Practical paradoxes

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,

The Safety of Danger 173

XX. Living is Dying 183

I.

THE COMFORT OF CHRISTIAN PARADOXES.

The law of the Christian life is a paradox. It is made up of seeming contradictions. All its teachings are contrary to the common opinions of man. According to this law, giving is getting; scattering is gaining; holding is losing; having nothing is possessing all things ; dying is living. It is he who is weak who is strong; it is he who defies danger who avoids it; it is he who loses his life who finds it. Self-interest is promoted by unselfishness; the pleasures of earth are surest to him who disregards them; happiness is found only when it is no longer sought ; the clearest sight is of the invisible; things which are not, bring to naught things which are. Yet paradoxical as is the gospel rule of living, and hostile as are its teachings to

IO PRACTICAL PARADOXES.

man's ordinary opinions, the propriety of its requirements and the absolute truth of its declarations are made plain to all who fairly test them in their personal experience.

A man acquires physical strength by putting forth his strength. The arm that would shrivel if unused, grows muscular and stalwart with much exercise. Money is made by its risking, not by its hoarding. Grain lives by dying. It springs up by being buried. The mind gains most by giving out, not by taking in. Telling a thing to another fixes it the firmer in one's own mind. Teaching is the chiefest help to learning. Struggling against danger is safer than shrinking from danger. A man overtaken on a plain by a blinding snow-storm would peril his life by crouching down in the hope of evading the pitiless blast, when he might save his life by rising up to trample under foot the snow as it falls.

So, also, in the higher sphere of moral action; it is by encountering evil, not by shunning it, that the Christian keeps himself pure, and makes highest attainment in the divine life. It is by seeking the welfare of others that he best promotes his own welfare. It is by counting not his life dear, that his life becomes precious. It is by a spirit of absolute dependence that he rises to supremest independence.

A missionary is more likely to live a life of holy thought and purpose, while surrounded by heathen idolaters to whom he proclaims the truth, than is a hermit in a solitary cave, with no companionship but books of devotion, and no occupation but a selfish seeking of spiritual attainments. Going into the homes of the impenitent, that for their good he may be brought face to face with those who forget God, is surer to make real the great truth of salvation to a preacher or a teacher, than sitting down in his room to meditate on its preciousness, and to comfort himself with its hope. Not by flying from evil, but by fighting it, does the Christian keep himself free from the stain and the power of evil. By giving of his faith and love to others does he gain in faith and love. Spiritual safety and spiritual progress are to be found in the thickest of spiritual dangers, and in the surmounting of spiritual obstacles. " There are two ways of defending a castle," says Phillips Brooks, in holding up the example of the pattern life of Jesus : " one by shutting yourself in it, and guarding every loop-hole; the other by making it an open center of operations from which all the surrounding country may be subdued. Is not the last the truest safety? Jesus was never guarding himself, but always invading the lives of others with his holiness. . . . His life was like an open stream that keeps the sea from flowing up into it by the eager force with which it flows down into the sea. He was so anxious that the world should be saved that therein was his salvation from the world. He labored so to make the world pure that he never even had to try to be pure himself. . . . Some people seem to be here in the world just on their guard all the while, always so afraid of doing wrong that they never do anything really right. They do not add to the world's moral force. . . . All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists. The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness."

Being in earnest about something worth living for is the best cure for frivolousness. Doing for others what needs doing — at a personal sacrifice — is the surest way of overcoming selfishness. Striving to win the impure to a life of rectitude is a greater help to purity than the direct endeavor to crush out all unholy desires from one's own heart. There is no protection of self like forgetfulness of self in devotion to Christ, and in active efforts for the good of those whom Christ loves. Progress is never made more surely by the Christian than when, at the call of duty, he enters a path which is beset by obstacles and hindrances at every step.

These paradoxes are as true for our lives, in the present time, as they have been for

Christians generally in all the ages. What we give away wisely we shall still hold. What we seek to make sure will be most uncertain. In cheering the despondent we shall be cheered. In taking upon our shoulders the burdens of others, we shall find our own burdens lightened. In imparting spiritual knowledge to the ignorant we shall gain in spiritual knowledge. In moving against greatest spiritual obstacles at the call of God we shall make greatest spiritual progress. In seeking out the unholy that we may be the means of good to them, we shall be freest from danger of religious apathy. In disregarding our property, our position, our reputation, our usefulness, or our life, in comparison with duty, we shall be the gainer in all these things ; our interests will be safer, our reputation higher, our usefulness greater, and our life better worth the saving. And this is the way by which we can get comfort out of Christian paradoxes.

II.

A PART IS GREATER THAN THE WHOLE.

It is an axiom in mathematics that "the whole is greater than a part;" but it is a fact in practical life that a part is greater than the whole. Indeed, Plato quotes this declaration as from Hesiod, and affirms its correctness. The poet and the philosopher are agreed concerning it, even though the mathematician may deny it.

None of us can love the whole human race as we can love some one person of that race; and our interest in the race as a whole commonly increases in proportion to our interest in its various portions. The grandeur and sublimity of the material heavens are never apprehended by any sweep of the eyes over the entire reach of the firmament, as by the search with the telescope into the starry wonders of a single quarter of the heavens. We never have such an interest in knowledge in general as we have in some particular branch of knowledge ; nor has any branch of knowledge any such hold upon us by its entirety as it has by its minor details, into which we have searched diligently.

As a practical force, the wedge has more power than a sphere. The thin edge of the axe or the jagged edge of the saw has greater efficiency than the polished surface of either. Modern science puts an explosive charge into the cannon-ball, as well as behind it, in order that the ball may burst and do greater execution by its fragments than it could as a complete and unbroken whole.

In all efforts to arouse men to duty or to convince men of truth, there is more power in a one-sided or a partial presentation of the case, than there could be in a well-balanced consideration of all that is by any possibility involved in the issue. Reformers have always been men of one idea; and their partiality of view has been an important element of their power in bringing others to see the importance of what, to their minds, was allimportant. The earnest argument of the advocate is, ordinarily, more influential with the jury, than is the unimpassioned charge of the judge; and this even when the jury seeks to give a righteous verdict, and gives it. The right side seems more clearly the right, when no opposing or qualifying considerations are before the mind.

A preacher, as a rule, has power, not in proportion to his fairness in stating both sides of every question touched by him, and to his habit of bringing out many truths at the same time in their due proportions and relations, but according to his earnestness in showing one truth at a time, and the best side of that. Any leader is a gainer in his leading-power when his zeal and enthusiasm see, and bring others to see, only one way in which to go, and that — the way he is going. This it is that makes a part greater than the whole as a plea for duty or for right.

The man who can see all sides of a subject with like clearness and equal interest is no man to bring others to see the importance of any one phase of that subject, however he may, himself, enjoy his impartial and judicial apprehension of its merits. He is admirably fitted to give the casting vote, when all the world is a tie on that subject, and only a final decision is waited for; but so long as the seesaw of controversy continues, he neither "goes up nor goes down with either end of the plank. His standing-place is over the pivotal log, with nothing to do beyond a slight kink of his knees — first one and then the other — to keep himself in equilibrium. His mission in the engine of the world's action is that of the balancq-wheel, rather than of the piston. He is too well rounded a man to push his way through a crowd. There is no thin edge to him, by which he can force in where there is a jam. It is good to have such men in the world. They are good for judges, good as examples, good in their power for the future; but they are not good as reformers, as pioneers, as advocates, as leaders, for the present hour. A really well-rounded man belongs — like every polished sphere — on the summit of a column, or elsewhere in the place of the finished and the ornamental. He may be a very good man, but he is not the man to do the most good, or to bring others to do it.

On the wrong side as well as on the right, a part is more effective than the whole. No lie is so damaging to any person or cause as a half-truth. A caricature has its force in the fact that its representation of the man is no more wholly false than it is wholly true. Its partial view is its whole -power. Baseless slander is never to be dreaded like misrepresentation. The out and out false is harmless, in comparison with the half and half witnessing to one's spirit and speech and action, by an enemy. The partial is more potent of evil than the wholly false, as it is more potent of good than the whole truth.

Whatever is incomplete is of course but partial ; and the incomplete has, always, more in it by its possibilities and its suggestions than the finished has by its actualities. When the end is reached, or the desire attained, there is no longer room for noble desire or ennobled endeavor. The resistless conqueror of the world becomes the crying boy when there are no more worlds to conquer. His manhood is gone when the purpose of his manhood is realized. And so it is with all the completeness that this world can offer or can show.

As a rule, those whose work is best and longest in the world are those who are cut off with their work unfinished. What they did do was so full of suggestions and expectations of what they were to do, that their glorified memory remains an example and an inspiration beyond all that their completed work could have been. And so the part that they did is more than the whole that they could have done. It is the broken column, rather than the capped one, that marks the grave of him whose life is still a power in the world. The gain of the whole is often a loss of the power and the beauty of the partial. In this sense it is that Paul says of our earthly and human " knowledge, it shall vanish away. For [now] we know in part, and we prophesy in part: but when that which is perfect [is complete] is come, that which is in part shall be done away." All the inspirations and all the hopes and all the strivings that grow out of the suggestions of the incomplete, are inevitably at an end when the complete is attained to. Hence it is that in this world the immediate power of the partial and the incomplete is greater than the power of the finished and the perfect.

In architecture, a pinnacle or a spire has teachings beyond those of a dome; for a dome is complete in itself, while the spire or the pinnacle points to something yet higher. This it is which makes Gothic architecture more uplifting and inspiriting than the Romanesque. St. Peter's is wonderfully impressive. To stand under its majestic dome, and to look upward and around upon its varied magnificences, awes one with a sense of grandeur and immensity. But the very symmetry and finish of that place of holy beauty are so satisfying that the mind rests within their limits. Not so. the graceful pointed arches and the towering clustered pillars of the choir and transepts of Westminster Abbey. They lift and carry one above themselves. They point beyond. The mind cannot be satisfied with the reach to which they have attained. There is impressiveness in St. Peter's. There is inspiration in Westminster Abbey. Even the old Romans when they would build a temple to all their gods, as in the Pantheon, left its dome open at the top, that its incompleteness might carry the thought of the uplooker to the heavens above the temple.

That which is true in architecture is true in the whole realm of mind and matter.

" Nothing resting in its own completeness

Can have worth or beauty ; but alone Because it leads and tends to further sweetness, Fuller, higher, deeper, than its own."

III.

THE LITTLES ARE THE LARGER.

The littles have their place and part in making up the larger; everybody admits that. More than this, the littles are often in themselves the larger ; not everybody realizes that. Not in one sphere alone, but in all spheres, this paradox is found to be a simple truth.

All great discoveries are made through observing the little things rather than the larger ones. It is the man who watches the swinging lamp, or the falling apple, or the flying kite, or the twitching muscles of the frog, or the convulsive lifting of the kettlecover, or who pores in study over the lenses of the microscope, who brings to light new forces in nature, and new helps to toil, and to power, and to health. More has been learned concerning the material universe beyond our globe, by the examination of the single rays of light from the distant orbs, under the scrutiny of the spectroscope, than by all the survey of the vast orbs themselves in the limitless sweep of the telescope. And the great scholar in any sphere always shows his greatness rather in his new uplifting of an overlooked little in his realm of research, than in his setting in a new light the great truths which even an untrained eye could see, and an unskilled mind could perceive the meaning of.

Old soldiers have no such fear of heavy artillery as of light infantry, in the hour of action. They do not dread the ponderous round shot, or the shrieking Parrott shell, as they do the hissing bullet that pierces the air, and the tissues of life, like a flying needle. It is said that the cost of the fences in America is greater in the aggregate than the cost of the buildings. It is certainly the case that the smaller items exceed in amount the larger ones in every man's cash account. And when it comes to the troubles and worries of life, who will say that it is the great things rather than the little ones which make up his daily burden, and that cost him his keenest heart-pangs?

Many a man who could nerve himself up to bear the amputation of a limb, or who could move forward unflinchingly into the thick of battle, shrinks like a child from the thought of having a tooth pulled, or an inflamed finger lanced. The very smallness of the demand for courage stands as a barrier to heroism. As there are poisons which kill surely in small doses, but which work their own cure in larger portions, so there are many trials and causes of suffering which are overpowering and deadly in proportion to their seeming insignificance. Those who could bear great griefs courageously, and who could grandly meet great emergencies, are powerless in the presence of discomforts and annoyances which are large enough to be a reality, but too small to create a demand on all the energies of mind and heart.

And because the littles are the larger, it behooves us to look well to the littles in our dealings with others, and in our being and our doing before God. It is by our littles that we have power for good or for ill among our fellows; it is by our littles that our character is both shaped and shown; and it is by our littles that we are to be finally and fairly judged of God.

It is by the little word or deed of loving kindness and loving sympathy that we make other hearts glad, and that we win the love and gratitude of others. And it is by the little word of thoughtless or deliberate unkindness or severity that we give pain to others, and that we leave sad or bitter memories of our unlovely course in the minds of those whose love and respect we might have won and held. It is often true that —

" A clouded face Strikes deeper than an angry blow."

It requires constant watchfulness to guard our littles in speech and conduct. It is harder to be always right in little things, than to be always right in great things. It is easier to show littleness in the doing or the attempting of great things, than it is to show greatness in the doing or attempting of little things. But both these things are possible; and both of them are sure to be recognized, and to have their potency, whenever and wherever they are manifested.

We judge our fellows, we are judged of others, and God judges us, by little things rather than by those that are obviously great things. It is the unconscious, the instinctive, and the impulsive word and act of those whom we observe, rather than their more deliberate and formal expressions of self, by which we shape our estimate of them. And in the same way we are judged by the world about us. It is more important for us, in fact, to have a care to our course in the minor affairs of every-day life than in the greater matters and on the chief occasions, when everybody knows that we are on our guard and are at our best.

When the Lord chose men for Gideon's army, he judged them by the way in which they performed so simple an act as drinking from a spring. In our Lord's parable, it was the man who had taken care of one pound faithfully, to whom his master gave the rule of ten cities. God is judging every one of us just now by the manner in which we do our simplest tasks. And his rule of judging is of universal application : " He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much ; and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much."

IV.

ONE AND ONE ARE MORE THAN TWO.

Even in cold hard mathematics, a unit gives or gains added power beyond its intrinsic value by its position with reference to another unit. One and one put together become not two, but eleven. And if it be the fact that in the realm of this exact science a unit tenfolds the value of another unit, and adds its own value to it besides, simply by its juxtaposition with that other unit, who will question that, in the sphere of being and doing, one person and one person brought into right relations to each other are more by far than two persons ; or that their aggregate power is more than doubled?

"Two are better than one," says the Preacher; and then he gives as a reason for this gain : " For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up." There certainly can be no question that one live man and another live man are worth at least eleven times the practical value of one dead man. And it is obvious that the life of either of two men maydepend on the helping hand of another man in the hour of peculiar need. Moreover, while they live, and are not in special danger, two men may gain tenfold power from one another by means of the sympathy and counsel and life-quickening assistance which they render each to the other.

" Iron sharpeneth iron ; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend," says the Wise Man, concerning friendship. An iron instrument sharpened is fully ten times as effective for its instrumental purposes as it could be with a dulled edge; and since no iron instrument can sharpen itself all by itself, one iron instrument and another iron instrument, sharpening one another by their clashing and mutual rubbings, tenfold each other's value through being together. And as it is with iron and iron, so it is with friend and friend.

It is hard to stand all by one's self, battling a host without a human fellow to speak a word of stimulus or cheer. Not every man is capable of being an Athanasius, to go against the whole world when the whole world goes against God. But when one true man finds another true man by his side, the two may be a host in themselves; they may, in fact, be all the world to each other. Each is no longer one, nor are the two merely two. Each is more than one, and the two are many times more than two. This thought it is that gives point to the inspired suggestion, that in the Lord's service, in battling with the world, "one" believer shall "chase a thousand, and two" shall "put ten thousand to flight;" two having tenfold the power of one.

This truth is not a mere sentiment; it has a practical basis in the necessities of the case. No man can be at his own best, all by himself. He needs the stimulus and the cheer of another to bring his own best into action. His powers can be at their full only in and through their expression ; and they can have expression only when expression to another is called for.

Take, for example, a physician with the case of a very sick patient to tax his sense of responsibility. He is doing as well as he knows how, when the friends of the patient desire him to call in another physician in consultation. At once a new pressure is brought to bear upon him. He must be ready to state the case of his patient to his brother practitioner, with a sense of professional responsibility in that statement. His powers of observation are quickened accordingly. He scrutinizes the case with keener perceptions than before. He is more of a physician, through this added pressure, than would be possible without such pressure. The one is already more than one. A similar process goes on in the mind of the practitioner called in from without. His powers also are aroused by the appeal to his professional skill, and to his professional responsibility. He is more of a physician for this case, under this peculiar pressure, than he could be for the same case if it were left to him alone.

Then the two physicians, who are already more than two, test each other, and examine their common charge together. Every effort that either makes to state the facts as he sees them, or to formulate his opinion as that opinion must be formulated, enlarges his capabilities as a physician in charge of the case. Meanwhile each fresh suggestion made by either is a quickener to the thought of the other. There is no longer one stand-point of observation for both, but there are two standpoints of observation for each. Either becomes more than twice the man he was before, and the two together are more than twice two. Where either might have failed by himself, the two may prove a success.

And as it is with the physician, so it is with the lawyer; so, indeed, it is with every 3 thinker or doer in his realm of thought or of action : one and one may be many times more than two. No man can study to so good advantage all by himself, as with the help of another. In elementary branches, a man studies best with the help of a teacher ; but if it be that he is above needing a teacher's help, he still has need of a fellow-student, or of a pupil. He needs another to whom he can express himself, in order to secure the gain of expression. By himself, he can never be more than a unit. With another, he and his fellow can be more than two units. This it is that makes the best Sunday-school teachers value most the Sunday-school teachers'-meeting ; and that makes those who attend the teachers'-meeting the best teachers ; for one and one are more than two — in a teachers'-meeting as elsewhere.

Independence of character, and independence of thought, and independence of action, are admirable and praiseworthy attainments ; but no man can be independent without another man to help him. It takes at least two to enable one to be independent. A man can shut himself up within himself all by himself; but in order to express himself, he must have some one to express himself to; and unless a man gives expression to himself, one part of his nature, and the most important part at that, is not brought into play. There must be both centrifugal and centripetal forces at work to enable an orb to keep moving on in its own circuit, in the mental or in the moral, as well as in the natural world; and only as a man opens himself outward toward an object of attraction, while still holding himself in toward his own truest inner self, can he be his best self, or be himself at his best. Thus it is that, in order for a man to be at his fullest power, he must have another person with whom he stands in such relations that himself and the other are as eleven, rather than as two.