“WE do not set expediency over against right, as it is sometimes used; for there is a right expediency. The root meaning of the word is the loosing, or releasing, of the foot, from ex, out, and pedis, foot. Expediency is defined as ‘the quality of being proper, suitable, and advantageous under given circumstances; fitness to meet the requirements of a particular case; advantageousness; advisability; desirableness. That which is most practicable or best to be done, all things being considered.’ (‘Standard Dictionary.’) To this kind of expediency no one should object. That expediency which serves self-interest as opposed to the right is another matter.
The duty of man is to do right. The Christian should know no other standard than simple righteousness. In an ethical or moral sense every expedient should be in harmony with the revealed will of God; for it is always and only expedient for him to follow that in all questions involving morals.
Yet there are times when he needs to discern between expediency and principle. A good Christian for years may have carried his grist to mill on horseback with the corn on one side and a stone on the other to balance; but there comes a time when he sees that it would be better for both beast and man to throw away the stone and divide the corn into equal parts on either side of the horse. And with some minds here would come a struggle between principle and expediency. ‘Father did that way and so did grandfather,’ he soliloquizes; ‘would it be right to change?’ He has done the thing so long it seems sacred, and he clings still to the precedent as does the old judge to his unhealthy wig and antique dress.
The above is an exaggerated illustration of many things in the cause of God. Red tape is wound and unwound when Christian expediency ought to cut it in twain or to relegate it to entire oblivion. A certain cumbersome mode of procedure is followed in a certain church. It was the best that the men saw who inaugurated it. It was successful, not because of its form, but because of the personality of the man behind it. But others get to looking upon the thing, and think how fine it would be to do the same in all associated churches. It is adopted; followed for a time, and comes to be regarded as semi-sacred. By and by some bold spirit sees a shorter, better, simpler way of doing things, and, contrary to precedent, he adopts it. It is Christian expediency so to do; but precedent-lovers are ready to stone him for his good sense in loosing his feet from the heavy clay of a well-worn rut.
Here is a certain method of missionary work thru which great results have been obtained, not because of the method, but because of the burdened Christian soul behind the method; but men praise the thing, adopt it generally, and hope for success in the dry form. After awhile it becomes ‘sacred,’ and ‘must not be changed; it would be wrong to do it.’ Yet it has not a scintilla of sacredness in it, and Christian expediency would say that if it was not best for the time and the occasion, set it aside9and adopt the best method for that time and circumstances.
This does not mean that we should build a new cart for the ark and haul it with oxen. That is a matter of the revealed will of God, which to the Christian is always expedient. But when no moral principle is involved, expediency—the best way—will set aside the time-frazzled (the time-honored) custom and method and adopt one befitting the occasion. It will not clothe the new child of God’s thoughts in the hampering, hindering, liturgical skirts of a dead past. It will listen still to the words of the angel, who stood by the empty sepulcher of the Prince of Life, not to honor the thing, but to direct to the Master—‘He is risen;’
‘He is not here;’ ‘behold, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see Him.’ Thank God, He lives; but has left the sepulcher. He also left there the grave-clothes; He has gone out where men need Him.
Let the follower of the risen Christ hold it ever expedient to do right, to follow the revealed will of God in all things; but at the same time let Christ’s servant lift his feet from the mire of ‘usages,’ and seek to know by divine illumination the best way, the quickest way, the easiest and simplest way, to do God’s work the most effectually. And it is the revealed will of God that ‘all things be done decently and in order,’ even so the Master left the grave-clothes of the past. Luke 24:12.