More Man!

Quit you like men.’’ — 1 Cor. xvi. 18.

WE have used four English words to express the one original word. No one English word can carry the wealth and energy of the Apostle’s word. Perhaps we come nearest to it in our vigorous phrase, “Play the man!”? The man in men is to be heroically displayed on the difficult fields of the Kingdom. The manly is to be one of the tokens of the Christly. A big manliness is to be the sign and witness of a big faith, and is to bear its testimony to the dynamic of God’s grace. ‘More men? More man! It’s there we fail.”

For what is our religion worth if it does not reinforce our stock of ‘man’? Unless our religion gives a man “more man,” what part does it play upon the bloody field? A strong and yet delicate manliness, delicate in its chivalry as well as athletic in its prowess, is one of the most impressive presences which go along the streets of time. Everybody is arrested by it. It is not only arresting, but commanding. It is not merely an object of interest, it is a fountain of power. Virtue goes out of it. It shapes the crude stuff of circumstances to the pattern of its own fine visions. It informs -all its issues with its own essence. Its speech is manly, but so is its silence. Its aggression is manly, but so are its restraints. It dyes everything in its own colour, and all its effluences carry the red blood of a consecrated man of God.

Now this is one of our supreme needs to-day — as much in America as in Britain, as much in France as among the new friends of Christ in China or in India. More man! More of that inner mystic dynamic which makes everything in one’s life a well-equipped soldier of the Lord. And how are we to get “more man”? Not by shouting, either in the roar of the lion or the scream of the eagle. No; not by striving, or crying, or lifting up our voice in the street. We shall get more “man” from the Son of Man.

All our springs are in Him. He is “the very fount of our new day.’’ And the gift will come to us on invisible roads, in holy commerce, through reverent communion, and in humble and thoughtful worship at the springs. It is born from above. What other way is there? Iknowofnone. What is born of the Son of Man is of the Son of Man sustained. The Redeemer provides bread for His own creation. In His provision we become partakers of His nature, and the Son of Man reincarnates Himself in the manliness of the men whom He redeems.