FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXVIII.
Brantwood, 20th Feb., 1873.
I was again stopped by a verse in St. John’s gospel this morning: not because I have not thought of it before, often enough; but because it bears much on our immediate business in one of its expressions,—“Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own.”
His own what?
His own property, his own rights, his own opinions, his own place, I suppose one must answer? Every man in his own place; and every man acting on his own opinions; and every man having his own way. Those are somewhat your own notions of the rightest possible state of things, are they not?
And you do not think it of any consequence to ask what sort of a place your own is?
As for instance, taking the reference farther on, to the one of Christ’s followers who that night, most distinctly of all that were scattered, found his place, and stayed in it,—“This ministry and Apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.” What sort of a place?
It should interest you, surely, to ask of such things, since you all, whether you like them or not, have your own places; and whether you know them or not, your own opinions. It is too true that very often you fancy you think one thing, when, in reality, you think quite another. Most Christian persons, for instance, fancy they would like to be in heaven. But that is not their real opinion of the place at all. See how grave they will look, if their doctor hints to them that there is the least probability of their soon going there.
And the ascertaining what you really do think yourself, and do not merely fancy you think, because other people have said so; as also the ascertaining, if every man had indeed to go to his own place, what place he would verily have to go to, are most wholesome mental exercises; and there is no objection whatever to your giving weight to that really ‘private opinion,’ and that really ‘individual right.’