A PLEA FOR MANLINESS

"He who goes nearest in time to Christ the crucified, Will go nearest in Eternity to Christ the Glorified."

Lefevre could not forgive himself that he had not come forward more manfully in defense of the truth. One day, not long before his death, it is said, while seated at the table of the King and Queen of Navarre, he was observed to be overcome with emotion. When Margaret expressed her surprise at the gloomy deportment of one whose society she had sought for her own diversion, Lefevre mournful exclaimed, "How can I contribute to the pleasure of others, who am, myself, the greatest sinner on earth?" In reply to the question called forth by so unexpected a confession, Lefevre, while admitting that throughout his long life his morals had been exemplary and that he was conscious no flagrant crime had been committed against society, proceeded, in words frequently interrupted by sobs, to explain his deep penitence: "How shall I who have taught others the purity of the gospel be able to stand at God's tribunal? Thousands have suffered and died for the defense of the truth which I have taught them; and, unfaithful shepherd that I am, after attaining so advanced an age, when I ought to love nothing less than I do life -- nay, rather, when I ought to desire death -- I have basely avoided the martyr's crown and have betrayed the cause of my God: His grief was so great that his friends could scarcely restrain him.

Thousands of young men were solemnly warned by these words of remorse from one who had been so eminent in translating the Scriptures, and in teaching and writing expositions of them, to take heed lest, when, having preached to others, they themselves should be castaways." And let men of God in this day be warned' that the offense of the cross has not ceased and that if they preach the pure Word of God without the stamp of peculiar party leanings, they will be persecuted; and that the present time, of all times in history, demands a peculiar courage to be true to Jesus Christ.

One suggest that those professing Christians who claim to believe the Bible from cover to cover and yet live as though its promises were not true were potential Higher Critics and a greater menace to Christ's cause than the avowed Higher Critics -- in other words one might as well openly avow himself a Higher Critic as to defend the Bible against the Higher Critic while he practices what he condemns the avowed Higher Critic. For, whose sin consists in setting aside certain portions of the Word of God and he does it openly but the professor who fights Higher Criticism as a dogma and practices its deductions in setting aside other portions of the Word of God, who can find out?

It is little different if one avowedly be a Higher Critic or if in practice he be one -- in either instances the World of God is set aside, The avowed Higher Critic says Moses did not write Pentateuch the potential Higher Critic says he stands for the whole Bible yet sets aside its teaching by the sinful respect of persons or the violation in the equity it teaches.

Emerson said that God will not have His work made manifest by cowards! Of all times that demand courage this is the time! It demands men of backbone! Men of sterling worth! Fearless, courageous men! Men of daring! Men of conviction, and the courage of their conviction! Men who will dare to stand for truth! Real manhood is the need of the hour -- God give us in these trying times, Men! A glance at the perfect manliness of the Master will inspire us:

Thomas Hughes wrote, in the Manliness of Christ, "the last test and proof of our courage and manliness must be loyalty to truth -- the most rare and difficult of all human qualities -- for Such loyalty, as it grows in perfection asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher."

"And this is the great lesson we shall learn from Christ's life, the more earnestly and faithfully we study it. 'For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth.' To bear witness against avowed and open enemies is comparatively easy. But to bear witness against those we love against those whose judgment and opinions we respect, in defense of that which approves itself as true to our own inmost conscience, this is the last and abiding test of manliness. How natural, nay, how inevitable it is, that we should fall into the habit of appreciating and judging things mainly by the standards in common use among those whom we respect and love. But these very standards are apt to break down with us when we are brought face to face with some question which takes us ever so little out of ourselves and our usual moods. At such times we are driven to admit in our hearts that we, and those we respect and love, have been looking at and judging things, not truthfully, and therefore not courageously and manfully, but conventionally. And then comes one of the most searching of all trials of courage and manliness, when a man or woman is called to stand by what approves itself to their conscience as true, and to protest for it through evil report and good report, against all discouragement and opposition from those they love or respect. The sense of antagonism instead of rest, of distrust and alienation instead of approval and sympathy, which such times bring, is a test which tries the very heart and reins... Emerson's hero is the man who, taking both reputation and life in his hand, will with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob, by the absolute truth of his speech and rectitude of his behavior.'" As another suggests the sorest trial in such times is the temptation that perhaps we were mistaken in a course which evoked so much opposition.

"In testing manliness we shall, sooner or later, have to reckon with the idea of duty -- the refusal of which will annul manliness. Trace further the manliness of Christ: This young Peasant, preaching from a boat or on a hillside, sweeps aside at once the traditions of our most learned doctors, telling us that this, which we and our fathers have been taught, is not what the God of Israel intended in these commandments of His; but that He, this young Man, can tell us what God did really intend;" that He was before Abraham and is greater than he; that He is greater than their cherished Temple; that He can give commandments that Moses could not; that He is Lord of the Sabbath; that He has power on earth to forgive sins; that He would fill up the Law with new meaning; that their traditions are worthless-and their worship, which teaches for doctrines, commands of men, vain, -- this is courageous language which at once arouses the fierce, hard, Jewish spirit to frenzy. Follow Him further: the multitude whom He fed would make Him king and Nicodemus would honor him with an interview at night but "He commits Himself neither to the mob nor to the noblemen." See Him courageously enter the temple! unofficially! No authority from the priests! "He, not even a Levite, a mere peasant from a despised province, had presumed to exercise authority in the very temple precincts! Authority and courage that no priest had dared show before Him!" Think what a similar act would mean now! To go into a fine modern church and purge out many of the unspiritual and their doings! Arrest would be inevitable! The temple, one suggests, was an object of worship with the Jews which usurped the worship of Jehovah and Jesus goes to the heart of the difficulty, to the root of the idolatry -- "He showed them that He had no superstition about this splendid Temple of theirs;" His zeal was for His Father who was obscured by its activities! To exalt Him to the proper place in their Worship was His aim. The Temple, a magnificent place in which to worship God, was a poor place to worship, if God was excluded. Again it took manliness to refuse the worship of the crowd whom He had fed; who clamored to make Him king -- (to successfully resist the test of success requires more manliness than to endure defeat) -- Today many would grasp at this honor and at once organize the crowd into a church with themselves as their head; Jesus withdrew, disappointed, into the mountain; He felt that the great lesson of Himself as their spiritual bread, which He had thought to convey had been lost on the multitude.

See again, His manliness in His conference with Nicodemus: As Thomas Hughes wrote: "There is, depend upon it, no severer test of manliness than our behavior to powerful persons, whose aid would advance the cause we have at heart. But from beginning to end there is no word to catch this ruler or those he represented; no balancing of phrases or playing with plausible religious shibboleths, with which Nicodemus would be familiar, and which might please, and perchance, reconcile, this well-disposed ruler, and the powerful per, sons he represented." Had Jesus talked to Nicodemus about traditions and the value of external righteousness through payment of tithes, formal almsgiving, fasting and perfunctory praying, Nicodemus would have at once been pleased and have given to the zealous young reformer a letter of recommendation to all the priests and synagogues of the land and the way would, with such powerful commendation, been comparatively easy for Christ -- But there is no fawning! No groveling! No playing for patronage! No effort to get his backing! No respect of persons! No bowing before the great or rich! Christ ignores everything Cherished by Nicodemus and introduces something startlingly new: "Nicodemus, you must be born again or you are lost!"

Courageous manliness is seen in His conversation with the woman of Samaria on the well: "The same splendid directness and incisiveness characterize His teaching at Samaria. There, again, He attacks at once the most cherished local traditions, showing that the place of worship -- Mount Gerizim -- matters nothing, the object of worship everything" -- worship not being a matter of a location but of a specified Spirit and in truth. Those who thus worship the Father anywhere within temples or without, are acceptable to Him. All are familiar with the abundant fruitfulness from His conversation with the woman at the well -- the nearby city is stirred with a general revival; the field was one which easily yielded its fruit. But the Master's manliness again is seen in leaving, after two days, this easy field: "The seed is sown and He passes on, never to return and garner the harvest; deliberately preferring the hard, priest-ridden lake cities of the Jews as the center of His ministry. He will leave the ripe easy field for others to reap. This decision, interpret it as we will, is that of no soft or timid reformer."

In this incident, the Lord's love and grace, and freedom from the opinions of mere is seen, in that He talked to her who was a despised Samaritan with whom His people, the Jews, had no dealings; in talking alone to a questionable character of the opposite sex; in befriending one whom the hierarchy banned; in rebuking her pet religious tradition that Mount Gerizim was the only proper place to worship God; courage too is seen in His leaving this easy field (after two days' labor), which gave so ready a response to His message, deliberately choosing to go and labor among those who were filled with resistance and hatred, in the hard, priest-ridden lake cities.

A final instance of His manliness is gleaned from His return to Nazareth while His doings at Jerusalem are still fresh in the minds of His townspeople and kinsfolk. They are excited and divided as to His doings. Every Evangelist knows how desirable it is to have at least one haven to which to go for rest and relaxation. "A thousand reasons would occur for Christ to speak soft things, at such a moment: for accommodating His teaching, here at any rate, to the wants and tastes of His hearers, so as to keep a safe and friendly asylum at Nazareth, among the scenes and people He had loved from His childhood. It is clear that some of His family, if not His mother herself, were already seriously alarmed and displeased. They disliked what they had heard of His teaching at Jerusalem and on His way home, which they felt must bring Him to ruin, in which they might be involved. He must have seen and conversed with them in His own home before that scene in the synagogue, and have had then to endure the bitter pain of alienating those whom He loved, and respected, and had reason to love and respect, but who could not for the time rise out of the conventional and respectable way of looking at things."

"To stand by what our conscience witnesses for truth, through evil and good report, even against all opposition of those we love, and of those whose judgment we look up to and should ordinarily prefer to follow; to cut ourselves off deliberately from their love and respect, is surely, I repeat, one of the most severe trials to which our manliness can be put."

His bold speaking when men clamored for His life and when any word might prove fatal to safety; His message to Herod as that fox about His determination to do cures today and tomorrow until perfected; His unflinching devotion to duty in the face of bitter antagonists; His going on with the work in hand His Father had given Him to do, His refusal to be influenced by the false standards of men: after being stoned, immediately curing a blind man, allowing none of the stormy scenes through which He passed to divert Him from the Father's business; escaping the mob at Nazareth who sought to throw Him over the precipice and like Jeremiah of old, when released from prison, preaching "thus saith the Lord" of His Father; going back to Jerusalem when of late they had sought to stone Him there; and, finally, facing Judas and his mob and Pilate and Herod and the rabble and the Cross, when He had power not to, all these ate evidences of the highest manliness. God give to reader and writer His spirit of courageous manliness so that we shall unflinchingly face the call of duty whenever and wherever it comes in His Name and strength. Without Him we can do nothing but through Him that loved us we are more than conquerors -- Praise His Name!

To break from the traditional, conventional and unreal way of looking at things, and to look at them honestly; to break from traditions which are hoary with age and venerable with reverence, yet which fail the test of reality and break down in the light of the fuller revelation of Truth; to break from the narrowness and exclusiveness of false standards; to break for liberty and to reach out beyond the vision of our own nation and denomination -- away from bigotry, exclusiveness, and sectarianism, which would arrogate to itself superiority over others who are dear to God; and to include in our love all nations and denominations, requires the strength of the supernatural. Only Christ Himself working in us, can accomplish the work.

Jesus Christ grew up amidst the most exclusive narrowness; He was a child of the most exclusive race and yet dared to speak of the Temple as His Father's House and a House of Prayer for all nations! Dared to state that His Father's love was not confined to the Jews, but that He loved the world; dared to be courteous to despised Samaritans. He said He had other sheep not of that fold, and that men would come from every direction of the compass and sit down with the patriarchs in the Kingdom. God, alone, manifest in the flesh, could do this courageous thing.