The Stuff of Manhood: Some Needed Notes in American Character

by Robert E. Speer

A friend in New York tells a lovely story about a boy in one of the great English schools. He was an only child, and his mother died when he was but a little fellow. Between him and his father there grew up relations of the most delicate and sensitive intimacy. The father was blind, so that the little boy had to be his father’s eyes, and until the day came when the lad had to go away to school there was scarcely an hour when the two were separated. But at last the time came and the boy went. He became the best athlete in his school. One spring, just before the final game in which the boy was to bowl for his own school, tidings came that his father was seriously ill and he must come home. The news sent the whole school into lamentation, for they were afraid that he might not recover and that if he did not the boy could not play in the concluding and critical game. And indeed, as it turned out, the father died. The day before the game was to be played the boy came back to school, and, to the amazement of all, let it be known that he intended to play. The next day he took his place and played as he had never played in his life before. When at last the game was over and the school had won its triumph, one of the masters came to the boy and expressed to him the delighted surprise of the school at what he had done and their amazement both that he had played at all and at the way he had played. “Why,” said the boy, “didn’t you understand? I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. That was the first game my father ever saw me play.” Beneath the consciousness that for the first time his father’s eyes were open and watching him the boy had discovered capacities of power that he hardly knew he possessed before. Beneath the eye of our Father, Who is looking upon the game that we are playing, where is the man that cannot play a better game, who cannot draw on the reservoirs of power untouched before, who cannot come out and do his work in the world and live his life with larger inspiration and strength, with more dominion and sovereignty, because he is living it before a God Who is alive? To such a man will compromise not seem a filial insult impossible except by a base degradation of the soul?

And not only did Elijah’s principle determine his conduct and pour inspiration into it; it was this principle of a God Who is alive that made him absolutely fearless. He was not only unafraid of physical harm, but he had none of that subtler fear that every man knows—the fear that he himself will fail, the fear that he cannot carry himself safely through. What you and I are afraid of is not the things that are without; our enemy is inside. Treachery within the walls is all that we need to dread, and our deepest fear is of our own failure. That was the great thing in Elijah’s life, that he dared to stand on Mount Carmel, before all that crowd of priests, confident and fearless. He knew he would prevail, that he had not promised in vain that God would answer. The man who knows that he is living his life before a God Who is alive and doing his work in the name of a God Who is alive is not afraid either of what men can do to him or of the failure that he may make himself.

There is a story in the life of Dr. Schauffler that illustrates how to-day too men can rise into just such fearlessness. The missionaries were being bothered a great deal in Constantinople by Russian machinations against the Protestant missions in the empire, and Dr. Schauffler went to see the Russian ambassador. “I might as well tell you now, Mr. Schauffler,” said the ambassador, “that the Emperor of Russia, who is my master, will never allow Protestantism to set its foot in Turkey.” The old missionary looked at him for a moment and then replied: “Your Excellency, the kingdom of Christ, who is my Master, will never ask the Emperor of all the Russias where it may set its foot.” And he went on with his mission unintimidated by any agencies working in the dark against him, because he was confident that the living God Whose work he was doing would achieve for him His own victory.

And we see in this story of Elijah another thing that this great conviction will do for a man: it will make a troubler of him. “Art thou he,” said Ahab when he met Elijah in the midst of the great famine, “art thou he that troubleth Israel?” “No,” said Elijah; “thou art he who troubles Israel.” And yet they were both troubling Israel, the one with the iniquities into which he was leading the people, the other because the principle of the living God dominating his life drove him as a great moral force against the evils of his time. A man cannot live in a college or university with a faith that God is living and that he himself is living in front of God, and be quiet before the moral iniquities and evils he will find. It is not enough for a man to say, “I will simply be myself, live my own clean life, and let my silent influence count.” If his silent influence does not count, no other influence of his will count. But the silence is not enough. A little while ago I copied from one of the letters of Mandel Creighton, late Bishop of London, written to his boys who were away at school, this bit of advice. “You will see, then,” he writes to one son, who had just been made a monitor in his school, “you will see, then, that the chief influence of a monitor is in his example. But this is the point on which I have seen many people deceive themselves. They trust to what they call the force of silent example. That is most pernicious. If you content yourself with merely keeping school rules and doing what is right yourself and keeping out of the way of any fellows who you know are doing wrong, or if you stand by and listen to them saying what they ought not, without reproof, you are doing wrong. No, that won’t do. It is part of the essence of good to fight against evil. You must set your face strongly against all that is bad, and must put down not only all that you find in the course of your walk, but you must go out of your walk to find it in order to put it down.”

There has been much complaint these last years because in high places in this land there have been men who were troublers of the nation. The great need of the nation has been men who were prepared to make trouble in order that, at last, righteousness might come. Things that have thought themselves secure will be shaken; long vested interests that have believed themselves to be sacred will have their sanctity scrutinized; and men will come at last into their rights and their righteousness, if we are prepared, following the old Tishbite, to live our lives before the God Who is alive.

And this same principle brings peace and quiet and tranquillity to men. Elijah shook once, we know, but only once. Every time we see him on the public stage, no matter whom he is confronting—Jezebel, Ahab, Obadiah, Ahaziah—he is standing with confident soul, quiet and still. We can be sure that if on that day at Mount Carmel we could have first mingled with those four hundred and fifty priests of Baal who knew that their day of doom had come, and then have gone over and stood by the side of the old man, we should have found the old man the most quiet and placid person on the mountainside and his heart beat the calmest. And we may be sure that we can go in the same tranquillity and calm and steadfastness in which the old Tishbite lived, if we will believe as deeply as he did in a Lord God Who is alive, and will live our lives before His face with as little compromise and fear.

And it is a great conviction like this of Elijah’s that steadies men in the hour of their trial and that when they fall redeems them again. The old prophet fell down. He ran from a woman’s threats, and beneath the juniper tree and then on Horeb, he shook and was afraid. But God, Who was alive before, was alive still, and He came to Mount Horeb, where the man lay in his spiritual petulance and fear, and He was not in the great wind, and He was not in the great earthquake, and He was not in the great fire, but at last in the still small voice of life He spoke to Elijah, and Elijah rose up on his feet once more and went out to complete his work in unfaltering triumph.

It works that way still. There is a letter of Abraham Lincoln, the original of which is preserved in the state capitol at Albany. It is a letter Lincoln wrote granting a pardon to a deserter.

Executive Mansion,

Washington, October 4, 1864.