Yes, my friends, God’s wisdom is one—unchangeable, everlasting, and always like itself; and by the same wisdom by which He made the earth and the heavens, by the same wisdom by which He made our bodies, has He made our souls; and therefore we can, and are bound to, glorify Him alike in our bodies and our spirits, for both are His.
It may not seem easy to understand this; but I will explain what I mean by an example. I just told you, that in earthly matters we must stoop to conquer; we must obey the laws which God has given to anything, before we can master and use that thing. And in matters about our own soul—about our behaviour to God—about our behaviour to our fellow-men, believe me there is no rule like the golden one of Lord Verulam’s—stoop to conquer—obey if you wish to rule. For see now. What is there more common than this? It happens to each of us every day. We meet a fellow-man our equal, neither better nor worse than ourselves, and we want to make him do something. Now there are two ways in which we may set about that. We may drive our man, or we may lead him. You know well enough which of those two ways is likely to succeed best. If you try to drive the man, you say to yourself, “I know I am right. I see the thing in this light, and he is a fool if he does not see it in the same light. I choose to have the thing done, and done it shall be, and if he is stupid enough not to take my
view of it, I will let him know who I am, and we will see which of us is the stronger!” So says many a man in his heart. But what comes of it? Nothing. For the other man gets angry, and determines to have his way in his turn. There is a quarrel and a great deal of noise; and most probably the thing is not done. Instead of the man getting what he wants, he has a fresh quarrel on his hands, and nothing more. So his blustering is no sign that he is really strong. For the strong man is the man who can get what he wants done. Is he not? Surely we shall all agree to that. And the proud, hot, positive, dictatorial, self-willed man is just the man, in a free country like this, who does not get what he wants done. He will not stoop—therefore he will not conquer.
But suppose we take another plan. Suppose instead of trying to drive, we try to lead. Suppose if we want a man to do anything, we begin by obeying him, and serving him, that we may afterwards lead him, and afterwards make use of him. There is a base, mean way of doing that, by flattering, and fawning, and cringing, which are certainly the devil’s works. For the devil can put on the form of an angel of light; but we need not do that. We may serve and obey a man honestly and honourably, in order to get him to do what he ought to do. I will tell you what I mean.
Suppose when we have dealings with any man, we begin with him, as I was saying we ought to begin with earthly things—with a field for instance—we should say, before I begin to make this field bear the crop I want I must look it through and understand it. I must see what state it is in—what its soil is—what has been taken off it already—what the weather is—what state
of drainage it is in, and so forth; and I must obey the rules of all these things, or my crop will come to nothing. So with this man. First of all, before I get anything out of the man, I must understand the man. I must find out what sort of temper and character he has, what his opinions are, how he has been brought up, how he has been accustomed to look at things—so as to be able to make allowance for all, else I shall never be able to understand how he looks at this one matter, or to make him understand my way of looking at it. And to do that—to understand the man, or make him understand me, I must begin by making a friend of him.
There, my friends—there is one of the blessed laws of the kingdom of Heaven, that in a free country (as this, thank God, is) the only sure way to get power and influence over people, is by making friends of them, by behaving like Christians to them, making them trust you and love you, by pleasing them, giving way to them, making yourself of service to them, doing what they like whenever you can, in order that they may do to you, as you have done to them, and measure back to you (as the Lord Jesus promises they will), with the same measure with which you have measured to them. In short, serving men, that you may rule them, and stooping before them that you may conquer them.
And if any of you are too proud to try this plan, and think it fairer to drive men than to lead them, I can tell you of two persons who were not as proud as you are, and were not ashamed to do what you are ashamed to do—and yet they are two persons, before the least of whom you would hang your head, and feel, as I am sure I should, a very small, and mean, and pitiful person if I met them in the road.
For the first, and by far the least of the two, is St. Paul. Now St. Paul says this was the very plan by which he got influence over men, and persuaded and converted them, and brought them home to God, by being himself a servant to all men, and pleasing all men, being a Jew to the Jews, and a Greek to the Greeks, and all things to all men, if by any means he might save some. Giving up, giving way, taking trouble, putting himself out of the way, as we say here, all day long, to win people to love him, and trust him, and see that he really cared for them, and therefore to be ready to listen to him. From what one can see of St. Paul’s manners, from his own Epistles, he must have been the most perfect gentleman; a gentle man, civil, obliging, delicate minded, careful to hurt no one’s feelings; and when he had (as he had often) to say rough things and deal with rough men, doing it as tenderly and carefully as he could, like his Master the Lord Jesus Christ, lest he should break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax. Which of us can read the Epistle to Philemon (which to my mind is the most civil, pleasant, kindly, gentlemanlike speech which I know on earth), without saying to ourselves, “Ah, if we had but St. Paul’s manners, St. Paul’s temper, St. Paul’s way of managing people, how few quarrels there would be in this noisy troublesome world.”
But I said that there was one greater than St. Paul who was not ashamed to behave in the very same way, stooping to all, conciliating all. And so there is—One whose shoes St. Paul was not worthy to stoop down and unloose—and that is, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself—who ate and drank with publicans and sinners, who went out into the highways and hedges, to bring home