ARTICLE VI.-FORCING TRUTHS AND DUTIES INTO ANTAGONISM.

Ir is too much to expect of any man that he shall be able to see things on all their sides, and to arrange schemes in which every fact and every principle shall have its true place and adjustment. This is a necessary consequence of our human limitation. But there is a more serious evil; and the bad effects of it appear in connection with much of our thinking and reasoning.

There are some men with minds so constituted that it seems to be very difficult, if not quite impossible, for them ever to contemplate unlike ideas and duties save in the relation of antagonism. They never rise into that large apprehension of matters where apparent differences become easily reconciled, and notions which have an opposite look on the face of them fall into a real harmony. They are natural born specialists. They see some one thing clearly, and they hold to it tenaciously; but their thoughts never sweep out in wide circuits, and their views and systems are always one-sided for the reason that certain elements of fact and principle which are essential to completeness, but which do not happen to be in the line of their fancy or their interest, are sure to be overlooked and excluded. Conceptions which belong together, and duties. which ought to walk hand in hand, are set over against each other in a scowling attitude, instead of being arrayed as the co-factors of a higher unity. The single constituent elements which go to make up the complex whole of a truth or an obligation are forced into unnatural and mischievous conflict. Particular duties are picked out and insisted on in a way to make one think, by contrast, of the Master's words about doing some things, and being likewise careful not to leave others undone. They hold all their notions, whether in philosophy, or politics, or religion, in a narrow partisan spirit; and a truth or a duty which they think ought to be especially commended becomes to them what a client is to a zealous

advocate something to be vindicated at the expense of everyadvocate-something thing else. The many members are never instructed that they all belong to one body, and have a common end to subserve; but they are worked up into a temper of mutual jealousy, and made to assume threatening postures. The hand is inflamed. with a spirit of opposition to the foot; the eye is magnified by belittling the value of the ear. It is never this and that; it is this or that; or what is still more probable-it is this against that. It does not seem to occur to these men that two things can be true at once, and two obligations binding.

causes.

The theory

How often, for instance, one hears the claims of great benevolent causes pressed in a tone and by arguments calculated to excite hostility toward other kindred and equally important The impression made by these appeals is not that one is to help this along with other objects which must have a place. in any large plan of Christian work, but rather that this particular cause is to be selected and aided in the spirit of a preference which amounts to opposition to all the rest. of the procedure seems to be that of the unscrupulous contractor who weakens one wall to get materials to strengthen another, and not of the wise master-builder who keeps an eye on the whole structure, and endeavors to give symmetry and a uniform solidity to every part of the edifice. Enterprises which have a common warrant in Scripture command and in human need, and a common outlook and promise of good, and which, therefore, ought to be kept on the best of terms with each other, and to receive the fostering sympathies of all, are narrowly and wickedly antagonized.

Much of our sectarianism, and nearly all of that which is hard and bitter, comes about in this same way. Over-stress is laid on some one doctrine, while other doctrines equally vital, and which, if recognized and advanced into their true position, would tend to modify extreme views, and reduce all to a proper balance, are not so much ignored as stoutly and determinedly fought. There are differences of view which are radical, and which no amount of skill in reasoning, and no most patient. groping after some common bond of unity, can ever bring into agreement. But there are particulars also, not a few, in which men, now at variance, would be found to be at one, if, like

dwellers on the opposite sides of mountains, they would only consent to leave their limited sphere of observation, and climb to the clearer heights above. At the same time the lack of harmony in sentiment and catholicity in opinion is due not so much to confined vision as to the narrow, jealous spirit in which notions are held, and the oppugnant tempers in which they are maintained. The trouble is men first read their own conceits and prejudices into things, and then, reading them out again, blindly insist there is nothing else written. They learn one lesson, and straightway affirm no other is taught.

Christianity in its completeness as a system embraces many specific truths and duties, and sometimes these lead one way and sometimes another; but it is not to be forgotten that, like the branches of a tree, they all grow out of one common trunk, and have a relation to each other of inter-dependence. In supporting one, care is to be taken not to pull down and mutilate another. It is not faith without any regard to works, nor is it conduct without any regard to what one believes; it is both. It is not prayer in opposition to a spirit of self-help and a manly self-reliance, nor is it doing one's best and never calling on God for aid; it is both. It is not reason as something whose exercise is inconsistent with a sincere and child-like trust, nor is it looking up to the Father in simple confidence as though there were no call for the use of one's own faculties of reflection and forecast; it is both. It is not orthodox opinion to the displacement of charity, nor is it a life full of almsdeeds and sweet helpfulness as though the maintaining of the form of sound words were of no consequence; it is both. Each of these truths has a place and a mission; each of these duties is to be recognized; and so long as there is so much error in the world to challenge combat, and so much hard work to be done to bring men into the faith and fellowship of the Son of God, it does not seem wise, rather it does seem a criminal waste of moral force, to pit truth against truth and duty against duty in a way sure to hinder, if not to be reciprocally destructive of the energy of both.

A striking illustration of the tendency to this belligerent onesidedness in which some one truth or duty is adopted and defended in a manner to prejudice the claims of other truths and

duties just as commanding, is afforded in the treatment not unfrequently accorded to the life and writings of Paul. Men try to do with him what he intimated the Corinthians were trying to do with Christ,-namely, to "divide" him; or rather to divide what he said and did, and then to bring the whole man forward with all the weight of his great name to support the particular half which they have undertaken to champion. They follow him along part of the way which his example and instruction have made luminous, and there they stop, avowing in justification that the Great Apostle himself went no farther. They shut their eyes to the things in his career and teaching which they do not wish to see, and then declare that nobody can see them.

If we look for the one unifying element in the life and teachings of Paul we find it in his complete and uncompromising devotion to Christ. This was his absorbing passion. This was the silken thread on which the beads of all his separate thoughts and actions were strung. Christ was his life. Christ was his joy. Christ was his inspiration and his aspiration. There was nothing he would not do and bear for Christ; nothing he would not surrender. His one sublime and burning purpose was to spend and to be spent for Christ. From the moment of his conversion till his death Christ was the explanation of all he planned and wrought and wrote. As it was the Master's meat and drink to do the will of the Father, so it was Paul's to serve Him in whom the Father came into living manifestation. In this exalted sense Paul may be said to have been a man of "one idea;" and history furnishes no brighter example of whole-souled consecration to a single aim.

If we follow this one intent of Paul into its out-workings, and trace the practical ways in which his devotion to the interests of Christ showed itself, we discover two ends steadily pursued. These two ends are entirely distinct in conception, but in fact they are complementary parts of each other. The one implies the other, and is impossible without it. The other is incomplete without the one. These two ends are:

First: The winning of souls to Christ.

Second: The building up of souls in Christ.

On these two objects he brought all his vast wealth of energy

and enthusiasm to bear. In these two statements there is defined for us his conception of the scope and aim of Christian endeavor. It is reaching men with the tidings of redeeming love and bringing them into a faith-union with our Lord, and, when they have been so reached and induced to begin a new life by believing in Jesus, it is taking them and carrying them forward from stage to stage in spiritual and moral development until they have arrived unto the perfect manhood whose standard is the measure of the fulness of Christ. When thus formulated the whole thing seems so evident, and so in accord with what the memory will at once recall from the story of the life of Paul in the Book of Acts, and from the pleadings and warnings and counsels and expressions of intense desire to be serviceable and to have others serviceable to men in the double way of turning them from sin and advancing them in holiness, to be found in his letters, that the wonder immediately starts why there is any need of saying it. Yet there is need. For every little while men are coming forward and laying hold on one or the other of these two halves of the whole work, and dressing it up in such a costume, and placing it in such an attitude, as to be so much direct disparagement to the remaining half. One or the other of these duties is chosen in a partizan spirit, and then the rejected duty is thrust into the back-ground in order that the chosen one may be more conspicuous. It is not winning and building up as the two separate parts of a single whole :-winning with a view to building up;-building up because the winning is abortive without it; it is one obstructive of the other, in a temper of narrow antagonism. What God hath joined together is put asunder by a rude and unnatural divorce; and truths which are akin, and duties which are needful to each other, and which ought to stand side by side and co-work in the most friendly relations are forced to play the part of enemies.

It is easy to see that such views of Paul, and such methods of dealing with what he did and said are wholly unwarranted. He was broader. A little examination will make this clear.

For if, on the one hand, it be claimed that the sweep of the Great Apostle's example lies altogether, or even mainly, in the direction of winning souls into the faith of Jesus, the claim may be quickly silenced and thrown out of court by abundant