Nehemiah would not conform. And unless you can say 'No!' and do it
very often, your life will be shattered from the beginning. That
non-compliance with customary maxims and practices is the beginning,
or, at least, one of the foundation-stones, of all nobleness and
strength, of all blessedness and power. Of course it is utterly
impossible for a man to denude himself of the influences that are
brought to bear upon him by the circumstances in which he lives, and
the trend of opinion, and the maxims and practices of the world, in
the corner, and at the time, in which his lot is cast. But, on the
other hand, be sure of this, that unless you are in a very deep and
not at all a technical sense of the word, 'Nonconformists,' you will
come to no good. None! It is so easy to do as others do, partly
because of laziness, partly because of cowardice, partly because of
the instinctive imitation which is in us all. Men are gregarious. One
great teacher has drawn an illustration from a flock of sheep, and
says that if we hold up a stick, and the first of the flock jumps over
it, and then if we take away the stick, all the rest of the flock will
jump when they come to the point where the first did so. A great many
of us adopt our creeds and opinions, and shape our lives for no better
reason than because people round us are thinking in a certain
direction, and living in a certain way. It saves a great deal of
trouble, and it gratifies a certain strange instinct that is in us
all, and it avoids dangers and conflicts that we should, when we are
at Rome, do as the Romans do. 'So did not I, because of the fear of
God.'
Now, brethren! I ask you to take this plain principle of the necessity
of non-compliance (which I suppose I do not need to do much to
establish, because, theoretically, we most of us admit it), and apply
it all round the circumference of your lives. Apply it to your
opinions. There is no tyranny like the tyranny of a majority in a
democratic country like ours. It is quite as harsh as the tyranny of
the old-fashioned despots. Unless you resolve steadfastly to see with
your own eyes, to use your own brains, to stand on your own feet, to
be a voice and not an echo, you will be helplessly enslaved by the
fashion of the hour, and the opinions that prevail.
'What everybody says'--perhaps--'is true.' What most people say, at
any given time, is very likely to be false. Truth has always lived
with minorities, so do not let the current of widespread opinion sweep
you away, but try to have a mind of your own, and not to be
brow-beaten or overborne because the majority of the people round
about you are giving utterance, and it may be unmeasured utterance, to
any opinions.
Now, there is one direction in which I wish to urge that
especially--and now I speak mainly to the young men in my
congregation--and that is, in regard to the attitude that so many
amongst us are taking to Christian truth. If you have honestly thought
out the subject to the best of your ability, and have come to
conclusions diverse from those which men like me hold dearer than
their lives, that is another matter. But I know that very widely there
is spread to-day the fashion of unbelief. So many influential men,
leaders of opinion, teachers and preachers, are giving up the
old-fashioned Evangelical faith, that it takes a strong man to say
that he sticks by it. It is a poor reason to give for your attitude,
that unbelief is in the air, and nobody believes those old doctrines
now. That may be. There are currents of opinion that are transitory,
and that is one of them, depend upon it. But at all events do not be
fooled out of your faith, as some of you are tending to be, for no
better reason than because other people have given it up. An iceberg
lowers the temperature all round it, and the iceberg of unbelief is
amongst us to-day, and it has chilled a great many people who could
not tell why they have lost the fervour of their faith.
On the other hand, let me remind you that a mere traditional religion,
which is only orthodox because other people are so, and has not
verified its beliefs by personal experience, is quite as deleterious
as an imitative unbelief. Doubtless, I speak to some who plume
themselves on 'never having been affected by these currents of popular
opinion,' but whose unblemished and unquestioned orthodoxy has no more
vitality in it than the other people's heterodoxy. The one man has
said, 'What is everywhere always, and by all believed, I believe'; and
the other man has said, 'What the select spirits of this day
disbelieve, I disbelieve,' and the belief of one and the unbelief of
the other are equally worthless, and really identical.
But it is not only, nor mainly, in reference to opinion that I would
urge upon you this nonconformity with prevalent practices as the
measure of most that is noble in us. I dare not talk to you as if I
knew much about the details of Manchester commercial life, but I can
say this much, that it is no excuse for shady practices in your trade
to say, 'It is the custom of the trade, and everybody does it.'
Nehemiah might have said: 'There never was a governor yet but took his
forty shekels a day's worth'--about L. 1,800 of our money--'of
provisions from these poor people, and I am not going to give it up
because of a scruple. It is the custom, and because it is the custom I
can do it.' I am not going into details. It is commonly understood
that preachers know nothing about business; that may be true, or it
may not. But this, I am sure, is a word in season for some of my
friends this evening--do not hide behind the trade. Come out into the
open, and deal with the questions of morality involved in your
commercial life, as you will have to deal with them hereafter, by
yourself. Never mind about other people. 'Oh,' but you say, 'that
involves loss.' Very likely! Nehemiah was a poorer man because he fed
all these one hundred and fifty Jews at his table, but he did not mind
that. It may involve loss, but you will keep God, and that is gain.
Turn this searchlight in another direction. I see a number of young
people in my congregation at this moment, young men who are perhaps
just beginning their career in this city, and who possibly have been
startled when they heard the kind of talk that was going on at the
next desk, or from the man that sits beside them on the benches at
College. Do not be tempted to follow that multitude to do evil. Unless
you are prepared to say 'No!' to a great deal that will be pushed into
your face in this great city, as sure as you are living you will make
shipwreck of your lives. Do you think that in the forty years and more
that I have stood here I have not seen successive generations of young
men come into Manchester? I could people many of these pews with the
faces of such, who came here buoyant, full of hope, full of high
resolves, and with a mother's benediction hanging over their heads,
and who got into a bad set, and had not the strength to say 'No,' and
they went down and down and down, and then presently somebody asked,
'Where is so-and-so?' 'Oh! his health broke down, and he has gone home
to die.' 'His bones are full of the iniquity of his youth'--and he
made shipwreck of prospects and of life, because he did not pull
himself together when the temptation came, and say, 'So did not I,
because of the fear of God.'
II. Now let me ask you to turn with me to the second thought that my
text suggests to me; that is,
The motive that impels to this sturdy non-compliance.
Nehemiah puts it in Old Testament phraseology, 'the fear of God'; the
New Testament equivalent is 'the love of Christ.' And if you want to
take the power and the life out of both phrases, in order to find a
modern conventional equivalent, you will say 'religion.' I prefer the
old-fashioned language. 'The love of Christ' impels to this
non-compliance. Now, my point is this, that Jesus Christ requires from
each of us that we shall abstain, restrict ourselves, refuse to do a
great many things that are being done round us.
I need not remind you of how continually He spoke about taking up the
cross. I need not do more than just remind you of His parable of the
two ways, but ask you, whilst you think of it, to note that all the
characteristics of each of the ways which He sets forth are given by
Him as reasons for refusing the one and walking in the other. For
example, 'Enter ye in at the strait gate, for strait is the
gate'--that is a reason for going in; 'and narrow is the way'--that is
a reason for going in; 'and few there be that find it'--that is a
reason for going in. 'Wide is the gate'--that is a reason for stopping
out; 'and broad is the way'--that is a reason for stopping out; 'and
many there be that go in thereat'--that is a reason for stopping out.
Is not that what I said, that the minority is generally right and the
majority wrong? Just because there are so many people on the path,
suspect it, and expect that the path with fewer travellers is probably
the better and the higher.
But to pass from that, what did Jesus Christ mean by His continual
contrast between His disciples and the world? What did He mean by 'the
world'? This fair universe, with all its possibilities of help and
blessing, and all its educational influences? By no means. He meant by
'the world' the aggregate of things and men considered as separate
from God. And when He applied the term to men only, He meant by it
very much what we mean when we talk about society. Society is not
organised on Christian principles; we all know that, and until it is,
if a man is going to be a Christian he must not conform to the world.
'Know ye not that whosoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of
God.'
I would press upon you, dear friends! that our Christianity is nothing
unless it leads us to a standard, and a course of conduct in
conformity with that standard, which will be in diametrical opposition
to a great deal of what is patted on the back, and petted and praised
by society. Now, there is an easy-going kind of Christianity which
does not recognise that, and which is in great favour with many people
to-day, and is called 'liberality' and 'breadth,' and 'conciliating
and commending Christianity to outsiders,' and I know not what
besides. Well, Christ's words seem to me to come down like a hammer
upon that sort of thing. Depend upon it, 'the world'--I mean by that
the aggregate of godless men organised as they are in society--does
not think much of these trimmers. It may dislike an out-and-out
Christian, but it knows him when it sees him, and it has a kind of
hostile respect for him which the other people will never get. You
remember the story of the man that was seeking for a coachman, and
whose question to each applicant was, 'How near can you drive to the
edge of a precipice?' He took the man who said: 'I would keep away
from it as far as I could.' And the so-called Christian people that
seem to be bent on showing how much their lives can be made to
assimilate to the lives of men that have no sympathy with their
creeds, are like the rash Jehus that tried to go as near the edge as
they could. But the consistent Christian will keep as far away from it
as he can. There are some of us who seem as if we were most anxious to
show that we, whose creed is absolutely inconsistent with the world's
practices, can live lives which are all but identical with these
practices. Jesus Christ says, through the lips of His Apostle, what He
often said in other language by His own lips when He was here on
earth: 'Be ye not conformed to the world.'
Surely such a command as that, just because it involves difficulty,
self-restraint, self-denial, and sometimes self-crucifixion, ought to
appeal, and does appeal, to all that is noble in humanity, in a
fashion that that smooth, easy-going gospel of living on the level of
the people round us never can do. For remember that Christ's
commandment not to be conformed to the world is the consequence of His
commandment to be conformed to Himself. 'Thus did not I' comes second;
'This one thing I do' comes first. You will misunderstand the whole
genius of the Gospel if you suppose that, as a law of life, it is
perpetually pulling men short up, and saying: Don't, don't, don't!
There is a Christianity of that sort which is mainly prohibition and
restriction, but it is not Christ's Christianity. He begins by
enjoining: 'This do in remembrance of Me,' and the man that has
accepted that commandment must necessarily say, as he looks out on the
world, and its practices: 'So did not I, because of the fear of God.'
III. And now one last word--my text not only suggests the motive which
impels to this non-compliance, but also the power which enables us to
exercise it.
'The fear of God,' or, taking the New Testament equivalent, 'the love
of Christ,' makes it possible for a man, with all his weakness and
dependence on surroundings, with all his instinctive desire to be like
the folk that are near him, to take that brave attitude, and to refuse
to be one of the crowd that runs after evil and lies. I have no time
to dwell upon this aspect of my subject, as I should be glad to have
done. Let me sum up in a sentence or two what I would have said.
Christ will enable you to take this necessary attitude because, in
Himself He gives you the Example which it is always safe to follow.
The instinct of imitation is planted in us for a good end, and because
it is in us, examples of nobility appeal to us. And because it is in
us Jesus Christ has lived the life that it is possible for, and
therefore incumbent on, us to live. It is safe to imitate Him, and it
is easy not to do as men do, if once our main idea is to do as Christ
did.
He makes it possible for us, because He gives the strongest possible
motive for the life that He prescribes. As the Apostle puts it, 'Ye
are bought with a price, be not the servants of men.' There is nothing
that will so deliver us from the tyranny of majorities, and of what we
call general opinion and ordinary custom, as to feel that we belong to
Him because He died for us. Men become very insignificant when Christ
speaks, and the charter of our freedom from them lies in our
redemption by the blood of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ being our Redeemer is our Judge, and moment by moment He
is estimating our conduct, and judging our actions as they are done.
'With me it is a very small matter to be judged of you or of man's
judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.' Never mind what the people
round you say; you do not take your orders from them, and you do not
answer to them. Like some official abroad, appointed by the Crown, you
do not report to the local authorities; you report to headquarters,
and what He thinks about you is the only important thing. So 'the fear
of man which bringeth a snare' dwindles down into very minute
dimensions when we think of the Pattern, the Redeemer and the Judge to
whom we give account.
And so, dear friends! if we will only open our hearts, by quiet humble
faith, for the coming of Jesus Christ into our lives, then we shall be
able to resist, to refuse compliance, to stand firm, though alone. The
servant of Christ is the master of all men. 'All things are yours,
whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas--all are yours, and ye are
Christ's.'