Chapter 12: Our Ideals
Chapter 12: Our Ideals
"Conformed to the image of His Son." - Rom. 8:29.
HOW MUCH AN ideal may do! When I was a little boy, everyone was talking of the Crimean War, the Malokoff, the Redan, Sebastopol. Now, there was at the end of our playground an unsightly bank of earth. This, however, became to us lads a frowning fortress, with massive walls and threatening cannon; and we were the Light Brigade. With horses beneath us and lances in rest, we charged and tarried the grim old fortress every day between dinner and school. Ah, I was captain then, with a few trusty officers, and the weight of the campaign upon me! You tell me it was only a mud-bank and a playground. Nay, verily, it was a battlefield for all the world to me. The prosaic commonplace was idealized by the roseate hue of that young fancy which shed its glow on all.
The little children gather and dance around the barrel-organs in our London streets. I always walk slower to watch the motions of their feet and the smile on their faces. Again they are idealizing. That sloppy street is a richly carpeted saloon, and they - little gutter-snipes - are real ladies, and their fluttering rags are ball-dresses, and that untuneful clatter is a band! They could hardly be happier if their ideal were the reality, so strongly does it affect the reality.
It is very important to have a noble ideal. Suppose two young hearts begin to love, or that they have entered wedded life; is it not of inestimable importance to read to them those imperishable words in which Robert Browning declares his love to his wife, and she hers, and to remind them how he yearly kissed the steps of the church at Marylebone where they were wed, because she stepped up them to the marriage altar? Then the man takes on the ideal of Browning in his behaviour toward the woman, and the woman thinks how a wife so loved must act.
Or, suppose a young minister is tempted to indolence or unspirituality; is it not peremptory to raise his ideal? Give him the ideal of a McCheyne, a Brainerd, a Gordon; then, as he returns to a narrow sphere, and awkward personalities, and starved circumstances, he will conduct himself amongst them with the air of God's own nobility. It may be only a little chapel, but to him it will become a minster; through the scrapings of a few violins he will hear the pealing notes of the organ; and as he goes in and out among the handful of poor people who compose his charge, the spirit of Elijah will rest on Elisha, and his ideal will transform them into a beautiful flock.
For many years General Gordon was my ideal. How I read, and read again, the story of his life, and the inner story given in his letters! That utter trust in God to fulfill through him His divine purpose; that indifference to praise or blame, so long as He was pleased; that singleness of purpose, that strength of soul, that humility which would not keep the presents of the Emperor lest they should foster a spirit of ostentation! For years I walked the battlefield of life, as he, with his slim walking-stick, the battlefields of China and Egypt.
Young people, your lives may seem to be prosaic and dull enough; your opportunities limited: your associates and companions uninteresting; but in the midst of all you may realize your ideals, you may pass as noble a life as in a palace, amongst the sweetest, noblest souls. Life does not consist in what we have, or know, or do, in the people about us, or the drapery by which the bare facts of existence are veiled; but in what we are. You may make believe until what you believe in is actually realized. Dare to believe that that wilderness is a paradise, and that dry land springs of water, and you will soon find it literally so.
But there is no ideal like that presented in the character of the Man Christ Jesus; no motto so wholesome and inspiring as to ask, What would Jesus have done? no ambition so ennobling as to walk through the world being as absolutely Christ-like as possible, so that weary and fallen souls may look up to us, and think that Christ has come again to the world, and bless God for us. In Jesus there is the complete ideal of human life; of the Child at Nazareth; of the Servant in the workshop; of the Lover In his affection for his Church; of the Friend, the Sufferer, the Patriot, the Saviour. Let your spirit soak itself in the thought of Jesus, and go forth to reproduce Him-till that employment becomes the carpenter's shop; that charge of souls Capernaum or Jerusalem; that necessity for strong, brave words the Temple facade; that perpetual source of anguish the Glade of Gethsemane.
Never spare yourself. Do not slur over your failure to realize your ideal as though it were a trifling and insignificant matter. Confess it to yourself, to your companion in it, and above all to God. Nothing will so soon spoil the ear of the singer as inattention to minor inaccuracies of execution and expression. When once you permit yourself to fall beneath your best, you begin to drift rapidly to the worst. Run not as uncertainly. Fight not as one beating the air. Strive as though life itself depended on winning the guerdon of success. Plenty of voices will urge you to spare yourself. Like Peter, our friends dissuade us from the cross, "This shall not be unto thee." Oh for grace to be merciless to ourselves!
If you fall, fall with your face still toward your ideal. Never give it up I Like the brave Scot, fling the heart of the Bruce forward into the battle, and follow. The cliff towers far away into the blue, and you have tried many paths to scale it in vain; but there is a path that other men have trodden and succeeded. Never rest till you have found it, and stand victorious.
Be very merciful to others. Compare their worst with your worst; and not, as so many do, other people's worst with your best. You cannot be blind to their faults; but you can be infinitely tender and compassionate. This will keep your heart sweet and young, like a spring of fresh water amid an ocean of brine. The most trying temperament with which you may be yoked will only bring out your noblest traits by giving them abundant exercise.
Above all, seek the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. He alone can give you the Ideal; and He alone can enable you to plant the sprig of Paradise in the unkindly soil of your heart and life, and nurture it into a noble plant. He worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. Only work out what He works in. Whenever the Holy Spirit definitely, earnestly, and persistently urges you in a certain direction, be sure to yield prompt obedience. If your will falters, ask Him to work in you to will; if your power fails, trust Him to work in you to work, of his good pleasure. Be pliant and obedient, and you shall eat the fruit of the land.