Hard-Headed

““In understanding be men.’’ — 1 Cor. xiv. 20,

In some things we are to remain as children. We are not to grow away from their simplicity. Here the struggle is not to win new fields but to keep hold of land originally possessed. In these things retention is our noblest conquest. ‘‘ In malice be children.”’ We are not to grow into the personal knowledge of the evil thing, and become experts in its deadly ministry. We are to seek our greatness in our ignorance. Or, if we have ‘advanced”? into the dark experience, we are to renew our royal mastery by a wise retreat. In relation to some holy attainments it is the simple truth to say that going backwards is the only progress. ‘‘ Except ye turn again, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

But in understanding we are to be men. Indeed, one of our surest defences against belittling feelings is the cultivation of a more spacious mind, a mind which moves reverently but freely in the realm of truth revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Bitterness is always the product of narrowness, A man may be proud of his largeness of mind, he may boast of the roominess of his creed, but if he be bitter and malicious it is a sure sign that his vital thought is contracted and that he has not found the glorious liberty of the children of God. If the atmosphere in the berth is pestilential it is because the porthole is closed.

Mr. Roosevelt said on one occasion that he did not know which quality is most productive of evil to mankind in the long-run, hardness of heart or softness of head. That is a very suggestive word; but may we not add that softness of head produces hardness of heart? No man can be so cruel as the man of loose and undecisive thought. Soft thinking is allied to hard feeling. It is not the water which springs from soft limestone which is the sweetest and healthiest to drink; it is the water that comes from the hidden fortresses and strongholds of granite hills. If in understanding we are truly men, our emotional streams shall be like unto the river ‘‘ which maketh glad the city of God.”