Even if it were true that success is a criterion, we have to help God
to ensure the success of His truth. No doubt, taking sides is very
inconvenient to a cool, tolerant man of the world. And it is difficult
to be in a party without becoming a partisan. We know all the beauty of
mild, tolerant wisdom, and that truth is usually shared between
combatants, but the dangers of extremes and exaggeration must be faced,
and perhaps these are better than the cool indifference of the
eclectic, sitting apart, holding no form of creed, but contemplating
all. It is not good for a man to stand aloof when his brethren are
fighting.
In every age some great causes which are God's are pressing for
decision. In many of them we may be disqualified for taking sides. But
feel that you are bound to cast your influence on the side which
conscience approves, and bound to settle which side that is, Deborah's
fierce curse against Meroz because its people came not up to the help
of the Lord against the mighty was deserved.
But the region in which such judicial calmness, which shrinks from
taking its side, is most fatal and sadly common, is in regard to our
own individual relation to Jesus, and in regard to the establishment of
His kingdom among men.
'He that is not with Me is against Me.' Neutrality is opposition. Not
to gather with Him is to scatter. Not to choose Him is to reject Him.
Gamaliel had a strange notion of what constituted 'refraining from
these men and letting them alone,' and he betrayed his real position
and opposition by his final counsel to scourge them, before letting
them go. That is what the world's neutrality comes to.
How poor a figure this politic ecclesiastic, mostly anxious not to
commit himself, ready to let whoever would risk a struggle with Rome,
so that he kept out of the fray and survived to profit by it, cuts
beside the disciples, who had chosen their side, had done with 'ifs,'
and went away from the Council rejoicing 'that they were counted worthy
to suffer shame for His Name'! Who would not rather be Peter or John
with their bleeding backs than Gamaliel, sitting soft in his
presidential chair, and too cautious to commit himself to an opinion
whether the name of Jesus was that of a prophet or a pretender?