Letters to His Friends

by Forbes Robinson

I have been thinking to-day of that strange statement 'I no longer call you slaves … but I have called you friends.' To understand any one you must be their friend: you are able then to judge their life from the inside, to see why and how they do what they do; all their actions which seemed disconnected and purposeless before are seen to be part of a plan, to have an end, a goal. We cannot understand the riddle of life, the necessity of all the details in the great scheme of redemption, the reason for certain means of grace, the real significance of the hope of glory, while we are slaves. The whole appears so purposeless, such waste of energy, such unintelligible and irrational self-sacrifice. Why must the Christ suffer? Why could not sin be overcome in a less costly way? Why is the victory of the Christ so incomplete? Why do some, who are better than we, take so little interest in the eternal? We cannot answer these and a thousand other questions while we are slaves. All is a hopeless enigma, a play without a plot, a novel with no plan. But become a friend of a man and all is changed. Each act in his life, each thought in his life, each word from his lips—they have not ceased to be a problem, they are ten thousandfold more wonderful than they ever were before: they are still a problem; but there is, there must be, we feel, a purpose running through the whole. We have but one object—to understand him more, to see what divine ideal he is trying to work out in all the details of his common life. Each detail is important; each thought, however wayward, must be recognised and understood. All are seen in the clear, dry light of eternity; each is seen in something like its right proportion. We feel that his life is our life—nay, more interesting than our own miserable life—that if we are ever to know ourselves we must know him first. So, too, become a friend of Him who alone is, and all is changed. Gradually, perhaps painfully, yet surely, as we become like very little children, the meaning of the whole dawns upon us. We see it all: we see that it could not be otherwise: we cannot say why, but we are quite sure that we see it—at least, we see a little way, and where the light ends and it begins to get dark, we feel that it is all right beyond—that He who is with us in the light will be with us in the darkness. We are no longer slaves, doing His will because we must. We are friends, and we cannot help taking deep interest in all that He does. His acts, His thoughts, His words, they are still a problem—we cannot make them all out. But they are the same kind of problem as a friend is—a strange exquisite torture. We do not know what the whole of his life means; he can do things which we cannot, and which we rejoice to know that we can never do. We only see one side of him ever, and the rest is only known to God. And yet we do know part of his life, and we are content to know no more; what we know is good, and what we do not know or understand must also be good. We judge from what we see what that must be which we cannot see. We do not wish it otherwise. We feel that it would be impious to try and understand him fully, for is he not connected with God Himself? So we see one side of the life of the Eternal; but we are friends; we do not wish it otherwise. We cannot understand Him—we never can. And yet 'I have called you friends.' His main purposes we see: the plan by which He realises them we see in part. And as we know Him better, we shall be able to track His footsteps even where we did not expect to find Him. We shall learn that His methods are simpler and better than ours, that His thoughts are surer, deeper, higher than all our schemes and plans. I am constantly finding that ordinances, customs, beliefs, which I used to despise as strange, antiquated, or useless, are yet the very ones which I need, that my fathers knew better than I my needs, that above all God Himself had provided institutions and customs, and had waited until I was old enough to learn their use and to bless Him as I used them. So, as we know a man better, we feel that we must pray for him and his the more. As we become the friends of the Word, we feel we must pray that His will may be done ever more and more—His purposes realised by us and ours. Let us then not begin by criticising the world and God; let us first be the friends of God, and then in the light of undying friendship and prayer begin to criticise. We must be the friend of a man before we understand his life; we must be the friends of Jesus Christ before we understand His life now upon earth.

I used to skate: I don't now. I obey herein one of the great maxims of my life: 'If you want to get a thing well done, don't do it yourself.' I consider that K——, in this as in other similar pursuits, performs the ancient and 'sacred duty of delegation.' I have no doubt that he does it admirably. Why must people try what they can't do well? Why not leave it to those who like it and can do it well? The wretched public-school-boy conception of dull uniformity is an abomination to me! If K—— does the walking, you do the thinking; G—— does the dandy, M—— the grumbling, S—— the jack-in-the-box, G—— the running, M—— the philosopher, and D—— the little vulgar boy—allow me to do what after all is the hardest of all tasks, 'to do nothing gracefully.' (I am afraid that I begin by trying 'to do nothing—gracefully,' but end by 'doing nothing gracefully.' You see the difference!) I believe in division of labour—let each man do what he is made to do best—and those who feel their vocation to be nothing but receiving the results of the labour of others—why, let them try to do it with the best grace they can! Forgive me if such be my case.

To J. L. D.

Christ's College, Cambridge: May 15, 1893.

I think you are right in believing in the intense worth of sympathy. But 'sympathy' is the Greek as 'compassion' is the Latin form of 'suffering together with.' He who has suffered most has perhaps the most power to sympathise; not simply to pity or console, but to go right out of self and to get right into another, to see life with his eyes, to feel as he feels. If, then, you find many of those among whom your lot is cast almost incapable of sympathy, may it not be that they have not yet learned the meaning of suffering? They may not have had so many opportunities of suffering as you, or, if they have had as many, they may not have found any one to interpret to them what it all meant. Thank Him from whom all sympathy comes if you have known anything of the sufferings of life, anything of the worries and disappointments and delays and unsatisfied ambitions which so many have; if you have known these—known their inner meaning, and have been led out and beyond your own into that wider life of suffering, and have learned what it is to fill up in your turn ta husteremata ton thlipseon tou Christou.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: ta—tau, alpha; husteremata—(rough breathing mark) upsilon, sigma, tau, epsilon, rho, eta, mu, alpha, tau, alpha; ton—tau, omega, nu; thlipseon—theta, lambda, iota, psi, epsilon, omega, nu; tou—tau, omicron, upsilon; Christou—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, upsilon]

One hates to see others whose centre is self. Their whole life looks so mean and low. Life over, the Ego alone left; and what a poor, wretched, snivelling creature after all—this what we pampered, this what we thrust forward for others to admire and flatter! If we were not in much the same case, we might be able to view it in others with somewhat different eyes. And yet do you know that, as a matter of fact, our Ego is dead—self is not—and the devil's greatest lie is to make us believe in this self? For do not you and I belong to One stronger than self—One whose own self may live in us—does live in us—whether we recognise the fact or not? We died years ago to self when He claimed us for Himself, and we rose again to a selfless life in Him: zo de ouketi ego, ze de en emoi Christos.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: zo—zeta, omega; de—delta, epsilon; ouketi—omicron, upsilon, kappa, epsilon, tau, iota; ego—epsilon, gamma, omega; ze—zeta, eta; de—delta, epsilon; en—epsilon, nu; emoi—epsilon, mu, omicron, iota; Christos—Chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omicron, final sigma]

We act a lie whenever we make our Ego instead of His Ego the centre. If He is our centre and our goal, then be sure our Ego will begin to live, because it is 'grounded' and rooted in His. Any trouble and anxiety that leads you out of self to the Infinite Ego, that makes you feel helpless and lonely and in need of a Human Helper and a Human Comforter, thank God for it. He is teaching you to cast yourself upon One who is perfectly human because perfectly divine. He is teaching you that you are not your own; that long, long ago yourself died: ei oun sunegerthete to Christo, ta ano zeteite.

[Transcriber's note: The above Greek phrase was transliterated as follows: ei—epsilon, iota; oun—omicron, upsilon, nu; sunegerthete—sigma, upsilon, nu, eta, gamma, epsilon, rho, theta, eta, tau, epsilon; to—tau, omega; Christo—chi, rho, iota, sigma, tau, omega; ta—tau, alpha; ano—alpha, nu, omega; zeteite—zeta, eta, tau, epsilon, iota, tau, epsilon]