MAJORITY OR MINORITY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 1, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 44.

MAJORITY OR MINORITY.

A Splendid Statement of a Great and Important Truth.

THE chief value of the unguided opinion of the majority on any subject is as a warning rather than as a guide. The majority of persons will not agree with this statement of truth, which is only additional evidence of its truth. But a careful investigation of the facts as they are to-day, and as they have been throughout history, back to the time when error so overbalanced truth that only a flood could give truth a fair start again, and to the Garden of Eden itself, when there were two to one against Adam, will reveal, not to the majority, but to the few who are willing to know and to live the truth at any cost, that in such striving they must not expect sympathy or approval from the many.

The recognition of this truth shows a clean-cut line of division between two great classes of persons in the world, and on one or the other side of that line every individual stands. It is the line that divides those who take their marching orders from the crowd, as over against those who deliberately and of set purpose intend to do differently from the crowd. The former class finds its recruits in nine men out of every ten. The tenth man stands by himself in the latter class; somewhat lonely, sure to be sneered at and condemned as "different," but as sure to win in the long run rewards that are utterly beyond the reach of the crowd, as the trained athlete is foreordained to distance the average man in feats that call for skill and endurance.

Therefore it is no small matter that one should make a life-choice in this thing; and, having made the choice that puts him in the minority, prayerfully bring that decision to bear upon every debatable course of action, day by day, that confronts him. For until one has squarely faced this particular truth, he is not likely to realize its daily bearing upon his life. Its greatest value, indeed, is likely to come from its application to what the wrong majority call the "trifles" of life. It is harder to be "different," when we ought to be, in some of the smaller details of business and social and home life, than in a crisis which, by its very challenge, summons into action the best there is in us. But the principle is as big in the one case as in the other, and the effect of its observance or ignoring is in inverse ratio to the majority's opinion of that effect.—Sunday-School Times.