In a high sense, and to most men, it is a great and momentous thing to be "judged of man's judgement." Very few of us are aware of the reinforcements which our virtue receives from the pressure of our neighbour's opinion, and the persistent impact of the moral sense that is diffused in the social atmosphere in which we move. A man generally lives up to what is expected of him. The organized life of which he is a part presses him into place, and keeps his feet in the routine of duty. The habit of the community finds him, holds him, becomes to him law, breeds in him a personal habit which he no more thinks of breaking than a planet thinks of leaping from the clutch of the law of gravita- tion. Hence the peril, when a boy goes out from the shelter of his home, and the familiar faces of his native town, and plunges a lone swimmer, unnoted and unrecognized, in the turbid torrent of life that surges in some vast metropolis. The faiths, the principles, the moral habits with which his nature is stocked, these he takes with him ; and if they be of the right sort, they will bear him up, and he will breast the tide with a strong, manful stroke. But all the more he will need them, because he leaves behind him the safeguards of loving, watchful eyes.
The more closely we study the ways of men, the more clearly we recognize that the heavier weights we can pile on the cage
148 OUR THREE JUDGES
in which we pen our hungry passions, the less danger there is that those passions will upset the cage, and break loose in our life. The judgments of our fellow-men — the men whom we meet in the streets, in business, in social contact — serve as weights for this purpose. If we defy those judgments, not only do we suffer smart and loss in our outward life, but generally — which is far worse — we suffer impairment of moral power in our inward life. For a man to live under the perpetual challenge of the violated conscience of his fellows hardens him, embitters him, gives a morbid and distorted action to his own conscience. He is apt to yield to the restless push of whim and passion. Even if he honestly engages in the fight with sin, he is like a soldier who has been driven from behind the breastworks, and is compelled to face his foe alone in the open field with his naked sword.
Tf The public opinion fostered by a Tiberius or a Nero was of little worth to a man like St. Paul. But the public opinion of to-day bears the imprint of the Divine Christ. Something from that peerless, spotless Soul who brought God to this earth has flowed into the great thought of the world. Men have caught, in fragments at least, His interpretation of life, His ideal of life, His law of life. Very imperfectly do the actual lives of men reflect all these ; but His image lies in broken lines on the turbid pool of our modern life, and the strange Divine light in His soul has shot through the conscience of Christendom. The civilization in which we live is a civilization that bears the finger-marks of Christ. What we call public opinion is the invisible breath, the subtle aroma, of a Christian civilization.
U Habitually to ignore and set at naught what other people think may be as foolish and as fatal as habitually to consult and wait upon it. Athanasius contra mundum — it is a magnificent phrase, and it stands for a great truth; but I fear it has to answer for a good deal of stupid and obstinate wrong-headedness which is not always called by its proper name.1
If Christian public opinion, the expression of the Spirit of Christ in the united will, emotion, and intellect of human societies, has wrought, and is working miracles. It has raised the standard of purity, of honesty, of loving-kindness ; and above all, arid including all, it has established the sense of brotherhood, of mutual obligation and responsibility. But it has not had its
1 G. Jackson.
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 149
perfect work. It has been paralysed by timidity, the fear of persecution and ridicule, the fear of plain speaking ; it has been seduced by temptation, the personal desire for ease and pleasure, the corporate desire for power and wealth. But more than all, it has been weakened by division, and obscured by controversy and by an exaggerated sense of the paramount duty of withstanding erring brethren to the face because they are to be blamed.1
2. But for most of us the peril does not lie that way, but rather in a tame subservience, a too ready compliance with the ways and thoughts of the world about us. Is there anything that we need more in every department of life to-day than the spirit of sturdy, uncompromising independence which breathes through these words of the Apostle : " With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judge- ment ; he that judge th me is the Lord " ? We want men, like him, who fear God and have no other fear.