In considering separately here attainment of character and relation to God, it is not meant for a moment to admit that separation of ethics and religion which has been already denied, but only to single out for distinct treatment the one most important and fundamental relation of life—relation to God. We are certainly never to forget that the indispensable condition of right relations to God, is that a man should have been won into willingness to share God's own righteous purpose concerning men.
III. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN THE ATTAINMENT OF CHARACTER
We know no deeper law in the building of character, than that righteous character comes through that association with the best in which there is mutual self-giving. The problem of character implies not only a bare recognition of a man's moral freedom, but a sacred respect at every point for his personality. If a man is ever to have character at all, it must be absolutely his own; he must be won freely into it. In this free winning to character, no association counts for its most that is not mutual. I become in character most certainly and rapidly like that man with whom I constantly am, to whose influence I most fully surrender, and who gives himself most completely to me.
We may analyze the phenomenon psychologically, as, indeed, we have already done in showing that a true personal relation to Christ necessarily carries with it a true ethical life. And that which held true for religion cannot be false for theology, we may be sure. But, in any case, we always come back finally to the fact, that character is truly and inevitably contagious in an association in which there is mutual surrender. Character is caught, not taught. The inner strength of another life to which we surrender is, as Phillips Brooks somewhere says, "directly transmissible." I suspect that the ultimate psychological principle at work here is that of the impulsiveness of consciousness. But, whether that be true or not, the witness to this contagion is wide-spread among students of men. "The greatest gift the hero leaves his race," one of our great novelists says, "is to have been a hero." In almost identical language, a great ethical and philosophical writer adds: "The noblest workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the image of themselves. Their task, be it ever so glorious, is historical and transient, the majesty of their spirit is essential and eternal."
But one might still think, here, only of an example. The other life, however, must be more to me than mere example. For the highest attainment in character I need the association of some highest one, who will give himself to me unreservedly. Redemption to real righteousness of life cannot be without cost to the redeemer. And it is a psychologist, facing the ultimate problem of will-strengthening, who urges in words that might seem almost to look to Christ: "The prophet has drunk more deeply than any one of the cup of bitterness; but his countenance is so unshaken, and he speaks such mighty words of cheer, that his will becomes our will, and our life is kindled at his own."[82] It is the one great certain road to character—as it is to appreciation of every value—to stay in the presence of the best, in self-surrender to it. No wonder Christ said, "I am the Way."
1. The Application to the Problem of Redemption.—It is hardly possible to ignore this one great known law of character-making, which the social consciousness so presses upon us, in any thinking that is for a moment worth while concerning our redemption by Christ. And whatever our point of view, this consideration ought to have weight with us. Nay, must we not make it necessarily the very center of all our thought here? For all the realities in this problem of redeeming a man from sin to righteousness are intensely personal, ethical, spiritual. Now, are we to reach a deeper view of redemption, by turning away from the deepest ethical fact to the unethical? Do we so ground our view the more securely? Is there something holier than the holy ethical will seen realized in Christ's life and death? For, if it is the will in his death by which we are sanctified,[83] there can be no sharp separation of the life and death. Must we not rather expect that the clearest light, on the holiest in God and our personal relation to him, will be thrown by the holiest we know in life, in our human personal relations?
Is not the precise method of redemption, then, to no small degree, cleared for us right here, in this conviction of the social consciousness of the contagion of the good in a self-surrendering association—the only solidarity of which we can be certain? Christ saves us, in the only certain way we know that any man is ever saved to better living, through direct contagion of character, through his immediate influence upon us. The power of the influence of a redeeming person must depend upon two facts: the richness of the self that is given, and the depth of the giving. The supremely redeeming power must be the giving of the richest self, unto the uttermost. God has not yet done his best for men, until he gives himself in the fullest manifestation which can be made through man to men, and gives to the uttermost, with no drawing back from any cost. Is it not because, after all, back of all theories and even in spite of theories, men have seen in the life and death of Christ just this eternal giving of God himself, that they have been caught up into some sharing of the same spirit, and so felt working directly and immediately upon them the supremest redeeming power the world knows? The cross of Christ has been God's not only saying, "I will help that child to conquer himself, whatever it costs me," but God doing it, and perpetually doing it. Not less than that must be the cost of a man's redemption.
Character is directly transmissible in an association in which there is mutual self-giving. It is most easily so transmissible, only at its highest, in its most perfect manifestation, in its completest self-giving at any cost.
The self-giving on the part of one trying to win another into character must precede the self-giving of the sinner; for the sinner's own willingness to yield himself to the influence of the character of the other must first of all be won. This initial winning of the coöperative will of the other is the heart of the whole battle. And here the power relied on is not only the unconscious contagion and imitation of character that enlists a man's interest almost by surprise, but also the mightiest influence men know in breaking down the resisting will and winning men consciously and with final abandon—the influence of a patient, long-suffering, persistent, self-sacrificing love that cannot give the sinning one up.