Responsibility | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1885

Responsibility.

One of the most wonderful things in the world is the power of men to draw themselves a line beyond which they never dream of counting themselves responsible, across which they look and judge with cruelest criticism the men who are really fighting the world's sins and troubles on the other side, as if of them there were no more to be asked than just that they should be perfect in their own self-limited world of elegant uselessness. Never a brave reformer tried to break down a popular sin, or to build up some new and needed progress, taking on himself the responsibility which a true man ought to take, but these self-satisfied scribes gather around him to criticize his methods and ridicule his blunders, but never lift a hand to show how they too would blunder if they let themselves step outside of their safe and limited and petty life. This, I think, is the way in which most men of the world look at Christianity, and at the efforts of their brother men to live a Christian life. “I am no Christian,” says the practical man; “I do not pretend to be pious or religious.” And then he looks up in your face as if he had settled the whole question, as if his entire business thenceforth were just to stand by and see what sort of a Christian you were, and how your piety came on.—Phillips Brooks.