158 AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE
Independence and isolation may be nothing better than stoic egotism. A man may separate himself from his fellows through self-conceit alone. Pope has a couplet which says of certain persons —
They so despise the crowd, that should the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong.
Again, the effect is hardly less injurious of the inflexibility of those who in simple ignorance oppose the public way. Men get into their minds all sorts of distorted views, half-truths, and opinions which they call "conscientious convictions," and they protest that nothing shall move them from their faith or purpose. Their stubbornness arises from no unsociability of disposition, but simply through imperfect light. There is a good deal of emphatic personality and dogged independence in the world which is thus only a distortion. You see it in very marked development in present-day religious enterprise and Christian work. Men are every day rushing out of the orderly ranks, discarding long- established methods, and originating all sorts of infallible expedients for doing what the wiser Church is unable to do, or is not doing fast enough to satisfy their enthusiasm. And so these persons choose to toil alone, or to force their own crude theories and ill- considered schemes on their unwilling neighbours. All this is but a perverted egotism and a public hurt, though there is in it, as in most evils, an element of good.
^ There never was a more thorough Christian, or a more decided, than Tyndall's predecessor in the presidency of the Eoyal Institution — Michael Faraday. And while there are two or three eminent and prominent scientific men who are numbered with doubters, and whose names are regarded by those who wish it so as a sufficient justification of doubt, one of our greatest astronomers says he could appeal to the great majority of living men who are devoting God's noblest gift of genius to the elucidation of God's works, to prove that the pursuit of science has no inherent tendency towards religious scepticism. " As for my own par"".," he adds, " and I hope I say it without affectation — I am sure I say it with no reserve — from the results of modern research I have gathered additional reason for resting in the simplicity of the Christian Faith, and in modern discoveries I have found many a new and unexpected trace of the Creator's Majesty, of His power, His wisdom, and His love."
JOSHUA XXIV. 15 159
II.
As FOE Me and My House.
1. "As for me and my house," says Joshua; not "as for me" only. He carries his household with him, as the head of the house, and as the servant of God in the family circle.
(1) He is the head of his house. — He clearly signifies that he is the head over his family, that its oneness of decision is due to his ruling. There is to be no hesitation on this point. The Bible never permits the position of husband, as director of the family, to be trenched upon. His is the order which is to decide the course to be followed, his the firm hand which is to hold the reins, his the final word that is to bring differences to a settlement.
^ An ideal picture of the father as the high priest in the home is given by John G-. Paton, the South Sea missionary, in the story of his childhood's days in the south of Scotland : " Our home con- sisted of a ' but ' and a ' ben,' and a ' mid room,' or chamber, called the * closet.' . . . The ' closet ' was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table, and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding diminutive light on the scene. This was the Sanctuary of that cottage home. Thither daily, and oftentimes a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retu-e, and ' shut to the door ' ; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy. The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light as of a new-born smile that always was dawning on my father's face; it was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived." ^
But let us not mistake the nature of his authority. It is not that of a lord over slaves. It is not that of a superior race over an inferior. It is not that which needs to be constantly parading itself as if it had no real foundation. It is an authority which recognizes fully and cheerfully that a wife is one with her
1 John G. Paton. 10.
i6o AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE
husband, that the children have rights which no man gave to them and which no man should presume to take away. Thus the unity which resides in the head will be pervaded with sympathy for all the members of the house, and complete and tender har- mony will prevail. It will be plain that the father does not need to claim authority ; it will be dearer to the others than to himself. The mother and children will not need to take roundabout means to secure their rights; they will be acknowledged and carefully guarded by the father. And when, under the spell of this unity, a man speaks in his own name of the religious life which he and his house will choose, he does so in the assurance that they will agree with him — that he can, with the fullest decision, give utterance to the resolution, " As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."