A SUMMER SERMON by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 33.

A SUMMER SERMON.

By Editor

THESE words of the apostle, dear brethren, should come home to everyone with peculiar force: “Quit you like men,—be strong.” Let us ask first, How are you to gain strength? I answer, By exercise. You want a strong arm? Exercise your arm. The blacksmith shop supplies a large part of the pugilists of the country: continual exercise with the sledge hammer gives the brawny arm before whose knocks few can stand. You want strong legs? Exercise them. Walk. Still walk. Walk more. Keep on walking. The professional pedestrians have legs as tough as lignum vitæ; their tissues are like iron, and their sinews like steel; it has all come of exercise. You want strength,—to be known as strong men, to be strong men? Exercise that which gives strength. Exercise your will, and thus strengthen your determination and your courage; never occupy a compromising position. Be not one thing to your friends, and another to your mere acquaintances. Don’t live on the fence—a good place for chickens to roost on, but a poor place for a man: the Malagasians do better in finding their houses, like the turkeys, in the tree-branches.

A great many of you, dear brethren, it is to be feared, think after this fashion: “I would like to take such and such a position on a certain question; but it takes a strong man to do that.” It does take a stronger man, dear brother, than you are, but a man need not be a moral Samson to simply take up with his convictions and hold fast to them. There is the temperance question; there are doctrinal questions; there are questions of Christian faith and practice; there are sociological questions,—questions concerning society and the family life: on all these there are about as many divergent opinions as there are leaves in this month of August. But yet, dear brethren, that should not prevent you from holding fast to your opinions, and fearlessly avowing them.

Two great misconceptions, it is to be feared, beloved brethren, are made in this matter—one is that the public are not strong enough to receive your views; the other is that you are not strong enough to declare them. The first is not true, though the second doubtless is. But it is a great mistake to suppose that you can get strong by waiting for strength to come. To be sure, there were once some of whom the prophet tells us “their strength was to sit still.” But they were Egyptians—foes to Israel; and it is to be feared there are too many of these sedentary folk in the Christian camp to-day, and it stands without denial that they do not form the effective moral power of a community.

The wisest and truest thing for any and all of you to do, dear brethren, is to declare unequivocally and unyieldingly your position on the issues of to-day. Where you are convinced state your convictions; where you are in doubt say so: we are not speaking of utterances from the pulpit so much as of the every-day utterances to friends and neighbors. This is the manly way and the Bible way. But all things are not expedient. Then avow the expediency; only see to it that your reputation has not its omnipresent double which presents you as holding one position to some, and a very different position to others. Dear brethren, we want to see this principle of perfect independence of thought, clear purpose, and intelligent conviction brought home more and more in the family, in the church, in the school, in the college. Beyond question, beloved, a great deal of harm is done by parents seeking to shape their boys into chips of the old block. The same error is made by college professors sometimes in trying to force down the students’ throats peculiar views on the leading sociological questions of the day. It is better to exhibit both sides; better to challenge opinion. And let us say, most of the college students, most of you, beloved brethren, most of the people of this country, live in small communities. The tendencies of these, it must be confessed, is narrowing, and at times depressing. It is not possible for all to get on the higher plane of observation which a knowledge of the world brings through travel and change of residence.

But it is possible for you all, beloved, to follow the advice of the great seventeenth-century thinker,—get opinion from all sides, ponder, consider, decide; it is possible for both parent and professor to so instruct that the judicial as well as the receptive faculties shall be strengthened. What is wanted, dear friends, is the many-sided intelligence which gives opportunity for the best judgment, together with the courage which enables everyone to maintain and assert an opinion when once formed. The world despises trimmers and fence dwellers. It has a contempt for the man who carries his opinions about wrapped, like the photographer’s sensitive negatives, in dark clothes, so that they shall not see the light of day.

The men of clear, pronounced views courageously adhered to are the strong men. And they are strong not because they were born strong—they were very likely born as weak as the weakest of you, dear brethren—but because in due time, with the progress of years, increasing in wisdom as well as stature, they were led to cultivate the will. Brought to entertain clean-cut opinion, they were enabled to maintain that conviction in the face of the world. The men who are afraid of saying something that will occasion the expressed dissent of their fellow-men, as some of you are, and who keep their own convictions carefully concealed, as some of you do, beloved brethren, are not they who follow the apostle’s injunction, “Quit you like men,—be strong.” Owing to the warm weather the last hymn will be omitted. Receive the benediction.—Christian at Work.