Exhort your hearts and confirm them in every good work and word.
Building Character
The Avoidance of Compromise
Compromise is an indication of weakness of character. The two things which a man of character keeps ever before him are right principles and right actions. Lay the tracks of duty straight and parallel; bring in your motive power by third rail or conducting wire, and your character is completely equipped for work. Mechanical systems of this world may be wrecked by various external forces, but while the soul remains true to its principles and motives, the character will never see a wreck, no matter what disease or disaster may bring grief to the body. Compromise is the interior foe of principles and motives. If it does not at once destroy them, at least it warps them from the straight path of duty or weakens their driving force. Character must stand firm against compromise; a resolute heart must oppose any lowering of principles, any weakening of motives. “Nail the flag to ^he mast and crowd on all steam,” are the standing orders from the resolute heart. Saint Paul puts the same truth in another way when he wrote to the Thessalonians: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions you have learned whether by word or by our epistle. Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father who hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope in grace, exhort your hearts and confirm them in every good work and word.”
The Mastery of Right Principles
The resolute heart needs the consolation and strength of God for which Saint Paul prayed. It is difficult to get right principles, and equally, if not more difficult, to keep right principles. Knowledge, it is said, makes a bloody entrance. Sloth and the difficulties of study and the dryness of learning and many another cause well known to teachers, make the acquisition of knowledge a bloody battle. Such is the case where the student is helped to some extent by curiosity, which is the appetite for knowledge. We are curious, as is well known, to get at truth. What, on the other hand, is the struggle which the soul must make to learn the science of the saints! For that science we have no attraction, no curiosity. In acquiring that science we have other difficulties with the addition of the greatest of all, the downward and evil tendency of our sinful natures. The knowledge of right principles makes surely a bloody entrance. Many a page in the lives of the saints is stained with the blood of self-martyrdom.
The Application of Right Principles
Nor is the battle over, when the lessons are learned. When the resolute heart has fought its way to right principles, refusing to compromise with indifference, ease, vicious tendencies or irksome tasks, then another continuous struggle begins in the application of these right principles to the government of life. It is one thing to admit to oneself that the commandments of God or the counsels of Christ should reign supreme in the soul; and it is another and quite a different thing to apply those principles to the occurrences of every day. “Does this course of action fall under the law?” “How far may I go in that direction without deserting my principles?” “May I consort with this person, utter that word or admit the thought that is now bidding for admission into the accepted friends of my mind?” Every one of these questions suggests a possible place for compromise, and we all know how often such questions arise. Prejudice and passion assert their claims against principle, and the resolute heart must intervene to keep its principles from swerving toward the “primrose path of dalliance.” “Of course, I admit I must not hate my enemies, but am I to believe that God intended me to love in my heart the one who has acted so meanly and contemptibly towards me?” “Of course, I admit the right principle of self-denial, but this one act of indulgence will not matter, and after all, there must be some letting up occasionally.” These are examples of the arguments that present themselves to us daily when we face life with our right principles.
The Claim for Exemptions
What makes this struggle more difficult is the fact that there are real exceptions to our right principles; there are cases in which the framer of the law did not intend to apply his ruling. Equity sometimes claims an exemption which the letter of the law does not allow. How, then, will His resolute heart hold steadily the balance of justice, giving full value to lawful weights on the scale-pan? We sometimes hear of the full calendars of our courts. There are so many cases that judges and jury cannot possibly hear the evidence and give decision fast enough to relieve the pressure of business. The resolute heart is judge and jury daily for thousands of cases, and in all it must keep true to its right principles and not compromise.
The Descent to Lower Motives
More trouble still for the resolute heart I There is a compromise in good motives as well as in right principles. The motive is the impelling force which moves the will to act. Its importance in the soul arises from the fact that the will is free to act on this or that motive. A good motive cannot, it is true, excuse or justify a bad act, but a bad motive may vitiate an act otherwise good or an unworthy motive may render it less noble. The Christian, by his name and profession, takes as the motive power of his life the imitation of Christ. Let us say he begins to compromise on his motives. Instead of the love of Christ, he adopts the fear of hell. The motive is good and meritorious, but it is pot as noble as before. Suppose he lets go the motives which faith supplies and resorts solely and exclusively to those which reason offers. A profound change has taken place in his character, a change that will leave its record in time and eternity. He now avoids sin and practises virtue because of health or respectability or fashion or reputation. He no longer sees the eye of God looking over the horizon of consciousness into his believing and reverencing soul. He has compromised on his motives; he has narrowed the circle of consciousness and recognizes only the eye of man. He has substituted a policeman for a conscience. He has resigned his right to Heaven and has taken up motives which may be lightly dropped when the club has passed around the corner.
The Rise to Higher Motives
The resolute heart must resist any compromise with motive. It must hold fast to the good, not relaxing and descending lower and lower in the scale of motives, but rather rising from sense to reason and from reason to faith, from earth to Heaven, and then, when in that lofty region, it must soar still higher, leaving behind the selfishness of fear or profit until it cleaves with God’s “good hope in grace” to God himself in the unselfishness of perfect love.
Testing Character
Strong against Bodily Pain
Will not the resolute heart flinch in this unending conflict with the spirit of compromise? It might if it forgot what Saint Paul states: “Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation.” That love is embodied for us in the Heart of Christ, and one manifestation out of many others may be found in the example which is given to the resolute heart by His resolute Heart. Our Lord had His principles and His motives. His life-long principle was God’s will; His unceasing motive was love of the Father. Every action of His life was inspired and directed by that love and that will, but it was in the Passion especially that the resoluteness of His character was displayed, and it is there especially the resolute hearts will get their strength. Have we ever tried to understand the strength of His will, to fathom the depth of His resolution? From the moment He came from His prayer of submission in the Garden, uttering the words, “Sleep ye now and take rest. Behold the hour is come,” until He himself declared the unequal combat had finally ceased, Jesus, the Son of God, had been pitted in mortal struggle against all the power of the world. Intense pain, physical torture, savage brutality had left His body one huge, writhing wound. Every fibre that responds to the throb of pain had sent its message of agony to His tortured soul. He became the sport of the forces of cruelty. The whole spiritual power of the Jews let the full stream of its pent-up vengeance burst upon Him. The relentless might of Rome, slow to start, rolled down on Him, crushing its victim with the barbarous strength of its soldiery. The populace of Jerusalem, increased to an enormous extent by strangers from beyond the city, turned the blind, unreasoning fury of the mob against Him.
Firm Through Mental Anguish
But bodily pain was the least of His sufferings. His affectionate nature felt the greater agony. His friends forsake Him; His friends deny Him; His friends betray Him, bartering His life away for a trifle. The people of His adoption, they for whom He had done so much, for whom He was then laying down His life, they rejected and despised Him. The darts of venom, biting sneers, insults sharp and stinging, mockery keener to pierce the soul than any weapon to pierce the body, all these made a target of the sensitive and merciful Shepherd. The lips that had dispelled disease and death were bruised; the eyes that had looked in pity on the unfortunate were blinded with His own Blood; the face ever glowing with mercy and compassion was spit upon and defiled; the hands whose touch had healed, whose power had blessed, were fastened with piercing nails to the rough wood, and the divine Heart, beating with love for all, for betrayers, for persecutors, for murderers, was wounded with the sharp-pointed spear.
Persevering with a Man-God’s Resolve
Now, if we turn to the object upon which all this pain and cruelty rained, wonderful is the spectacle we behold. Jesus, our Saviour, ended His prayer in the Garden with a resolution, “O my Father, if this chalice cannot pass away except I drink it, Thy will be done.” Our resolutions are lightly taken and lightly broken. We understand not the resolution of a stronger will; we cannot conceive the resolution of a Man-God. But when Jesus going out of His agony said, “Thy will be done,” in conforming Himself to that will, His own will became as steel. His body grew calm and majestic. His words were few, dignified and divine. His soul was rooted in unalterable patience. He moved among His enemies to His death, like a man of bronze. The storm of cruelty beat down upon Him, the whirl-wind of fury raged about Him, and the waves of passion came breaking over Him with great might; but the Stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the Head of the corner, and the force of the tempest spent itself upon that rock and retired baffled. The tired body, the strained senses, the wearied mind were clamorous for repose, for solace, but the great will said: “Peace, be quiet,” and their cries were hushed but not silenced. The gloom of desolation gathered thick about His soul, it pressed upon it with a heavy weight, but it could not crush the indomitable firmness of will. What, then, was the resolution of Christ, our Saviour? It was a resolution born of infinite love, formed with full knowledge of all that the keeping of it meant, taken freely, gladly, voluntarily. “He was offered because He himself willed it!” It was a resolution to drain the chalice, when to drink of it were enough for God’s justice and our redemption. It was not stubbornness nor desperation. There was no blindness in it, but a penetrating knowledge of its consequences; no unreasoning fury, but the patient welcoming of all sorrow. There was no passion in that resolution, except the passion of love, great, intense, God-like love. It was a firm resolution, yet a gentle one; it was staunch, yet without violence; it was instinct with power, yet breathing meekness and affection. It was the resolution of a perfect man; it was the resolution of an all-loving God.
Uncompromising in Principle
From first to last there was no compromise on principles or motives in the resolute Heart of Christ. When He said: “Not My will, but Thine be done,” He laid what we might call the foundations of resolution, and the pressure of the Passion did but sink deeper and firmer into His Heart the law of God and the love of God, which formed the principle and the motive of all His life. When the fury of the storm had spent itself, the resolution was found still unshaken. “Into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” The Heart that rested on the Father’s will when the struggle began, found an eternal resting-place in the Father’s hands when victory finally came to the resolution of Christ.