Men in the Making

by Ambrose Shepherd

Nothing more damps the ardour of young people with good stuff in them than this caution called wisdom, which so often creeps over us as we advance in years. Then it is so frequently the case that the precepts that most naturally flow from our lips are the negatives that stifle hope. "I can no longer afford convictions," said a man to me once, "I have come to limit myself to opinions; they can be held at less risk, and changed at less cost." And the disposition to regard both faith and hope in great things as subject to the same insecure and miserable tenure, is apt to grow with the growing years, until we come to sympathize with nothing which cannot take out a policy of assurance.

When we are young we may be susceptible to the new, only because it is new to us. We are ready to welcome in book or speech anything which charms us with a novelty we readily mistake for originality. After we have crossed a line it may be well that most of us should become a bit obstinate, a little stiff in our beliefs, lest we be blown about by every wind of doctrine.[2] At the same time, there is always the danger of becoming so rigid in our opinions and faith as to permit no horizon of hope. There are multitudes, in our churches and outside them, who, from want of the hope that saves, are dying from the top downwards.

And among them is an increasing proportion of young men. I hear them boast that they have no ideals, no hopes or aspirations that are above the earth earthy. For once, at any rate, they have a conviction, and it is, that man lives by bread alone, that his life is in the abundance of the things which he possesses. They are too "knowing" to be caught prisoners by ideas, too much "men of the world" to concern themselves about the "Utopias of religion." And they call it strength. Strength! It reminds one of the bitter remark of an historian on the march of the Roman legions: "They make a solitude, and call it peace." Strength! There are those in perdition at this moment who could tell them that what they call strength is the stupidity which adds to sin the increment of a huge blunder.

The young man who is strong is he who has the moral genius of his years. He does not deny that man lives by bread, but he does deny that man lives by bread alone. He has faith in the upward trend of the world; and he has the hope which can give to faith its adequate translation. He does not believe that there are two Almighties in the world and that the devil is the greater; that sin shall breed sin for ever. He does not believe that the many must drudge to the limit of endurance and starve their higher nature as long as the world lasts, that the few may taste the sweets of culture and opulence. He does not believe that brute force shall for ever trample splendid intelligence underfoot, or that we must always stand on the margin of the dark river of wrong, in the unfathomed depths of which lie mysteries of terror—the despair of man, the sorrow of God. He has hope, that mighty dynamic—God's pledge to the young and unspoiled soul of a coming day when all that is false and unbelieving and wicked shall be cast into the consuming fire of divine holiness. He has faith in the great day of the Lord; and with the splendid optimism, the hope peculiar to his years, he cries: "I can, and I will, hasten the coming of my Lord." This is one great element of a young man's strength—hope in goodness, which goes so far to sustain the toil that can realize it. "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong."

Another factor in this strength is—Freedom. I hardly like the word, but I want to express by it immunity from certain responsibilities. Young men, up to a given period, are, as never again, free to sacrifice for what look like the forlorn hopes and apparently lost causes of humanity. "My six reasons for taking no risks," said a man in the American Civil War, "are a wife and five children." The reasons which in one man may resolve themselves into prudence, in the case of another man, differently circumstanced, may be nothing better than cowardice. Some years ago four men stood on the cage at the mouth of the shaft that penetrated to the workings of a Yorkshire coal-mine. There had been an explosion, and over forty men were imprisoned in what seemed likely to be their grave. The brave fellows on the cage knew they were taking their lives in their hands, but they stood calmly waiting the signal which should lower them into a possible death. While some detail of the machinery was being adjusted, a fine stalwart young man, some three-and-twenty years of age, forced his way through the crowd, and, seizing one of the rescue-party, literally flung him out of the cage to the pit-bank, and before the people could recover from their astonishment the men were being lowered through the pathway of the deep. Then they realized the meaning of the action. "He did it," said the man who had been so summarily handled, and his voice shook with emotion, "because I have a wife and bairns." The younger man was free from responsibility; he could better afford the risk.

There is a very real sense in which the same consideration tells in the warfare against sin and wrong. Some of us have less to risk in taking up the challenge which the powers of death and hell throw down to every true man. I write unto you, young men, because from your relationship to circumstances you are more free to accept risks.

We often hear men lament, and it may be sincerely, that they cannot afford to face the practical logic of their social, political, and religious beliefs. They shrink from the consequences of the good fight of faith. "Had I only myself to consider," says one, "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the force of it.

There are circumstances which are too strong for most men after they have put themselves in a given relation to circumstances.

Let me say a word here about circumstances, which will seem to contradict some things you will find in this book, if you have interest enough in it to read it through. A Glasgow minister some time ago made a stand against a considerable minority in his church over some matter that, as he said, involved a principle for which he should fight. It cost him many of his more wealthy members and adherents. "Not many of us," I said to him after, "have your courage to take so serious a risk." "Nor should I have had it," he answered, "had I not means that make me independent of my salary." It was a candid admission, and it reaches a long way. The strength of this man was in his position quite as much as in himself; and this is probably true of the great average of us. Circumstances may mean possibilities, more often than possibilities mean, or create, circumstances. What we can do is not only determined by what we bring into the world, but by what we find when we get here. Give, then, whatever courage is native to you its full purchase, by whatever favour you have in circumstances. It is here the young man has a great advantage; he is at an age when he can afford risks; let him use it before his years are mortgaged by other demands.

In public life he can base his efforts on the fact that there are tremendous evils that need resistance, that there are sacred causes which need assistance. He can afford, as never again, to close with the truth that there is a corporate life, a public virtue, a humanity of the body politic, with laws, responsibilities, and duties. In social life he can refuse to bow to an arbitrary and often empty fashion, or to immolate himself on the altar of mammon. He can be a living protest against the tyranny and lust of money, which are eating away the heart and destroying the soul of Christendom. He can stand for the sane and rational ideas and habits of life, without which society but personifies the unscrupulous and vulgar parvenu. And in religion he can accept the teaching and obey the commands of Christ without any overwhelming temptation to escape them behind some exegetical device or the plea of expediency. He can devote the rose bloom of his years to great principles, before he has had time to catch the infection of a commonplace belief in God. He can be a soldier of the Cross, and have himself placed in the forefront of the battle. He can go down into the pit to rescue the perishing, and take daring, awful risks for the Captain of his salvation and the race of which he forms a part. I have written unto you, young men, because you can afford to be strong.