01.05. CHAPTER V - CULTURE A LOAD OR A LIFT
CHAPTER V - CULTURE A LOAD OR A LIFT May my tongue falter and my pen forget its cunning before I say or write one word that hinders any man in his search for the deepest and broadest culture of which his nature is capable.
True culture should increase our capacity, enlarge our ability and quicken our perceptions. When properly applied, it is the handmaid of religion as well as the husbandman of the mind. But is it possible that such a beneficent thing may be throttled in its purpose, so that it becomes a source of spiritual death instead of life 1? Here the appeal must be not to theory but to fact. Does anyone doubt that German Kultur came to be a blight upon the individual and the world? Germany was unequaled in her intellectual attainments of a certain kind, but the effect of it all on her scholars in the atrophy of spiritual vision and power will ever remain as an indictment of a godless culture that cannot be overlooked or explained away. Are we not right then in asking ourselves, “Is the culture which I have and to which I aspire strengthening my devotion to those things which are pure and lovely and of good report? Are the most cultured men I know the most devoted to the highest interest of humanity and the most uncalculating and unselfish in the measure of their service?” Surely there can be no doubt that the standard of unselfish service is the one by which, in the last analysis, the greatness of men will be determined. There has been no dissent to the sublime affirmation of the Galilean Teacher “I am among you as he that serveth,” and “he that would be chief among you, let him be the servant of all.” When you apply this standard, the record of culture is not always pleasant reading. Emerson made his literary bow to the world in his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa oration on the alienation of men of letters from the affairs of national life.
Like wealth and power of any sort, culture has its insidious temptations. First of all, it is compelled to be analytical and critical. It takes things to pieces. Its flowers lose their perfume in the study of calyx and sepal. There is no song in the nightingale y’s throat when the scalpel is searching for the source of its melody. It comes to the city of Man-Soul as most of our railroads come to town, through the purlieus of poverty and waste. Because it does not find beauty there, it is tempted to think the city has none. Because the city’s soul is not in the street, it is quite inclined to believe that it has none. It loves to say it is a searcher after truth for truth’s sake, and is impatient with the pragmatic test.
What is truth for truth’s sake? If you mean a truth that is sterile, that does not eventuate in life, then it is an impertinence in the sight of God and man to talk of that kind of truth. From the standpoint of a life spent in association with Greek and Roman philosophers, who freely encouraged suicide and lived lives whose abominations smelled to heaven, Pilate had good reason when he asked of the fettered Man before him “What is truth?” He found out, as any man of culture needs to find out “For this cause was I born, that I might witness to the truth.
“I am the truth.” The only truth that counts in the realm of morals and religion is felt truth truth that is vital and imperative. A formal creed is only the skin of truth stuffed. It is as useless as a last year’s bird nest on the boughs of time. It is only when truth becomes incarnate that the world bows its knee to it and accepts it. That was what happened when a brown-frocked monk was walking up the holy staircase at Rome, and when the heart of an Oxford don was strangely warmed in Aldersgate Street.
Another temptation to which culture is especially susceptible is pride. It is fair to say that those who most reveal it are those whose culture is really limited, but, alas, there are so many of that kind! It is always true that knowledge may be proud that it knows so much, but wisdom will be humble that it knows so little.
There was a never-to-be-forgotten day when a freshman in another college strolled into the museum at Harvard. It was the opening of a fairyland to him. Eager-eyed he was gazing at specimen after specimen and wishing that he knew more about them, when a sweet-faced man, whose smile would have made summer in the Arctic, was standing at his side. Captivated by the man, the freshman heard him say, “ These are my pets. May I tell you about them? ’ ’ He lifted a trilobite and told the ignorant boy how that fossil was old when Pharaoh builded the pyramids and Attic poets sang. With infinite patience he answered questions which must have seemed foolish. When the wonderful man was interrupted and called away, the freshman asked a guide, “Who is that man?” “ Don’t you know that is Agassiz!”
It is always true that a little learning is a dangerous thing and most of us with all our culture have yet but little knowledge compared with what is before us, and yet we are proud. Edison has said, “No man knows one seven-billionth part of anything.” There is an arrogance of ignorance which we greatly condemn, but there is an arrogance of culture which ought with greater justice to be condemned, because the cultured man ought to know better.
Culture is tempted to interest itself in the form of things. It needs to be reminded “ ’Tis life whereof our nerves are scant.”
It is more life and fuller which is the need of the hour. John Stuart Mill was the greatest thinking machine in England in the last century. At twelve years of age he knew more Greek than most of the professors in Oxford, and at fourteen the greatest mathematicians took off their hats to him. At the morning walk with his father, at the mature age of thirteen, they discussed the problem of Gibbon’s “Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” When I was a boy in college, few names were more quoted in cultured circles than his, but I have seldom heard his name mentioned in the last twenty years. His latest historian says of him, * * There was no fire under his boiler. ’ * His culture was aloof and academic. He had no thrill of human interest, no glow of conviction. Toward the world’s needs, he was as heartless as a graven image. When asked how he would feel if the principles he advocated were universally accepted, he said, “I would not feel.” He was the consummate flower of the culture of his time, but it was the culture of the dilettanti.
Perhaps no two men of the same age better illustrate the difference between culture and service than Erasmus and Luther. Erasmus was the greatest scholar of his day. There were none to challenge his supremacy. He thoroughly agreed with the principles of Martin Luther, but when Luther’s friends asked him to come out in the open and stand with him he said, “Why should I lose my living or my head?” He realized all the abominations of the Church of Borne. He said that instead of saying their prayers the monks were eating gingerbread that they might take more kindly to their beer, but he left Luther to fight alone for God and men. If he had only stood with the little monk at the Diet of Worms he could have changed the thought of half the world and projected himself for the help of men through untold millenniums. Luther sighed over his deflection and might have chanted with Browning in his Lost Leader, “Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick on his coat.”
If you want to see culture as a load, read Froude’s “Times of Erasmus and Luther. “ If you wish to see culture as a lift, there is Henry Drummond, the scholar; “Chinese” Gordon, the soldier, “Who always and everywhere Gave his help to the weak, His sympathy to the suffering, His substance to the poor, And his heart to God.”
There is Phillips Brooks, the preacher, and Borden P. Bowne, the greatest philosopher that America has produced and one of the most faithful, eager-hearted Christians I have ever known. In Conferences and Assemblies and Synods throughout the country, I have had ministers by the score ask, “Why is it that with deeper, more scholarly culture and training, I am less effective in moving men to God?” The answer is not far to seek your culture has become a load instead of a lift. While you have been busy with the delights of scholarship the fire has gone out upon the altar. Thus so many of the prophets of God stand shivering around the altars where the fires have failed and are as impotent as were the priests of Baal to call down the fires of God from the ascenting heavens.
Knowledge ought to be power. Culture, if it is to be a lift and not a load, must be transmuted into service for God and man. When the culture of the mind exceeds the culture of the soul, a man is educated beyond his capacity. He is doing too much business for his capital. It is a prostitution of talent when he who knows the most does the least. It might be well for the best of us with all our culture to lay our finger on our lips and listen to the greatest Teacher of all the ages, Son of Mary and Son of God, who says to His friends in words which the world will never allow to be discounted or to perish, “If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine.”