far stranger than that, and very common: it is that of a Christian church whose members do not go up and down, helping forward the common welfare, each according to his ability. If we have any special gifts of mind and heart we are debtors to our fellow members. To think only of our comfort and ease, ever only of saving our own souls, comes near to meaning, “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”
Not to use our gifts is to lose them. Here the figure of the material fails us. The olive tree will not lose its fatness nor the fig tree its sweetness by not serving the other trees. But in the spiritual realm service is the law of increase and idleness means loss. All God’s gifts thrive in work and increase in proportion as we are faithful stewards. From him that hath not is taken away that which he hath.
THE CALL TO THE LOWLY
There is one more word to be said. I can take nothing back that I have said, but I am anxious not to be misunderstood. And the last thing I desire is to discourage any lowly worker. There are some who are, and who know they are, not typified by stately and kingly cedars and oaks, but by the lowly bramble or hawthorns. Ask the hands of the people who go blackberrying. Let every tree bear its own fruit and do the best it can for the whole forest.
So, in the church, there are diversities of gifts and operations. Do the best you can with the best you have. If others who are better equipped than you shirk, try to make up for their indifference. Do not strive for mastery or place, do what you can, not in the spirit of lordliness, but in the spirit of lowliness. I can best drive home this closing lesson if I let that veteran warrior, Dr. Clifford, being dead, yet speak to us. Speaking of the great Earl of Shaftesbury, who sacrificed place and ease to serve chimney sweeps and ill-used toilers, Dr. Clifford said that the remedial acts got through were not so much acts of Parliament as acts of an apostle. And the doctor quoted these lines: “Does it make you mad when you read about some poor, stained devil who flickered out because he never had a decent chance in the tangled meshes of circumstance? If it makes you burn like the fires of sin, brother, you’re fit for the ranks—fall in!”
“Whoever has blood that will flood his face at the sight of a beast in the holy place. Whoever has rage for the tyrant’s might, for the powers that prey in the day and night. Whoever has hate for the ravening brute that strips the tree of the goodly fruit. Whoever knows wrath at the sight of pain, of needless sorrow and heedless gain, brother, you’re fit for the ranks—fall in!”15
15. This is a quote from a Masonic hymn, the author of which is unknown. It can sometimes be found in full under the heading “Our Social Problem” on Masonic websites.
“SAMSON—A CHARACTER STUDY”—Judges 16.20
(Preached eleven times from Fentiman Road 3/12/22 to Mount Zion, Cornwall 5/16/43)
Judges 16.20 “And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, ‘I will go out as at other times and shake myself.’ But he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.”
The story of Samson has so often been treated as a story for the entertainment of children that it is difficult to get for it the serious consideration it deserves. We will insist on thinking of Samson simply as an old-time Sandow, a slayer of lions, a fighter of Philistines, a man strong enough to pick up massive iron gates and walk away with them. We regard the story of his life as a giant story written to fascinate the infant imagination. Now all these things are in the picture, but they are as certainly not all the picture. I want to suggest to you that you have here a pregnant study in temptation and character that serious men and women cannot afford to neglect. You have a luminous illustration of how the decay of moral principle paralyzes power, and how the lust of the eye and the pride of life lead on to tragedy and failure.
If you have imagined that there is neither dignity nor profit in this story, let me remind you that one of the greatest of all Englishmen, himself blind and in danger, though with no moral fall behind him turned his thoughts to this story we have neglected. And if my setting of the story fails to move you, let me urge you to ponder Milton’s Samson Agonistes. The story, as told in the book of Judges, is too long for detailed consideration in this hour of service, but we may get the heart of it under three propositions.
THE DECAY OF MORAL PRINCIPLE MEANS THE PARALYSIS OF POWER
Think of the Jewish Hercules as he stepped on to the stage of action. He was a giant in more senses than one. He was prayed into the world and born into an atmosphere of piety. The smile of God was on his birth and nature added her choicest gifts. In body, he was brawny and strong, and he was keen and smart in intelligence and wit, and his courage matched his strength and intelligence. The Philistines, the enemies of his country and his religion, were like witless clay in his hands.
Here we instinctively feel he was the destined leader and deliverer of his people. Everything promised that. Yet the life that opened so brilliantly went out in tragedy. The opportunities were tremendous, the attainments trifling. Samson had all the makings of a great man in him, but he never made a great man. There were just a few flashes of noble passion, true patriotism and heroic attainment—enough to show what might have been—and then the light was quenched. Failure is writ large over this man’s life, and as you look in the tragic failure you are inclined to give a new turn to Whittier’s words, “The saddest of all sad words are these, ‘it might have been.’”16
The reason for the failure is not far to seek. Milton says, “But thee, whose strength, while virtue was her mate, might have subdued the earth.” But virtue did not long remain the mate of strength, and so Samson subdued nothing. He did not “rule his own spirit,” and he did not rule anything. His moral principle decayed, his purity went, and his power to bless himself and his fellows was paralyzed. The man who might have lifted his people up, let them down.
Was this nothing to say to you? Can you not match that? That searching analyst of character, Alexander Whyte, says, “Samsons in body are not born among us in our day, but Samsons in mind are sometimes given us in room of them. And it is not seldom seen that our greatly gifted youths work as little deliverance for themselves and for us as Samson did for Israel.”17 You can read that in life as well as in Dr. Whyte. We all knew the youths who at school and college stood head and shoulders above the rest of us. Easily and brilliantly they came out head of the examination lists and carried off all the prizes. With them, as with Samson, the slaying of lions was as the slaying of kids. Great things were prophesied and expected of them. And for all the brilliant promise there has been no performance. They have been easily outstripped by men with fewer gifts. Many of them have not only failed, they have looked too long and longingly on the wine red in the cup, have sought too often the excitements of the card table, and well, the other can be left unsaid.
God help us to lay the lesson to heart. It is great to have great powers, but there is something greater than intellectual greatness or flashes of genius. Recall Tennyson’s knight “whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure.”18 That is not a pretty poetic myth, it is life’s great fact. Behind your brilliant intellect keep a pure heart. Let your moral principle be sound and strong. Then your power to serve your generation will be increased tenfold. Even if you are not an intellectual giant or a greatly gifted man you will be able to help your fellows if you are a good man and true. But without humility, purity, singleness of heart, your power will be paralyzed as surely as was Samson’s.
THERE IS AN UNCONScIOUS DEGENERATION AND LOSS OF POWER
He
