The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character

by Robert E. Speer

Now, the world tells us that such compromise is to-day absolutely unavoidable. Men and women, we are assured, cannot get along in a world like this without adaptations. If it is meant by this only that we are often obliged to adapt ourselves to that with which we do not agree, why, of course, we have to assent, because we are in a world of give and take of which we have to be a part, and it is necessary for us to live our life and do our work in this world. Here in many of our communities, for example, the saloons flourish. There is not one of us here in this audience who believes that it is wise that the saloon should exist under the protection of the government, but we have to live in a land where the principle with which we disagree prevails, and the only way we can escape is to go to some other land, and we would only find there some other principle with which we could not agree. We cannot live at all unless we are willing to adjust ourselves to an actual world. “Compromise” when used as the principle of such adjustment means simply that we must of necessity find room for ourselves among the crossing strands of life. “All government,” says Burke, “indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every vital and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.” “It cannot be too emphatically asserted,” says Spencer, “that this policy of compromise alike in institution, in action and in belief which especially characterizes English life is a policy essential to a society going through the transition caused by continuous growth and development.” And Emerson remarks, “Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other.”

If it is meant by compromise that we have to live under conditions with which we do not agree and to which we must adjust ourselves, why, of course, we must assent to that—it is perfectly obvious; but we do not need to live under those conditions assenting to them. We can bear our testimony against whatever we morally disapprove. We can assert our conviction by word or by the silent protest of life that those conditions are not right, and so to live in the midst of conditions in which we do not believe, but from which we cannot escape, is not compromise. It is compromise when we surrender our principles so that others do not understand what those principles are, or when we hold back something that is vital, or cover over deceptively or misleadingly something essential. When we take before men a position that is inconsistent with the position that in our hearts we are taking before God, that is compromise, and that is wrong. Regarding the truth in which we believe, the principles by which we know life ought to be lived, regarding these things there cannot be compromise, in our lives or in the Christian Church.

There is a noble essay by Mr. John Morley, as he once was, on this subject of compromise, its nature and limits, of which Scott Holland says in “Lux Mundi” that “no one can read that book without being either the better or the worse for it.” In it Morley takes up three different spheres of life. First, the formation of opinion; second, the expression of opinion when it is called out from us; and, third, the propagation of opinion; and then he pursues this line of argument: In the matter of the formation of opinion there cannot be any compromise at all. Every one of us is bound to hunt for the truth, no matter what the truth may be, and when we have found it, to give our lives absolutely to it. In the realm of the expression of opinion, nobody has any right to deceive any one regarding his principles and convictions when they are called forth. But in the third place, he admits room for compromise when it comes to the aggressive propagation of our convictions. He says that every man is not bound to propagate what he believes, and he takes for example his own case,—that of a man who does not believe in the Bible, who has abandoned the old religious views of his people, but who does not regard it as his duty aggressively to propagate his dissentient convictions.

In his own words his thesis is this:

“In the positive endeavour to realize an opinion, to convert a theory into practice, it may be, and very often is, highly expedient to defer to the prejudices of the majority, to move very slowly, to bow to the conditions of the status quo, to practice the very utmost sobriety, self-restraint, and conciliatoriness. The mere expression of opinion, in the next place, the avowal of dissent from received notions, the refusal to conform to language which implies the acceptance of such notions—this rests on a different footing. Here the reasons for respecting the wishes and sentiments of the majority are far less strong, though, as we shall presently see, such reasons certainly exist, and will weigh with all well-considering men. Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one’s contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught, and no more than dust in the balance. In making up our minds as to what would be the wisest line of policy if it were practicable, we have nothing to do with the circumstance that it is not practicable. And in settling with ourselves whether propositions purporting to state matters of fact are true or not, we have to consider how far they are conformable to the evidence. We have nothing to do with the comfort and solace which they would be likely to bring to others or ourselves, if they were taken as true.”

Now, we cannot but be rather grateful that men, who if they spoke would have to oppose Christianity, take this view and remain silent, and yet that is not our principle. Believing in Christianity, we believe that it would be wrong and unworthy compromise to conceal it and to refrain from propagating it. Mr. Morley prefixed to his essay Whately’s saying, “It makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place or in the second place.” We hold to another word of Whately’s also: “If our religion is false, we must change it. If it is true, we must propagate it.” Notice that Morley is speaking not of his doubts, but of his convictions. There is no obligation of a propaganda of insecurity. There is an obligation to propagate positive truth. It must, of course, be the truth that I believe. When I am asked what I believe I must, of course, tell the truth. But we believe something far more than that. The religious truth that one believes he must give his life to propagate throughout the world, and it would not make any difference if he were the only man in the world who held that truth, it would still be his duty, if he believed it was the truth and the great and necessary truth of life, to go out single-handed to defend and propagate it. Athanasius is regarded as an impracticable and troublesome type but the progress of the world is often lifted forward a sheer and discernible stage by such uncompromisingness.

Let us set forth some of the reasons why we may believe that there dare not be, in our Christian life and our Christian service, any compromise whatever, either in our searching for the truth, in our utterance of the truth, or in our aggressive and active propagation of the truth throughout the world. This is to put the matter, of course, very broadly and sweepingly. There is a great deal to be said for some of Morley’s nice discriminations. But actual life is a very rough and imperative and elemental thing. The difficulty of acting on any body of wary and wavery casuistical principles is enormous. The really workable principle of actual living must be very simple and uncomplicated and direct. The only safe ethical law is “No lie,” no lie whatever or under any justification. So also, however crude and blunt the rule may be, “No compromise” is the only practicable right rule. Mr. Morley closed his essay with such a plain word: “It is better to bear the burden of impracticableness, than to stifle conviction and to pare away principle until it becomes mere hollowness and triviality.” And in the beginning he wrote: “Our day of small calculations and petty utilities must first pass away; our vision of the true expediencies must reach further and deeper; our resolution to search for the highest verities, to give up all and follow them, must first become the supreme part of ourselves.” The loss by compromise to ourselves and others is certain, while its gain is uncertain and problematical.

In the first place, one believes this because compromise makes no contribution to the settlement of the real issue over truth. It is true that all the boundaries between truth and error are not clear and sharply drawn lines. Often there is a gray and misty region between. And much truth is only slowly and gradually won. But the ideal of truth is clearer than the sun and as pure as the character of God. And we have a far richer chance of winning it and all that it brings with it, if we both think and live it uncompromisingly. “The political spirit,” says Mr. Morley in noble words, “is the great force in throwing love of truth and accurate reasoning into a secondary place. The evil does not stop here. This achievement has indirectly countenanced the postponement of intellectual methods, and the diminution of the sense of intellectual responsibility, by a school that is anything rather than political. Theology has borrowed, and coloured for her own use, the principles which were first brought into vogue in politics. If in the one field it is the fashion to consider convenience first and truth second, in the other there is a corresponding fashion of placing truth second and emotional comfort first. If there are some who compromise their real opinions, or the chance of reaching truth, for the sake of gain, there are far more who shrink from giving their intelligence free play, for the sake of keeping undisturbed certain luxurious spiritual sensibilities....

“The intelligence is not free in the presence of a mortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of spirit. There is always hope of a man so long as he dwells in the region of the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long as he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusions after accepting the major and minor premises. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy grace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those who tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of luxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruption from a syllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life as in history noble and fair natures, that by the silent teaching and unconscious example of their inborn purity, star-like constancy, and great devotion, do carry the world about them to further heights of living than can be attained by ratiocination. But these, the blameless and loved saints of the earth, rise too rarely on our dull horizons to make a rule for the world. The law of things is that they who tamper with veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital force of human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religious imagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they are secured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than on anything else, the increase of light and happiness among men must depend. We have to fight and do lifelong battle against the forces of darkness, and anything that turns the edge of reason blunts the surest and most potent of our weapons.” We do not believe in compromising, because it makes no contribution to the larger discerning of truth or the triumphing of that truth over error.

In the second place, we do not believe in it because it creates a great many more difficulties than it removes. Now, Paul was invited to this compromising course in Jerusalem by his misguided friends because they thought it would avoid trouble. They wanted to set Paul right with the Jewish Christians in the city, and maybe with the Jews who were not Christians; they wanted to remove an impression which they thought prevailed regarding Paul’s attitude towards the Mosaic customs in the Gentile world.