The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character — Reading Companion

y kind of training that can produce this kind of character, but unless a man learns control from without, he will never learn self-control. Unless he passes under the discipline of a wiser and stronger hand at the beginning, he will never come to the time of deliberate and moral self-discipline, which alone is character. For this only is character,――the binding of life beneath the firm sovereignty of the principle that is the heart of God. If nations do not realize this they will pay heavily for their failure. “Make your educational laws strict,” said Ruskin, “and your criminal laws may be gentle; but leave youth its liberty and you will have to dig dungeons for age.”

And it is this that gives freedom. There is no freedom outside of character. Liberty, as Montesquieu says, is not freedom to do just as we please. Liberty is the ability to do as we ought. And the freedom that we need is not the freedom of caprice and whim and listening to our impulses. It is the freedom that enables our eyes clearly to see what right is, and then empowers us to do it. Symonds put it in his verse:

“Soul, rule thyself. On passion, deed, desire, Lay thou the law of thy deliberate will. Stand at thy chosen post, faith’s sentinel. Learn to endure. Thine the reward Of those who make living light their Lord. Clad with celestial steel these stand secure, Masters, not slaves.”

And if such self-control goes as far even as the self-extinction of that voluntarily accepted Cross, on the green hill outside Jerusalem, even so it will bring victory at the last, because it has brought one long succession of victories over self all the days. I cut this fugitive bit of verse from a newspaper the other day:

“Pausing a moment ere the day was done, While yet the earth was scintillant with light, I backward glanced. From valley, plain and height, At intervals, where my life path had run, Rose cross on cross: and nailed upon each one Was my dead self. And yet that gruesome sight Lent sudden splendour to the falling night. Showing the conquests that my soul had won.

“Up to the rising stars I looked and cried, There is no death! For year on year reborn, I wake to larger life, to joy more great. So many times have I been crucified, So often seen the resurrection morn, I go triumphant, though new Calvaries wait.”

And this freedom and victory are waiting only for those lives that have been broken beneath the cross of an absolute restraint of God, and have so mastered themselves under God’s name by the help of Christ that control has been given over in trust into their own hands.

And we all know that power is to be won here in this school where men are trained both to feel and to wield dominion. There is no power in the world that is not power cabined, power held in some way. Loose power is imperceptible and utterly useless. The only power we know is power walled in, shut down, confined and beating against its barriers and its walls. We know this in the athletic life of our colleges to-day. No athletic trainer in any college ever followed David’s method with Adonijah. The trainer is there to say: “Why did you do it that way?” “Why did you not do it this way? You have no right to waste your energy in that way. You must do it so.” There is one scene in _Quo Vadis_ that redeems much else in the book. It is the scene in the Coliseum, when the giant Gothic slave is shown saving the life of his mistress, whom he loved. The great bull has come out with the girl’s form tied to his horns, and there is dead silence as the bull stands angrily facing the man. You remember the picture. As Ursus lays one hand on each horn of the auroch the struggle begins. There is not a sound. The great multitude watches the man’s muscles rise and harden and the sweat come out and drop from every pore. They see his feet sinking down in the arena, until the sand is above his ankles. Suddenly the great head of the bull begins to twist under that awful strength. Then the neck breaks and the giant lifts the limp form from the beast’s neck and stands with the burden in his hands before the Emperor. One likes to read such a picture of power secured by self-discipline. Do we want to go out limp and beaten and ineffective in our lives against the great mass of work in the world that waits to be done? Or do we want to go in the strength of Him Who, having bent beneath His Father’s will, was able to carry on the Cross the whole burden of human sin?

And we must learn in this school the things we value and desire most: purity and delicacy and refinement of character, for they cannot be acquired elsewhere. So much social standing nowadays is uttered in terms of self-assertion and indulgence and the ability to have any whim or caprice gratified. This sort of self-assertion, this caprice, is regarded by many of us as the highest mark of social authority, whereas we know it is precisely the opposite, that it is self-restraint and self-control and self-surrender that mark the finest lives.

There is a beautiful story in the life of Goldwin Smith that illustrates what I mean. In the early sixties, when he was one of the keenest liberal minds of England, he was associated with Cobden and Bright in the Manchester School. Again and again he found himself the mark of the bitterest criticism from Disraeli. Later Goldwin Smith, resigning his professorship at Oxford, came to Canada. At that time Disraeli’s novel, “Lothair,” appeared in which he attacked Smith――of course, without using his name――as a social parasite. It stung Smith to the depths of his soul, but as it was an anonymous book there was nothing he could do but sit down and write this note personally to Disraeli:

“You well know that if you had ventured openly to accuse me of any social baseness, you would have had to answer for your words; but when sheltering yourself under the literary forms of a work of fiction, you seek to traduce with impunity the social character of a political opponent, your expressions can touch no man’s honour――they are the stingless insults of a coward.”

That was all he did. And yet, at that very moment, Goldwin Smith had in his possession letters of Disraeli, with which he could have crushed him. Openly in Parliament Disraeli had said that he had never asked Peel for any position. But among Peel’s papers which had been placed in his hands Smith had a letter in which Disraeli had abjectly begged Peel to give him office. All that Smith needed to do was to publish Disraeli’s own letter to Peel and it would have ruined Disraeli’s career. But to Goldwin Smith that was not a noble thing to do. Peel’s correspondence had not been given to him to use in self-defense, or for any personal justification of his own, and he repressed that letter until Disraeli was dead. Then, years after, all of Peel’s correspondence was published and the whole world knew what a gentleman Goldwin Smith had been. Our modern ideals of what constitutes high social and national standing and character say: “Fight fire with fire. Dishonour releases honour from itself. He struck you foul; strike him so in return.” But the man who had learned self-restraint in the school of God’s loyalty and truth, who understood that power is ours, not to use for self-seeking, but for the good of men and for God’s honour, would not stoop to any such disloyalty and shame.

Once more. Whose judgment is of any value? Who would have thought of going to Adonijah and asking his opinion on anything whatsoever? He did not know right from wrong. He never thought over the issues of right or wrong. What would I like to do? What does passion bid me do? What is my whim or caprice for to-night?――that was as far as Adonijah had ever thought. No man would ever go to him, as no men will ever come to you and me if we have not been trained in the school of moral discrimination, if we have not looked on ethical principle and duty in deciding the question whether each thing is really right for us and for the whole world. If we are to be men and women to whom people will come for comfort and strength and guidance, to whom our own children can come with assurance that they will get the truth, we must be men and women who now place ourselves beneath the firm discipline of God.

We see all this put simply in two great things. We see it in our Lord’s constant appeal, while here in the world, for men and women of fiber and discipline. One came to Him and said: “Lord, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, looking upon him, loved him and said: “I would not think of counselling anything hard. You must not sacrifice anything. It is all very easy. The Father above is a Father of great tenderness and compassion. He would not lay a straw’s weight upon any child of His. Go; live according to your desires and by the natural impulses of your heart, and for that you shall have treasure in heaven.” Oh, no; He did not say that. He said: “Go, sell all that thou hast, and come and follow me. Except ye love less than duty your father and mother and brother and sister, yea, and your own life also, ye cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

We see it, too, in God’s way with men as He laid down His great laws at the beginning, when His people were but as a race of little children. Why did He not say to them: “This ye may do. The world is sweet and fair. This ye may do, and all shall be easy to you”? Why, on the other hand, did He speak to them in the stern admonitions of the Decalogue: “Thou shalt. Thou shalt not”? God never hesitates to lay His great denials upon mankind and at last to stifle us beneath the restraint of death that He may issue us forth through that restraint into the infinite liberties of the life immortal.

Now do not brush all this away to-day, or any day, light-heartedly, as it can be so easily brushed away. “Oh, don’t shadow our lives,” you will say, “with your denials and your prohibitions and your restraints. Leave life free and sweet as the summer air and the flowers of the field”――that last how long? No, my friends, it were well for us that we should learn this lesson, and learn it now, ere the time comes when the silver cord is loosed and the wheel is broken at the cistern and the grinders cease and the long shadows fall. You remember a tragic incident in New York a few years ago――I do not need to recall the details of it――when two young lives made shipwreck of themselves just because they thought that impulse and caprice were the free voices that they might obey. When it was all over, and the two lives had drawn the veil of night across their short-lived evil joy, one of the papers published a letter which the girl had written to a friend:

“My friend,” she wrote, “you and I and Fred, young, heedless, cynical, living in this reckless town of New York, may laugh sometimes at the old things like law and religion, when they say, ‘Thou shalt not.’ We may think that phrase was written for old fogies, and we may sneer at ‘the wages of sin is death’; but, my friend, there comes to us some time knowledge that the law and religion are right. What they say we shall not do, we cannot do without suffering. Fred and I have learned that. The wages of sin is death.”

It is worse than death; for what was Hell in that great vision that John saw? Why, nothing but the removal of all restraint. “He which is filthy, let him be filthy still.” He is unclean, let him be unclean. He is unholy, let him be unholy. Take all the restraints away. That is Hell.

Away from the dark gates that open thither may another voice call us here to-day, the clear, strong, summoning voice of Him Who said of Himself: “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. I do always those things that please my Father,” and Who in the garden of Gethsemane, when the anguish was almost greater than He could bear, yet found rest when He prayed, “Father, not my will, but thine be done”; that out of the willfulness and capriciousness and the whim and mood of our little self-indulgent lives we may pass into the great, strong, steadfast, sovereign will that waits for us; that we may stand fast and be strong in the strength and chastening of God!

Now I have put it――this matter of our need of discipline――in the most personal and individual way, but it is our great national and corporate need. The body of a nation can only exist through the ordered discipline of its members and the spirit of a nation like the spirit of a man needs to be cleansed of all the lusts of willfulness and self-indulgence. The spirit of our American nation needs such cleansing. Mr. Kipling has drawn us his picture of it:

“Through many roads, by me possessed, He shambles forth in cosmic guise; He is the Jester and the Jest, And he the Text himself applies.

“His easy unswept hearth he lends From Labrador to Guadaloupe; Till, elbowed out by sloven friends, He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

“Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown, Or panic-blinded stabs and slays: Blatant he bids the world bow down, Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

“Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart, He dubs his dreary brethren Kings. His hands are black with blood――his heart Leaps, as a babe’s, at little things.

“But, through the shift of mood and mood, Mine ancient humour saves him whole―― The cynic devil in his blood That bids him mock his hurrying soul;

“That bids him flout the Law he makes, That bids him make the Law he flouts, Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes The drumming guns that――have no doubts;

“That checks him foolish-hot and fond, That chuckles through his deepest ire, That gilds the slough of his despond But dims the goal of his desire;

“Inopportune, shrill-accented, The acrid Asiatic mirth That leaves him, careless ’mid his dead, The scandal of the elder earth.”

Doubtless we do not like this picture. We call it a libel or a caricature. Let it be so. Draw your own picture. If there is any truth or faithfulness in it, if it is not blind with national vanity and self-deceit, it will still be a revelation of national need of discipline and of self-empire.

And how can such discipline and self-empire be won? Well, it will not be won on any ground of prudential expediency or practical self-interest. It is well for men and nations to discern their moral shortcomings and to realize their need of a new character. But there are no automatic processes of community salvation. The disciplined nation comes in only one way――by the answers of individuals to the austere call of the one Person who can remake character and mould the stuff of manhood and nationality. The austere call! This is the nation’s need and it is the fundamental summons and the central note of Christianity. “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

The appeal of Christ was always addressed to the sacrificial and the heroic. In every call which He issued to men there is this unmistakable note of austerity. He never smooths things over for the sake of pleasing people or of winning followers. There were times when He seemed almost needlessly to draw in these repelling aspects of discipleship, and to make the conditions of following Him unnecessarily hard. It is related that it came to pass that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto Him, “Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” And Jesus said unto him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” And He said unto another, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.” Jesus said unto him, “Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house.” And Jesus said unto him, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Christ never concealed His own judgments and convictions as to life’s values in these matters, and spoke with the greatest scorn of all indulgence and softness of life. “What went ye out for to see?” He asked the people, regarding John. “A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that wear soft clothing are in king’s houses.” He was looking after men of iron and of austerity. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”

The beautiful thing is that this appeal of Christ’s was not futile. Instead of repelling men it drew them. He actually obtained the men whom He was hunting for, not by offering them worldly inducements, not by making such appeals as anybody but Christ would have made, but by addressing the sacrificial spirit in them, and making an appeal to their latent capacity for heroism. There is a wonderful tribute in Jesus’ method to those characteristics in human nature which have never been destroyed, which can answer to the highest motives, which do not need to be bought by any low compensations, but which spring into full life when appealed to on the most heroic and unselfish plane. We know how, in consequence, this exultation in difficulties, this love of hardship, this scorn of ease became the characteristic note of early Christianity. In the best summary description which Saint Paul gives of Christian character and manhood, in the twelfth chapter of Romans we find him speaking of “rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation.” And when he comes to write his conception of the character of the happy warrior, we find him setting this in the foreground, “Endure hardship, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The praise of the New Testament is never given to those who have lived in luxurious, indulgent ease. It is for that little company of men and women who have loved the difficult tasks, and who with joy trod the rough ways that transcend the stars. Every one of the great New Testament leaders is a man who exalts for us this same love of moral hardship, this same scorn of indulgence and smooth ease, and this same virtue of steadfastness, “And not only so,” says Paul, “but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh stedfastness; and stedfastness, experience; and experience, hope.” And Peter writes, “Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge; and in your knowledge self-control; and in your self-control stedfastness; and in your stedfastness godliness.” James joins in, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” And you remember the description which John gives of himself in Revelation as “your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and stedfastness which are in Jesus.”