1.C 05. How to use One's own Special Forces

How to use One’s own Special Forces. The question, then, comes up, How far shall a man conform to the strong tendencies of his own nature?

One man is himself very imaginative, and not a reasoner; or he finds himself possessed of a judicial mind, calm, clear, but not enthusiastic; while an other finds himself an artist, as it were, with a mind expansive and sensitive, seeing everything iridescent, in all colours. Can these men change their own endowments? Or how can one conform to the endowment of the other? A minister says: “ I am naturally very sensitive to the praise and opinion of men. When I speak I can’t get rid of the feeling of myself. I am. standing l>eforc a thousand people, and I am all the time thinking about myself, whether I am standing right, and what men are thinking of me. I can’t keep that out of my mind.” What is such a man to do? Tan he change his own temperament? On the other side, there are men who say: e< I don’t care what people think of me; I wish I cared more. I am naturally cold, somewhat proud and sell-sustained. People talk about sympathy and a warm side toward men, but I never feel any of that.

I do what is right, if the heavens fall, and go on my way. If people like; it, I am glad; and if they don t, that is their look-out.” How can you change that disposition? How can a man alter the laws that are laid down for him?

Well, in one sense, he cannot change at all. You can make just as many prayers, write just as many resolutions, and keep just as long a journal as you please, recording the triumphs of grace over your approbativeness, and when you are screwed down in your coffin, you will have been no less of a praise loving man than when you were taken out of the cradle. That quality grows, and it grows stronger in old age than at any other time. You will find that men get over some things in time: they be come less and less imaginative; they become less severe as they grow older; but, if vanity is a part of their composition, old age only strengthens it, and they grow worse and worse as they grow in years. In general, too, if a man has a strong will, I do not think he loses any of it as he gets along through life. It becomes fixed, firm as adamant. But it is not necessary that you should change much. Go and look at Central Park. Before the artistic hand of the landscape-gardener began to work upon its surface, there were vast ledges of rock in every direction, and other obstructions of the most stubborn character. Now if, when the engineer came to look over the land for the purpose of laying it out into a beautiful park, he had said, “ How under the sun am I going to blast out those rocks?” he would have had a terrible time of it, and would have been blasting until this day. Instead of that, however, he said, “ I will plant vines around the edges of the rocks and let them run up over. The rocks will look all the better, and the vines will have a place to grow and display their beauty. In that way I will make use of the rocks.” So it is with your own nature. There is not a single difficulty in it which you cannot make use of, and which, after that, would not be a power for good. Suppose you are conscious, in your disposition, of approbativeness. Do you think you are more sensitive than thousands of God’s best ministers have been? But perhaps you love the praise of men more than the praise of God. The thing for you to do, then, is to train your approbativeness, so that, instead of delighting in the lower types of praise those which imply weakness and which unman you will strive after those which rise steadily higher and higher in the things which are of God. Now it is not your fault that you have the element of approbativeness, but it is your fault that you suffer it to feed on despicable food. Train it to desire approbation for things that are noble and just, for doing intensely whatever is disinterested among men, and for things that other men cannot do.

Task yourselves as men should do, and not like boys or puling girls. Have such a conception of man hood in Christ Jesus that you would scorn praise for things that are less than noble. Strike a line through the head, and seek praise for things that are represented above the line and not below it.

You cannot find a more beautiful or illustrious instance of the transformation of a great constitutional faculty than in Paul, the fiercely proud and arrogant, the man that was originally made for a persecutor. For, the moment the summer of Christ’s love drew near and shone on him, he be came a changed man. Although he moans and yearns in his teachings, and his letters are full of self-consciousness, yet it is all extremely noble. It is beautiful. I would not take a single “I” out of Paul’s epistles; and yet you might take scores out of every one of them, and they would scarcely be missed, there are so many. Where was there a man whose pride was more regal than his? and what a power it was, and how he used it for Christ’s sake! In regard to strong constitutional peculiarities, I would say, therefore, that you cannot eradicate them, and that you should not try to change them very much. You can regulate and discipline every one of your emotive powers; but do not try to quench them. Do not crucify anything. Do not crucify your passions. Do not crucify any basilar instinct.

There is force in it, if you know how to use it as a force, in the propulsion of moral feeling and moral ideas. You may be naturally ambitious; you will be ambitious to the day of your death. Do not attempt to take away your constitutional endowment, only train it to things which are consonant with divine sympathy and with true life. Make it work, not for yourself, but for others, and it will be a power that you need not be ashamed of.