As individuals we are fragments. God makes the race in part, and then
he gradually puts us together. What I lack, you make up; what you
lack, I make up; our deficits and surpluses of character being the
cog-wheels in the great social mechanism. One person has the patience,
another has the courage, another has the placidity, another has the
enthusiasm; that which is lacking in one is made up by another, or
made up by all. Buffaloes in herds, grouse in broods, quail in flocks,
the human race in circles. God has most beautifully arranged this. It
is in this way that he balances society; this conservative and that
radical keeping things even. Every ship must have its mast, cutwater,
taffrail, ballast. Thank God, then, for Princeton and Andover, for the
opposites.
I have no more right to blame a man for being different from me than a
driving-wheel has a right to blame the iron shaft that holds it to the
centre. John Wesley balances Calvin's Institutes. A cold thinker gives
to Scotland the strong bones of theology; Dr. Guthrie clothes them
with a throbbing heart and warm flesh. The difficulty is that we are
not satisfied with just the work that God has given us to do. The
water-wheel wants to come inside the mill and grind the grist, and
the hopper wants to go out and dabble in the water. Our usefulness and
the welfare of society depend upon our staying in just the place that
God has put us, or intended we should occupy.