About Right by H. W. Blake

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 12, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 23.

"About Right."

By H. W. Blake

Few incidents of my boyhood made a deeper impression than did the brief career of two young men who came to the farm on a winter's day seeking work. They brought their axes with them, and my father put them to chopping "four-foot" wood on the edge of the swamp, a long distance from the house. It was understood that they should fell the trees, cut them up into sticks four feet long, and make piles of those sticks, eight feet in length and four in height. And they were to be paid according to the number of cords which they could cut.

Two or three days passed before father found time to look after them, and when he did, the inspection was not encouraging. They had piled the wood in a "scraggly," slip-shod fashion, and the sticks varied in length from three to five feet. Expostulation brought out the remark from one of the youthful workmen, "Oh! well, it will average about right." "I cannot sell wood by average," was the conclusive reply of their employer, and it ended the job. These amateurs in life's battle evidently had some crude ideas about "the law of averages," and they fell into the common error of trying to apply it to human conduct.

The school-boy thinks that if he gets a lesson "about right," even though a fortunate guess covers his ignorance, it is all that can be expected. The man of business who flatters himself that he is "about square," never for a moment imagines that he doesn't stand on the very summit of commercial rectitude. The supreme morality of the world consists in being "as good as they'll average."

But as regards material affairs, we are quick to admit that this theory is false. Suppose the freight conductor who has "just about" time to run his train on the schedule of the delayed passenger express causes the accident which his recklessness has courted, the world at once points the finger of disgrace at him between the bars of a prison. Suppose a drug-clerk "averages" a prescription, or a helmsman adopts a happy-go-lucky method of steering, the results are practically the same.

Who shall number, however, the spiritual wrecks caused by substituting an "average" line of conduct for a course in life which conscience dictates as the only true one? "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." "Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able."

No; the law of averages, while it is useful in certain calculations, does not belong to the code of ethics, and lies outside of the Golden Rule. The law of love on this particular point, as cited by its most eminent living interpreter, Dr. Mark Hopkins, is as follows:—

"Does an artisan fail, as in making a steam-boiler, to provide in the best way for the safety and comfort of the community? is a physician ignorant of the right remedy, or a lawyer of the precedent on which his case turns? does a clergyman lack quickening and persuasive power?—each is condemned by the law of love, and responsible for the consequences if the failure could have been avoided. There may be faithfulness at the moment—at the bed-side, in the court-room, in immediate preparation for the pulpit—but the failure and guilt may lie far back in the indolent self-indulgence and dissipation of the years of preparatory study?"

This citation sweeps away the "about right" theory, leaving no room for moral averages. But perhaps you say, "It is simply perfection, and condemns every mortal." Granted; but unless we have a perfect standard, how can we become workmen who do not need "to be ashamed"? And having this standard, it is our privilege, when we fail to come up to it, to consider that the Father is full of compassion, "For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust."—H. W. Blake, in S. S. Times.