THE REJECTED MAN IS THE SAVIOUR.
By Thos. H. Nelson
[Thos. H. Nelson, in Pentecost Herald.] It has been almost universally the case that the man, the idea, or the movement that was destined by God to save, bless, or benefit humanity, has been unpopular and rejected at first. This is true in science, literature, politics, government, and religion, and everything else, as history proves, and I suppose it will continue to be so till the final end. The world will not reason or think. It always makes a popular clamor for the superficial idea, or man, and refuses to learn from the past. In the minds of solid thinkers so far are they from feeling that the popular judgment must be right, that the honest conviction of each is that it is universally wrong. These thinking men yield to it, but they do so for selfish reasons, and not because they see it is the right thing. Were a man to honestly seek that which was sound in principle and right in practise, in the absence of all other proof, he would be safer in standing alone against the thoughtless popular decision than he would in standing by it. Christ was not the only being who came with blessings “to His own, and His own received Him not.” He was not the only man, nor His tenets the only tenets, that were “wounded in the house of their friends.” To illustrate:— Joseph was rejected and put out of the way, but this unpopular man afterward proved to be intrusted with a divine mission. Moses was at first rejected by the Jews, but forty years afterward this rejected man proved their deliverer. Jephthah was rejected by his brethren because of his illegitimate birth, but when their day of trouble came, they sent for him to deliver them. Micaiah’s advice to wicked Ahab was set aside because it was the very opposite of the advice of the four hundred popular priests, but the outcome proved that he alone was right and they were wrong. The cases of Jeremiah, Daniel, in fact, all the apostles and prophets, and even the Lord Himself, could be cited in proof of the above. Yet for all this the blind, unreasoning old world still decides that a man must be in the wrong if he is unpopular. The reformers should take heart and rejoice, however, for they are in good company. God has ever blessed liberated and elevated humanity through the unpopular-man movement and idea. The popular cry is, “The majority rules;” but the facts show that in reality the minority rules, and always has. We are blind, and controlled to-day by ideas that were once popularly rejected. Let none consider himself wrong simply because unpopular.