CHAPTER 8
with a good reputation, but without the character many supposed he had.
A life superstructure had been erected without a foundation.
At another time a prominent lady, apologizing to us for her husband’s absence from Church, said, “But he is ripe for heaven.”
We brooded over the speech of this unsuspecting woman, and it actually became oppressive as we remembered that not less than a dozen people possessed facts which were sufficient to blight and blast her marital happiness forever.
Great will be the astonishment of families, Churches, communities, and multitudes on the Day of Days, when the real man and woman are brought to light, and God shows the difference between reputation and character.
Again, it is possible to have character without reputation.
Paul tells us that Christ had none, that he was “of no reputation.” The same fact is brought out in his reference to the disciples of the Lord. The Savior himself said that all manner of evil should be spoken about them;
they would be cast out of synagogues and put to death; and people in visiting those things upon them would think they were doing God service.
No one can question the fact of their possession of religious character, and yet they were without reputation.
So was Luther in his day, and Wesley in his time: they were jeered, ridiculed, denounced, and persecuted all through life; the churches were closed to them; ministers and magistrates united to condemn and oppose them; and yet they were men filled with the Holy Ghost, died in the faith, and went to heaven. These facts ought to bring many of God’s servants great comfort today. Shut out from Churches, discounted in certain social and ecclesiastical circles, struck at and condemned in religious and secular papers, yet it is possible to have not only a conscience without offense, but to be the temple of the. Holy Ghost and filled with the fullness of God. It is possible to have one’s stock very low on earth, and that same religious stock be very high in heaven. It is possible to possess a pure heart, a genuine Christian character, and yet have the Church, as we see it in some places today, ashamed and afraid of us, and downright opposed to us.
So, just as one can have reputation without character, this strange, old world furnishes the equally remarkable spectacle of a person having character without any reputation.
Again, it is possible to have no reputation, and still be happy.
The fact is, it is very hard to be happy in a continuous way with what is termed a reputation. We have studied the cases of orators, musicians, authors, and all kinds of celebrities and prominent folks, and we have discovered that, as a rule, they are the uneasiest of people. A man with a reputation on his hands has an elephant to take care of. So much for its cumbersomeness. Again, it reminds me of an invalid, a baby at night, and a costly pet, all three in one. It needs a vast amount of attention, and in its exactions is perfectly tyrannical. It matters not how with its possessor
“spoke his piece” before, he must excel, and more than excel every time, and delight and astonish everybody, or the man is gloomy, irritable, and miserable.
Apply this spirit to the ministerial, ecclesiastical, oratorical, or any other kind of reputation, and behold the result. I knew a man once whose great pride as a preacher was in having answered the roll-call of his Conference over thirty years without a single break. To have failed on the thirty-third time would have given him as much anguish as the commission of a sin. It was a kind of annual misery with him.
A layman boasted that he had sat forty years in one place in the church.
He had also remained in the same spot in other respects. His pride took hold of the first fact. Here was his reputation. For any one even to attempt to take his seat angered him. His reputation cost him a good deal of mental peace, as all frequently saw.
There is a kind of pseudo-religious reputation born of the fact of years of church attendance, identification with various kinds of Church work, a cordial reception in the best ecclesiastical circles, and a standing well with Church functionaries and prominent people. This, like the rest, is filled with disquietude, and demands to be recognized, petted, patted, and generally coddled, smiled upon, and praised. It is full of fears of losing its peculiar ground, and others taking its place. To lay all this on the altar is
one of the hardest of spiritual performances, and is the explanation why so few of that class of Christians obtain the blessing of sanctification.
Just a glance over the list hastily given is sufficient to convince the thoughtful that to get rid of reputation would be a relief all around, especially to the man who has groaned under the burden for months or years.
The fact is, that the happiest people the writer ever knew were those who had lost all they had in this line. With this loss had gone Church patronage, social honor, a certain kind of public reverence and attention, together with the estimation formerly entertained of their good sense and general level headedness. And yet these same people were bubbling over continually with a joy beyond all language to describe. All sanctified people have had third and seventh heaven experiences here, and it is with difficulty that we restrain our pen at this point.
Still again, it is possible to have no reputation, and be very useful.
We sometimes wonder that so many overlook the remarkable truth that the individuals who have wrought most spiritual good for this world, had no ecclesiastical reputation during their lives. It was after they were dead that their detractors and opposers took time to read what they had written and observe their works, and then the world saw that angels had been in their midst, and they knew it not; that God himself had spoken to them through human lips, and they had failed to know and receive him.
It does not require reputation to achieve great things for humanity. The Bible proves this in the record of the disciples, and history confirms the thought in the deeds of Luther, Wesley, Booth, and a host of others. The fact is, that reputation seems to be in the way of workers. It clogs, cumbers, hinders, embarrasses, paralyzes, and in many ways keeps one from doing for God, and especially doing his best for God.
It is well to have nothing to distract and absorb us when Christ calls us to labor for him; it is well to have both hands empty for him. If we have other gods and idols of our own, even though that idol be only reputation, we will never be and do for the Savior what he desires. Such a man can not afford to speak at every providential call because he has an oratorical fame to support and perpetuate; or another person will not engage in mission or
slum work because a certain social prestige is lost by such a life. So the soul-stirring and life-saving message was not delivered, and the diamond in the gutter was not found and lifted up.
We know of a city where there are seven missions, and they are all run by people who have lost their ecclesiastical or Church reputation. Not a denomination in the place, nor all the denominations combined, have been sufficient to run a single mission; and yet here is a body of people laughed at, despised, and in a sense ostracized and tabooed, running seven distinct works.
A concluding thought is this, that there is going to be a great revolution of opinion and judgment at the Last Day.
People who stood very high on the earth will stand very low before the Bar of Christ when all hearts shall be known. A great many “big men,”
so-called in this world, will be found to be exceedingly small under the marvelous light of eternity. The sudden shrinkage of individuals who were admired, quoted, and even feared on earth, will occasion one of the most shocking sensations of the Judgment-day Men will never cease to talk about those dreadful collapses and downfalls, and which were long ago predicted by Christ under the figure of the house built on a foundation of sand.
On the other hand, some people who were over-looked, or who were discounted, despised, laughed at, and rejected, will loom up in such moral grandeur, such mighty proportions of spiritual attainment, that the astonishment will be even greater here than the amazement already described.
We knew quite a wealthy man who recently died. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Out of a large fortune he gave thirty dollars a year to the support of the Church, and was bitterly opposed to missions, especially those in the foreign field. Yet this man had a great ascendency in his Church. Perhaps court was paid to him because of what was hoped he might yet do. But he did nothing. He died without doing anything. The outside world did not, and does not, know the littleness of his Christian and Church life. They were much impressed with his
imposing form and rolling guttural speech. They thought he was a pillar in
the Church, when he was only a sleeper. They imagined that he supported the Church, when he only occasionally entertained the bishops.
The sight of this man shrinking, drawing in, drawing up, drying up, and generally going to nothing under the solemn, silent, searching gaze of the Son of God will be one of the sickening and horrifying visions of the Day of Judgment.
The writer is acquainted with a woman who, filled with the Holy Ghost and burning up with the love of souls, started with her slender means a little mission in one of our large cities. She was ridiculed, slandered, and struck at in many ways. She bore all silently and patiently, founded a Sabbath-school of fifty children picked up from the street, and with her simple revival services among people who never went to Church, saw twenty clear conversions in three months. This was not a large number, but it happened to be a larger average than that of a large Church of several million members, which reported sixteen thousand conversions for one year’s work. The denomination referred to has seventeen thousand
preachers on its roll; so there were a thousand preachers who did not have a single convert. As for the three million members, according to figures, they did nothing. The woman I referred to brought twenty souls to Christ in three months. As examined in a comparative way, her work begins to grow upon one. T hen, when we remember what the Savior said about the worth of a soul, her achievement was great indeed. In addition, when we notice that in the line of soul-saving she did the work of eighty preachers, the whole thing, in a strange, solemn way, prepares us for the astounding scenes of the Day of Reward and Doom.
Aladdin saw a small copper lamp or vessel lying on the seashore near him.
As he looked upon it a thread of smoke began ascending from the vessel, and spreading and enlarging until it became a great cloud, and then assumed the shape of a gigantic genie. After a while the shape disappeared, the cloud of smoke returning with steadily diminishing proportions to the diminutive metal lamp at Aladdin’s feet.
The fictitious scene becomes all powerful when applied to the occurrences at the Judgment. So will we see the swagger, strut, puff, and swell of a mere reputation steadily disappear before our eyes. It may once have filled
the land and overshadowed thousands; and now behold! It is lost in a poor, morally shriveled creature who cowers at the feet of Christ.
And, thank God! we shall also see the other sight. We will behold coming forth to public view from some humble, despised, and wronged one of earth, the beauty, grace, glory, dignity, and majesty of a Christ-like nature and life. It can be hidden and kept down and shut in no longer. It is God’s own work wrought in the face of Satanic hate and every human
discouragement. It is something to rejoice over and to praise God for. And it is a piece of justice done to suffering man as well. And so the glory of that life, so long bound in with hardship and thrust into obscurity, shall stream forth at last, and fill the firmament of observation.