LORD BACON says that ‘To be wise by rule and to be wise by experience are
contrary proceedings; he that accustoms himself to the one unfits himself
for the other.’ It is singular how little attention, in the guidance of
our lives, we pay to our own needs. It is a common falsehood of these
times that all knowledge is good for everybody, the truth being that
knowledge is good only if it helps us, and that if it does not help us it
is bad. ‘Whatever knowledge,’ to quote from Bacon again, ‘we cannot
convert into food or medicine endangereth a dissolution of the mind and
understanding.’ We ought to turn aside from what we cannot manage, no
matter how important it may seem to be. David refused Saul’s helmet of
brass and coat of mail. If he had taken the orthodox accoutrements and
weapons he would have been encumbered and slain. He killed Goliath with
the rustic sling and stone. No doubt if we determine to be ignorant of
those things with which the world thinks it necessary that everybody
should be familiar we shall be thought ill-educated, but our very
ignorance will be a better education, provided it be a principled
ignorance, than much which secures a local examination certificate or a
degree. At the same time, if any study fits us, it should be pursued
unflaggingly. We must not be afraid of the imputation of narrowness.
Our subject will begin to be of most service to us when we have passed
the threshold and can think for ourselves. If we devote ourselves, for
example, to the works and biography of any great man, the pleasure and
moral effect come when we have read him and re-read him and have traced
every thread we can find, connecting him with his contemporaries. It is
then, and then only, that we understand him and he becomes a living soul.
Flesh and blood are given by details.
We are misled by heroes whom we admire, and the greater the genius the
more perilous is its influence upon us if we allow it to be a dictator to
us. It is really of little consequence to me what a saint or philosopher
thought it necessary to do in order to protect and save himself. It is
myself that I have to protect and save. Every man is prone to lean on
some particular side and on that side requires special support. Every
man has particular fears and troubles, and it is against these and not
against the fears and troubles of others that he must provide remedies.
A religion is but a general direction, and the real working Thirty-nine
Articles or Assembly’s Catechism each one of us has to construct on his
own behalf.
A not insignificant advantage of loyalty to our Divine Director will be a
more correct and generally a more lenient criticism of our
fellow-creatures. We shall cease to judge them by standards which are
not applicable to them. Much that we might erroneously consider wrong we
shall discern to be a necessary effort to secure stability or even to
preserve sanity. We shall pardon deviation from the obvious path. The
boat which crosses the river may traverse obliquely the direct line to
the point for which it is making, and if we reflect that perhaps a strong
current besets it we shall not call the steersman a fool.