It is the man who makes no compromise, who stands fast by truth, that we know we can locate. It was that which gave Stonewall Jackson his huge power as a leader of men in the Civil War. He was a man of the most unflinching Christian convictions. He was one who never moved the breadth of a hair from his loyalty to his Lord or to truth as he saw truth in the presence of his Lord. Colonel Henderson draws for us a rich picture of the great soldier’s character and it is full of genial and kindly touches, but it is faithful also in its account of the man’s rigid and inflexible righteousness.
“Jackson’s religion entered into every action of his life. No duty, however trivial, was begun without asking a blessing, or ended without returning thanks. ‘He had long cultivated,’ he said, ‘the habit of connecting the most trivial and customary acts of life with a silent prayer.’ He took the Bible as his guide, and it is possible that his literal interpretation of its precepts caused many to regard him as a fanatic. His observance of the Sabbath was hardly in accordance with ordinary usage. He never read a letter on that day, nor posted one; he believed that the Government in carrying the mails was violating a divine law, and he considered the suppression of such traffic one of the most important duties of the legislature. Such opinions were uncommon, even among the Presbyterians, and his rigid respect for truth served to strengthen the impression that he was morbidly scrupulous. If he unintentionally made a misstatement—even about some trifling matter—as soon as he discovered his mistake he would lose no time and spare no trouble in hastening to correct it. ‘Why, in the name of reason,’ he was asked, ‘do you walk a mile in the rain for a perfectly unimportant thing?’ ‘Simply because I have discovered that it was a misstatement, I could not sleep comfortably unless I put it right.’
“He had occasion to censure a cadet who had given, as Jackson believed, the wrong solution of a problem. On thinking the matter over at home, he found that the pupil was right and the teacher wrong. It was late at night and in the depth of winter, but he immediately started off to the Institute, some distance from his quarters, and sent for the cadet. The delinquent, answering with much trepidation the untimely summons, found himself to his astonishment the recipient of a frank apology. Jackson’s scruples carried him even further. Persons who interlarded their conversation with the unmeaning phrase ‘you know’ were often astonished by the blunt interruption that he did not know; and when he was entreated at parties or receptions to break through his dietary rules, and for courtesy’s sake to seem to accept some delicacy, he would always refuse with the reply that he had ‘no genius for seeming.’ But if he carried his conscientiousness to extremes, if he laid down stringent rules for his own governance, he neither set himself up for a model nor did he attempt to force his convictions upon others. He was always tolerant; he knew his own faults, and his own temptations, and if he could say nothing good of a man he would not speak of him at all. But he was by no means disposed to overlook conduct of which he disapproved, and undue leniency was a weakness to which he never yielded. If he once lost confidence or discovered deception on the part of one he trusted, he withdrew himself as far as possible from any further dealings with him; and whether with the cadets or with his brother-officers, if an offense had been committed of which he was called upon to take notice, he was absolutely inflexible. Punishment or report inevitably followed. No excuses, no personal feelings, no appeals to the suffering which might be brought upon the innocent, were permitted to interfere with the execution of his duty.”
“As exact as the multiplication table,” some one said of him, “and as full of things military as an arsenal.” Those of us who are looking for the secret of Christian influence over others may be sure that we will find it here. Men are not going to follow the shifting man. They will follow the man who makes no compromise, who has his firm convictions and who stands by those convictions, no matter what the cost of his loyalty may be. Recent American politics are rather eloquent and convincing on this point.
In the sixth place, compromise in principle substitutes reliance upon majorities for reliance upon the truth, and the majorities never have been right and we may doubt whether, until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again, they ever will be right. God never has relied upon the majority. He never has waited to do His work until it was ready to side with Him. In all ages God has done His work by the few. In Old Testament times He did it by the few. The one principle prevailed always—not by might, nor by power. It was ever only “the Sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” When our Lord came He did His work with the few. Through all the ages God has been working so, and we simply depart from His whole method in history when by compromise we try to get the force of the majority on our side. The force of the majority does not amount to anything in comparison with the force of truth. “The history of success,” says Mr. Morley, “as we can never too often repeat to ourselves, is the history of minorities.” And we do not believe in compromise because it substitutes our reliance upon the majority for our reliance upon the truth of God, and upon the strength of God to enable the few with the truth to triumph against the error of the crowd. This passes for foolish idealism and some of our most popular political leaders and reformers have poured scorn upon the idealists and dreamers, who are not to be numbered among the practical men.
“One would like to ask them what purpose is served by an ideal, if it is not to make a guide for practice and a landmark in dealing with the real. A man’s loftiest and most ideal notions must be of a singularly ethereal and, shall we not say, senseless kind, if he can never see how to take a single step that may tend in the slightest degree towards making them more real. If an ideal has no point of contact with what exists, it is probably not much more than the vapid outcome of intellectual or spiritual self-indulgence. If it has such a point of contact, then there is sure to be something which a man can do towards the fulfillment of his hopes. He cannot substitute a new national religion for the old, but he can at least do something to prevent people from supposing that the adherents of the old are more numerous than they really are, and something to show them that good ideas are not all exhausted by the ancient forms. He cannot transform a monarchy into a republic, but he can make sure that one citizen at least shall aim at republican virtues, and abstain from the debasing complaisance of the crowd.”[2]
[2] Morley, “Compromise,” p. 226.
And we might add, “he cannot instantly make truth the life of the nation, but he can be loyal to its commandments. He cannot make political leaders honest and patriotic, but he can refuse to profit by their dishonesty or to regard them as honest men if they will but wear his badge and seek their own ends by promoting his. He can form his own ideals of honour and glory and live by them whatever way others may go.”
In the seventh place, compromise increases in peril as we draw near the highest. If you take a man who is down on the lower levels, compromise does not mean as much to him as it does to men who have been climbing up. The nearer we come to Christ and the highest truth, the more perilous does compromise become. As Edward Thring said: “In proportion to excellence, compromise is impossible. A single leak sinks a great ship, a raft that is all leaks floats.” That is just the deep lesson that men and women need to learn; that the higher and cleaner and more morally lofty or exacting the life, the more perilous compromise becomes to it. One has heard Christian men say sometimes that they thought they were safe in doing what this or that man, not as strong or experienced or mature, could do. It is a great mistake. The clearer and stronger a man’s life, the more careful must the man be, the more solicitous, the more anxious, lest thinking he stands he falls. One of the greatest things about the life of Paul was the humility and self-distrust in which he walked, fearing lest when he had preached to others he himself might be a castaway. We have to learn that here lies power and duty, and that the cleaner Christ makes any human life, the more careful must that life be to keep all its habits pure and unsullied, and its convictions of truth unflinching and firm.
It was this principle that made our friend, S. H. Hadley, and that makes so many men who have escaped from the slavery of drink, go to extremes in cutting off physical indulgences. Mr. Hadley not only dropped once and forever the use of alcohol, but he stopped tobacco too, and he tried to get every drunkard whom he was seeking to save to discontinue the use of nicotine. He held that men should be clean every whit and his strong conviction was that while he would not for a moment class such indulgences together, nevertheless the man who wanted to be free from the one would find his deliverance far easier if he sloughed off the other also. It is safer and easier to be thoroughgoing and indiscriminate, if you will, than to be always calculating how great risks can be safely run.