Poor Peter has never been much of a favourite with the preachers; he
was so thoroughly unstable, unideal. But the people have always had a
tender feeling for him, partly because he was a fisherman, partly
because he was so much like the rest of us. Nothing is more striking
in the life of Jesus than His affection for ordinary men. The cultured
Pharisees, the philosophical Sadducees seem to have much less
attraction to Him than the rude fisherman and the toiler. These men
were often weak, sometimes cowardly, obstinate, dull, mediocre; yet He
committed His kingdom to them; He believed in them. Before they had
faith in Him He had faith in them; and that ultimately made them men.
It sounded much like cruel sarcasm when He told that weak, vacillating
Simon that he was a rock. Those who knew Peter best must have smiled;
he was more like a jellyfish. But Jesus could see the best that was in
a man. He detected the hidden good even in Peter. He proves His own
goodness by His faith in the good in every man.
Somewhere in every man there is some good. Overlaid it may be by
passion, by habits, by prejudice grown out of wrong and suffering
perchance; but still it is there. Faith in this and sympathy, these
are the golden keys that unlock the doors to where the good lies buried.
The saviours of society have always been those who looked for the best
in it. If you go through life seeking the beast in man, you will find
it, and the chances are it will devour you; if you look for the beauty
that is from above you will find it, and it will bless you. It is just
as necessary to have faith in man as it is to have faith in God. If
men cannot become good, then there is no God in the sense of a power
that makes for goodness. The optimist not only believes in the best,
he creates the better.
Some there are who reluctantly admit that God is a little better than
they are, though that may be due to His circumstances, but they have
never imagined for an instant that any one else is at all good.
Believe that men are wholly bad and they will not disappoint you.
Every man somehow responds to the expectations of others. You had
better damn a man than despair of him. Neither a church nor an
individual can help this world when they have more confidence in the
power of evil to become all pervasive than in the power of the Most
High to make His purposes felt in every heart as truly as He makes His
sun to shine on the just and the unjust. The church first consigns men
to perdition and then wonders why they are reluctant to walk with it
the other way. So long as you have faith in total depravity you will
find some facts to substantiate it.
But there is a better way. Sympathy with men will do more for them
than sermons on their sins. Look for the best in them and you will
find things better than you expected. There are flower beds as well as
garbage heaps in every heart; at least, there are spots where seeds of
the fairest flowers of heaven may be sown.
You do not have to be a fool to have faith in your fellows. You do not
need to take the padlocks off your house; but you do need to take them
off your heart. There may be those whom it would be wrong to trust
with your cash box; but it is a greater wrong to withhold from them
your kindness. You can show them that you believe the best instead of
the worst of them.
The great Teacher told men that He came not to condemn but to give
life. His followers have too often occupied themselves wholly with
condemnation and then wondered that their sentences saved none. Every
soul knows its own sentence; what it needs to feel is that God and all
good men are with it, helping it to shake off that sentence, to arise
and return to the Father, that, instead of all things conspiring to
keep a man down, there is a cloud of witnesses cheering him on, a
mighty choir invisible inspiring his heart. And there is nothing any
man can do of greater worth to the world than to cheer on another by
his faith in him, his high expectation of him, his wise blindness to
some little faults, and his propagating approval of the least
beginnings of any good. Men are the saviours of men by their faith in
men.