Verses 1-35
Out of Place
There is a fitness of things. We all know it. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it in words. There is an instinctive judgment about proportion, and social rightness, and personal action. There is a regularity in irregularity. Life is not so tumultuous as it seems. If we could see the action of all the lines of life we should see that beneath all the tumult and uproar, all the eccentricity and irregularity, there is a steady line, direct, inevitable, persistent. It is upon that line that God looks when he talks of progress and the final out-blossoming of all the things he has sown and planted in the earth. There is what is called tendency. It can hardly be measured; it is often imperceptible; it may require whole centuries in order to note the very least progress that that tendency has made. It is in the air, it is in the remoter thought of men, it is in the things which they say to themselves when nobody hears them. It is thus that God leads us on from one point to another, whilst we ourselves imagine that things are irregular and upsidedown and wanting in order and peacefulness. There are two looks: there is the outward and superficial look that sees nothing, and there is the penetrating and spiritual look to which you may trust for a true and profound criticism. There is therefore, I repeat, a fitness of things, a sense of proportion, and colour, and weight, and values. We know one another at once; in a few minutes we soon learn whether the man should be here or there, or elsewhere: there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. There is an order of things which every one must approve. You may talk as much democracy and vulgarity as you please, but there is an order appointed of God, and you cannot upset it. It is not an order based upon mere money. When money is mere money there is nothing so poor on all the earth: nobody wants it, nobody will change it, nobody will trust to it. Money by itself is mockery, imposition, disappointment. There is no order or classification founded upon mere golden sovereigns. It is not an order of dress. Men shine brightly through their clothes. The clothes of a poor man are always radiant, not to the eye of vulgar judgment; but there is something about the man that makes his very cloak shine and glisten as no fuller on earth can whiten it. It is a marvellous process, wholly mysterious, and out of the way of the common run of criticism; but there it is, and we feel that the man has a right to be at the top. He does not look much, but let him give a judgment, let him utter one sentence, let him put his finger down upon one point in the argument; and at once the primacy is conceded. It is the ghostly, the mental, the spiritual, that rules all things in the long-run.
This order or fitness of things is not merely hereditary. We do not despise that which is hereditary. Because it ought to bring history with it There ought to be a good deal of grey moss on certain names, and grey moss ought to be full of wise writing, it ought to be the treasure-house of experience and character and honour and service. But the fitness of things I refer to now is not founded either upon money or dress, or heredity, or anything that is external. It is a house not made with hands. Hands spoil everything. No man can pluck a flower without killing it. Plucking means killing. You cannot put back the drop of dew on the rose-tip that you shook off just now. That dew will not be handled. How sweet a thing it is, and beautiful, to know that our hands have done so little! And whatever our hands do time wears out, nature begins to quarrel with at once. You no sooner put the roof upon your house than nature begins to take it off. There is an inner fitness, a spiritual relation and kinship, and when souls that know one another meet, how accidentally soever, they know one another instantly; an introduction would be a dishonour: the introduction comes up from eternity and is stamped upon the face of the occasion. There is a spirit in man.
I could imagine all the bankers in London gathered together with all their gold with them, pile on pile, and quite a snowstorm of financial paper; and I could imagine it being announced to them that Robert Burns, who hardly ever had a sovereign in his life, was at the door, and would be glad to look in if they would allow him. I could imagine all the bankers of London starting to their feet to receive the ploughman. How so? He has a right to such salutation. He has no paper, he has no bullion, but he has written words that make life doubly precious: he has sent angels through the air singing of common things and little things; he makes the house the pleasanter whenever he comes by his songs into it. He would be recognised at once as welcome, and honoured, and honourable. This is also a marvellous thing, that the spirit that is in man bows to spirit. For a time it may bow to the gold, but there are times when it recognises its true kinship, and when it rises and bows itself down again in humble and reverent homage before its own higher kindred. I could imagine all the lords of Great Britain and Ireland assembled under their gilded roof, and I could imagine circumstances under which they would also rise to their feet to welcome a stranger. Let it be announced to them that Beethoven was at the door and would like to come in, and there is not a lord amongst them that would not rise and say, Welcome! Why? He was no peer, he was a poor man. He has been set down even at great royal festivals to sit and dine apart, but he also was so much of a man and a king that when they set him down at the side-table he took up his hat and went out, and left them to dine without him as well as they could; and on other occasions he was called to the chief seat, where he had a right to be. It is mind that must be at the top: beauty of soul, pureness, grandeur of imagination, massiveness of intellect, that must rule; and every other aristocracy must pay tribute to its majesty. There must always be an aristocracy of mind. I do not like the free-and-easy way which I have seen in some countries. I do not care for that broad and vulgar doctrine which says that all men are equal, because I know that is a lie. All men are not equal. There are masters and there are servants, and there must be so to the end of time. I am not now using these words in their ordinary social sense. There are master minds, master thinkers, men who catch the light of the morning first and throw it down upon the valleys. All men are equal? is the landscape all equal? are the stars all equal? is nature all equal? Why, we must have masters, rulers, kings, and sometimes what we call tyrants; there must be an order or level of mind that must domineer for the time being, and prove its rectitude and harmony with the higher sovereigns after long time, so that we shall salute the dead. We often reserve our encomiums for the dead. We kill them, we crucify them, and then we sing hymns to their memory. We slay the prophets, and the next generation will come and build marble tombs over them, with elaborate epitaphs. But there should be and must be inequality now: it is inevitable, we cannot alter it. There must be class after class, lower and higher; and blessed is that nation the citizens of which can recognise these great distinctions of mind, and moral force, and pay appropriate tribute to them. I have no right to be equal in the presence of a man like Longfellow; a servile mind like mine must bow down at the feet of such a man, and look up to him. We know what he has written, we know what a master of music he was; his words are now part of the air we breathe, and when we see him we do not accost him with some false bald doctrine of "All men are equal, and I will stand in your presence covered." There are not many men who have a right to keep their hats on when Longfellow comes in. And what is true of the one poet is true of poets of our own. I would have therefore an exaltation of mind, genius, character above all things. The pure-minded man should be the sovereign of the age in which he lives.
But the speaker of this parable is no Epictetus, he is no Seneca, he is no mere moralist; he did not hang up these little pictures for the purpose of having them admired as men admire cameos and forget them. He was the Son of God, and therefore there must be even in this parable, simply ethical and social as it appears to be, a gospel element, a sacrificial doctrine and thought and purpose. What is it? Is it true that Christianity is a religion of manners? Certainly Christianity teaches men how to behave themselves; and when a man does not know how to behave himself he is no Christian. But he believes in nine hundred and fifty-nine articles and doctrines and other addenda. So he may do, but he is no Christian if he be not courteous, if he does not know how to behave himself and restrain himself and exhibit excellence of conduct; I do not care if he multiply his beliefs by ten, it is nothing. If he have not charity, love, all-teaching, all-guiding love, he is nothing, and less than nothing. So Christianity is a religion of manners. "Be not weary in well-doing." We misunderstand that word oftentimes. It is not well-doing in the sense of doing well, doing things that are excellent, but doing things that are excellent excellently. The emphasis is on the adverb. A man may do excellent things and do them roughly; a man may preach the gospel in an ungospel tone; a man may bid you welcome to heaven as if he were threatening you with punishment. Literally, the apostle says, Be not weary in courtesy, in good manners, in the civil treatment of one another. A man is not candid because he is brutal. Courtesy does not ask for bluntness to sustain its charter and its dignity. Christianity is therefore, I repeat again and again, a religion of manners, of behaviour, of conduct. When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding sit not down in the highest room, but seek out the right place. Never be out of position; and if you have to elect the position always proceed upon the assumption that you are not the best man that is coming to the feast. Christianity insists upon self-knowledge. How honourable are you? How many men are there who are more honourable? Suppose there are fifty men coming to the wedding-feast, who is the most honourable? Blessed is he who says, Not I; I must wait until I see all the guests before I can form a judgment; it is my business to wait until all others are in. And depend upon it sooner or later there comes a destiny, a gentle, genial, beautiful, yet inexorable fate, that says, Friend, that is not your place, your place is further up. You cannot keep men back from the places they are destined to occupy. God goes by the fitness of things which he himself has established. You need not edge and elbow and crush your way, in obedience to the vulgar exhortation, Now make your way in the world! Do nothing of the kind. Depend upon it, we are under a fatherly providence, and if you will look back upon your life you will see that you have never forced your way to any real position worth having, but have been led to it; men have heard a voice in the air, saying, This is the man. It is so in statesmanship, and in commerce, and in literature, in journalism, in preaching, in everything. There is a master of ceremonies, an angel of God, a spirit of right that says, You are wanted higher up: or, Sit where you are until you are sent for. God knows where you are, and when he wants you he will not forget you. You are in a little village, and you want to be in a great city, and you are impatient because a man of your bulk almost occupies the whole of the village. Draw yourself in, and wait just where you are, and when God needs you in the great city he will come for you certainly. If you live in this faith, you will have peace, you will have great measure of enjoyment in life. Oh, rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him, and he will arrange the wedding-table; and when the whole geometric figure is completed, and all the living people are at the table, they will look round and say, Why, this is a mosaic; this is a mosaic not made with hands. How well fitted we are, how admirably thrown together! Yet there was no throwing in it, except in the sense in which the clouds throw their showers upon the thirsty ground. Believe in God, live in God, and know that he knows you better than you can know yourself. You think you could occupy the top seat, but you could not. If you could believe that we should have no fret at home, no chafing, no mortified ambitions, but just that wonderful silence which often says to itself quite inaudibly to others, What is this? I wanted to be otherwhere, and yet I am here; for a time I was in patient, but now I see I would not change my place: all has been ordered wisely; he who is the Master of the feast hath done all things well.
A marvellous Christianity is this for continually shall we say eternally? striking the self out of the man. It will not rest until it has got out of you and me every little weight of selfishness that is lying in the most secret part of our hearts. In this very chapter the doctrine is laid down in graphic language: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple," What, may I not retain one little atom of my very self? And the gospel says, No. Then what are the terms of acceptance with the higher life? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The words are at least four in number: humble himself, deny himself, crucify himself, mortify himself. Are these the terms of entrance? Name them again: Humble, deny, crucify, mortify. Then where am I? Nowhere; killed, slain, the last shred of selfishness crushed: now you are prepared to receive the kingdom of heaven.
An awful word is the word "mortify." What does it literally mean? Make dead. Unless a man make dead himself, he cannot begin to live. You know the term well enough in your deeds of partnership and deeds of arrangement and deeds of settlement "That he the said A. B. shall be as if dead." You have often written yourselves dead on your legal parchments: that is just what you must do in this entrance into the wedding chamber; you must have no self, no selfishness, no self-idolatry, no self-trust; you must hate your own life; then God can begin to do something with you. Ambition killed the race; wanting the next and higher thing brought us to ruin. That spirit will ruin the Eden of your life, and blight the Eden of your home, and bring you down to disappointment and shame and misery. What you have to do therefore is to get rid of self. "Unless a man deny himself he cannot be my disciple." You say it is necessary for you to live, and God says it is not. There is no need for you to live another moment. A man may say, "I must do something for a living." No; that is atheism; there is not one whit of gospel in that. It is absolutely needless that you or I should live another moment. And if we cannot live without sharp practice, and without injustice, and without taking up the room that belongs to other people we had better not live; it is not life. In some money there is no comfort. Once a man got hold of thirty pieces of silver, fifteen in each hand, and his hands were scorched, and he took it back and could hardly shake it off, and he said, "Take it again, I have betrayed innocent blood!" Why not make the confession and keep the money? You cannot; restoration follows confession. There is some honour in which there is no real sense of dignity; it is a thing of feathers and air and paint and gilt. True honour cometh only from God; it belongs to righteousness and to obedience.
Here then is the great Moralist and the great Teacher, and especially the great Saviour, saying to us by parable and by doctrine, If you want to come into my kingdom one man must be killed. Who is that one man? Yourself. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." We might all find it if we really wanted to do so.
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