from us. We ought surely not to want to render less than what is due, to God or to man.

II.

HAVING A BASE-LINE.

In all works of civil engineering, or of surveying, it is of first importance to settle upon a base-line — " a main line taken as a base of operations, and on the correctness of which the whole depends." All measurements are made from this base-line. The elevation of the mountains and the depression of the valleys are noted from this level. The amount of "cuttings" or of "fillings" required to bring a proposed road to " grade " are settled by a comparison with the assumed base-line. In popular topographical, or geographical, phraseology, the base-line of measurement is the ocean's surface. We speak of a mountain as fifteen hundred feet high. We do not mean that it towers fifteen hundred feet above its next lower peak, or its surrounding "foothills," or the plain from which they spring. 2 17

Our meaning is that it is fifteen hundred feet above the level of the ocean's surface as a universally recognized base-line.

In practical operations of engineering, or of survey, it is customary to settle upon a base-line for the time being, rather than to adopt the ocean level, which may be very far below the face of the region under examination. But the base-line once agreed upon, every measurement must conform to it, or there is no hope of accuracy or success in the operations in progress. Much the same necessity exists in works of art as in those of science. A painting or a piece of sculpture must have its recognized base-line of perspective or of elevation, or it will inevitably fail of symmetry and apparent truthfulness. And as it is in science and the arts, so it must be in character and conduct. We must have a clearly defined base-line in our minds, from which all measurements are to be made unquestioningly. Without this we are liable to be up in the air or down in the depths without intending or knowing it. Having a base-line of conviction and of purpose is an indispensable requisite to well being or well doing in the world.

The common base-line of religious principle is, "Do right though the heavens fall;" or as it is put by the Apostles, concerning all questions about the standards of personal duty, " We ought to obey God rather than men." In any and every emergency where the right is apparent, we are called of God to adhere to the right at every cost to ourselves or to others. " It is a small thing that I live or die; but it is a great thing that I do what is right whether I live or die," said a great general, when tempted to do wrong for the saving of his life. Measuring from that base-line, the level of the path of duty is always distinct.

To pursue that path at a given time may seem to involve loss to ourselves or to others; it may clearly risk our pecuniary interests, our professional or social standing, our closest friendships, our very life itself, — or, what is far more than all these together, our own u good name and the welfare of those who are dearer than life to us; but large as this risk may seem, it is not to be compared with the risk of holding back from that path. Unless we then push right on in the face of all confronting dangers, our life is an absolute failure; it would be better for us never to have been born. No life is worth saving, no interests are worth preserving, at the cost of wrong doing or of neglected duty.

So far, there ought never to be a question. The common ocean base-line of God's truth settles these main measurements. But there are times and places when the real point at issue is, What is right? rather than, Shall we do right? To enable us to meet these emergencies wisely, we need to fix upon minor base-lines, or "bench-marks," as the surveyor calls them, for our local sphere and for our immediate personal work. Such base-lines can be agreed upon; they ought to be.

Take, for example, the matter of religious belief. We are sure that the inspired revelation of God is a safer guide of our faith than any man-made creed or catechism; but are we, therefore, to reject all creeds or catechisms as helps to our study or teaching, until we have compassed for ourselves all that the Bible says on the points touched by them? Must we have no theological opinions until we have shaped them freshly from our independent Bible study ?

A good base-line to measure from just here would seem to be, that the presumption is in favor of the general theological conclusions of those Christian scholars whom we suppose to best represent the faith and practice of Christianity; and that it is well for us to accept those conclusions until we find good reason for the conviction that they are manifestly at variance with the word of God. A good engineer newly coming in charge of a piece of road building does not feel called on to re-run all the "levels " of his predecessors, unless he has special reason for distrusting their accuracy. His original presumption is in their favor. When, however, we are sure that the Bible teaches one thing and a creed or a catechism teaches another, we are to stand by the Bible view of truth, at every cost of being looked at or opposed as heretics or as unbelievers. This base-line would guard us against bigotry on the one hand, and undue laxity on the other.

Then again, in the performance of our daily duties, the question often arises, What shall have the first place? A dozen things press at once for attention : which must give way for the others? A good base-line for measuring the relative altitude of conflicting claims on one's time was given by an earnest worker to a young man who confessed his perplexity on this subject: " First, attend to the thing that you have promised to do, and that you are paid for doing. Next, take hold of the things that you have pledged yourself to do, but are not paid for doing. After this, you can give yourself to those things that you would like to do because you think they ought to be done by you."

In other words, if you are a pastor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, you have practically agreed to perform certain services for your church, or your clients, or your pupils, and a stipulated sum is to be paid you for so doing. While those things press for immediate attention, your time is not at your disposal for anything else. You must not respond to a call for outside work, or for new business, or for help to others. Such a call is a temptation, to be resisted unflinchingly. If there comes an hour when something else can be done without conflict with such imperative claims, attend first to that which already has a promise of your attention. Not until these two classes of claims are satisfied, have you a right of selection from other demands upon your services.

Recognizing such a base-line as this, many a man would have no hesitation in sticking at his proper business, in spite of multiplied calls on him to go off and "do a great deal of good" elsewhere. But there are emergencies when great interests overshadow lesser ones, and when what would otherwise be a man's duty is no longer binding on him.

A young clerk might properly be late at his employer's office, if, by stopping back an hour, he could save his mother's life, or rescue a family from ruin. A professional man might be justified in abandoning an interest he had agreed to further, if he found that great wrong would be done to others by his adhering to his unfortunate agreement. What base-line will enable one to measure such cases as these?

The ordinary claims of duty are binding on a man unless the extraordinary demands are such as to justify him in losing place and credit and confidence by his fidelity to his higher convictions. He may conscientiously put an extraordinary claim above an ordinary one, but only when he is prepared to take the fullest consequences of his failure on the lower plane. The base-line must show him that the interests he adheres to are obviously higher than those he abandons.

Another safe base-line of personal conduct is, that principle, and not feeling, should be our guide in all our actions. We have no right to read our Bibles, and pray, and go to church, and be reverent in speech and demeanor toward God, and toward all that represents him, merely when we feel like it, and abstain from these observances at other times. We ought to have a right spirit in all such things; but we ought to be right in action whether we are right in spirit or not. And as toward God, so toward our fellows. We ought to be kindly in word and deed, and cordial and cheery in manner, toward our loved ones, whether our feelings for the hour prompt us to this course or not. Whatever may be our impulses, or moods, or freaks of feeling, our course and manner should never be such as to give discomfort to those who are dear to us, merely because "we want to be ourselves, you know." It is a great deal better never to be ourselves than ever to be unkindly, or regardless of the feelings of those whom we love.

So in the matter of giving, as in that of doing. It is not right for us to give, or to refuse to give, merely because we feel generous or stingy for the time being; nor yet because it is a peculiarly tempting or a peculiarly unattractive appeal for aid which now presents itself. We ought to have some plan of giving, some recognized basis of duty in the meeting of every call on us for assistance. We are the Lord's stewards ; and whether we give or withhold, we should do that which we believe our Master would have us do in that particular instance. If we give, it ought to be because we believe that Jesus would disapprove our refusal to give. If we withhold, it ought to be because we think it would displease him to have us give anything.

So, also, in all things. In all our convictions, in all our actions, in all our beneficences, we should take our levels of duty from a recognized bench-mark of principle ; and every such bench-mark from which we measure should be in unmistakable conformity with the ocean-level of eternal truth.

III.

IMPRESSIONS OF THE HOUR AN UNSAFE GUIDE.

There is no more unsafe guide for us than our impressions of the hour. Yet there is no guide which, commonly, we are readier to follow. What seems to us at the moment the only proper thing for us to do, may be the very thing of all things for us not to do, in spite of our feeling about it. And just here it is that we are most in danger when we think that we are safest.

If we feel like going off on a vacation, or like sticking at our work year in and year out; if we feel like eating or like fasting; if we feel like going to church or like staying at home; if we feel like praying or Bible reading; if we feel like being sociable, and meeting friends and neighbors cordially, or like shutting ourselves up within ourselves,

V and showing others that we are disinclined to conversation; if we feel like walking, or riding, or reading, or sleeping, — it ordinarily seems to us, that that is the very thing we ought to do just now. Not only is it clearly the most agreeable thing, but it appears to us to be the one proper thing, for the hour.

And why cannot an intelligent, sensible, right-minded man, a man of principle, and a man well trained in habits of correct thinking and correct doing, trust his feelings in such matters as these? Is he likely to feel like doing that which he ought not to do; or like refraining from that to which duty should impel him? What safer guide can he have, in matters where a choice is open to him, than his own feelings, his drawings, his impressions of the desirableness and propriety of a course under consideration? How indeed can he be himself and pursue any other course than that which at the time for action seems right and proper, all things considered ?

Whether a man can be himself or not, it is his duty in every emergency and under all circumstances to do what is right, whether he feels like doing it or not; whether, indeed, he can for the moment perceive the right or wrong in the case. And as a great many men have done wrong conscientiously, have done wrong impulsively, have been unconsciously swayed from the right by their fears, their affections, and their varying personal interests, it is important to every man that he know what is right, and that he is ready to do it unflinchingly, regardless of his temporary feelings — of his fluctuating impressions and his emotional impellings. As a practical matter, those persons who most steadily do and say what is right in the world are persons who are accustomed to do and say a great deal that they do not feel like doing and saying; a great deal that would seem quite unnecessaiy or uncalled for on their part if they trusted their feelings or their judgments of the hour.

The highest order of work is not to be compassed by snatches of labor when a man feels like working. In painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in sermon-writing, in essay-writing, in romance-writing, in all brain work and in handiwork of every sort, there is drudgery to be done at times when it goes against the worker's grain to bend down to it unswervingly. And in minor personal habits the man who cares best for his physical wellbeing is he who eats and sleeps and walks and rides, and who takes hold of his work, and lets go of it again, when he ought to, rather than when he wants to.

The loveliest and most attractive persons in the world — in home life, in business life, and in society life — are persons who give their time and attention to others generously, cordially, with seeming heartiness, and whose words of sympathy and interest are free and timely, when they feel least like anything of the sort, as well as when they feel just like it. And no greater mistake could be made by a conscientious person than in supposing that it is always better and truer to speak and to act just as one feels, according to his

DUTY-DOIXG. 31

impressions of the hour. He does best who does what he knows to be best, apart from his momentary feeling on the subject.

The poorest time in the world to settle a question of right and wrong for one's self is at the moment of temptation, in a pressing emergency. The better time is when one can look at the question coolly, with due deliberation, in the light of Scripture and reason, while self-interest is, as far as possible, kept out of sight and thought.

The time for a bank cashier, for example, to decide whether or not he ought to aid robbers in the opening of the vault he is set to guard, in order to save his life, is not after he is tied hand and foot, and a revolver is pointed at his head. TJicn he might feel that it would be quite right for him to say or do almost anything rather than to leave his wife a widow, and his children orphans. But if the question presented to him at such a time were settled long before, he could now properly recall his former deliberate and unbiased conviction of duty, and decide on the instant to act against his present impressions of right. Like Lesena, the Athenian heroine, who — fearing that her weakness of body might induce her to disclose under torture the state secrets of which she was possessed — actuallybit off her own tongue that she might be unable to betray the trust reposed in her, the tempted cashier may be sure he had better die a hundred deaths than save his life by doing what he before knew to be wrong, but now feels may not, after all, be so culpable.

So, also, in matters lesser or greater. The time for a man of business, or a literary man, to decide whether he ought to be interrupted in his work to see a particular caller, or, in fact, to see any one who calls on him, is not at the moment the caller is announced, and while his duties of the hour press him most heavily and perplexingly. Then he is unsuited to look at the question impartially. He ought to settle in advance on his proper course in matters of this kind, and act in view of his deliberate decisions, rather than according to his feelings — or even according to what may seem to be his conscientious convictions in the practical emergency. If it is right for him to receive the caller, it is his duty to bear himself during all the interview as if he had nothing to live for just then but to attend to the person whom he thus receives. Indeed, that is his pre-eminent duty, for the time being, however he may feel about it.

The same principle applies to our estimate of the binding force or of the propriety of a business contract, a professional obligation, or a covenant of friendship. The time to decide on such matters is when we can look at them coolly, dispassionately; not when some question of personal loss or danger, or when some misunderstanding, or strong swaying of attachment or repulsion, is liable to influence the judgment unduly.

But, it may be asked, How are we to know

what is right, and what is wrong, if we cannot

trust our impressions of the hour as to our

personal duty in a present emergency? Must we always go back to a former decision of conscience, and accept it as more accurate than the one to which we are now inclined ? Can we never with propriety reverse a decision of conscience? Of course a former decision may have been wrong, and now demand reversal. But in such a case we must have a care to bring conscience into a fitting state to decide anew judicially.

We may feel sure, to begin with, that a deliberate decision, made at a time when self-interest was not a factor in the verdict, is more likely to be trustworthy than a decision made under the pressure of strong feeling, or of special personal considerations. The old decision ought to hold against every pressure until a new one has been arrived at with at least as fair and full a deliberation as was given to the former. If, moreover, other persons or parties are involved in the issue, they have a right to be heard in the premises, and their interests are to be duly considered in arriving at the final conclusion.

"We need every one of us to know," says

Bushnell, in his essay on The Moral Uses of Insanity, "that we live in moods and phases, working eccentrically, sometimes more unhinged, and sometimes less; sometimes in better nature, and sometimes irritable; sometimes more disposed to jealousy; sometimes more to conceit Nothing looks fresh after a sleepless night; nothing true after an overheavy dinner. . . . Opinion is sometimes bilious; sensibility, morbid and sore; and passion, tempest-sprung, goes wild in all sorts of rampages. At one time we can be captious toward a friend; at another, generous toward an enemy; at another, about equally indifferent to both. Now a wise man is one who understands himself well enough to make due allowances for such unsane moods and varieties, never concluding that a thing is thus or thus because just now it bears that look ; waiting often to see what a sleep, or a walk, or a cool revision, or perhaps a considerable turn of repentance, will do."