INFLUENCE
"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous."—Rom. 5:19
We now proceed to consider the facts of heredity and environment from another standpoint; no longer as they affect us, but as through us they affect others. "No man liveth unto himself." (Rom. 14:7) Lonely, isolated life is an absolute impossibility by the very nature of man—an impossibility which has been proven in every successive generation, in all lands, and among all peoples. The life of every man is affecting, as well as being affected by, other persons. We desire to acquaint ourselves with the true Christian position in regard to this subject of our influence.
We shall first then state the case, second, examine it; and third, consider solemnly the responsibilities entailed upon every one of us.
"As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” The simple statement of the text is that man is a center and source of influence. The central heads of the human race—the representative men through all the ages—are held up to our view, not only that the apostle may make a great theological statement; but in order that we may see them to be what they really are —each of them typical men.
The statement is not merely a declaration that we have inherited from Adam tendencies to sin, and from Christ redemptive forces. It is that, but it is much more; namely, an announcement that the positions they occupied were typical and representative of the position that every man, woman, and child occupies also. By disobedience the first man wrought havoc amid those that followed him. By obedience the second has produced the wondrous results which have made the desert blossom as the rose, and rivers of water to spring in dry and solitary places.
The influence, in each case, was determined by the life. Disobedience begets disobedience; obedience was the generating force of obedience. From the breaking of law arose not only sin in the individual case, but in the influence exercised; and, therefore, in succeeding generations. From the keeping of law comes the righteousness which has restored man to communion with God. This is true, not only in the one ultimate example of the life of the Christ, but in all the men who have heard His voice, and been obedient to Him.
Every man is a new starting-point for good or for bad in the history of the human race as our father Adam. I am the heir of all the ages past. I am also a starting-point for ages to come. I have inherited forces without having been consulted. I shall also transmit to other ages by the effect of my life today, and by the influence that I am exerting upon those who touch me at every point, forces which will either make or mar the human race; which will be for the uplifting or degradation of untold thousands of my kind. It is a principle of which one must speak in the first person singular, in order to lead thought in the line of individual application.
It is not for me merely to declare a theory, but for us to isolate ourselves; and, in the presence of God to face this fact, "No man liveth unto himself." Every one of us exerts influences which will have their effect upon other lives as our father Adam as well as Christ, and the generations yet unborn will be lifted nearer God or thrust into deeper darkness, because we have lived and moved and had our being on this earth.
So far we have stated the philosophy of the subject. Let us now make application of the same to our everyday life. We spoke of heredity so far as it affects us. Let us now remember that we, too, are transmitting forces, tendencies, biases, to those who come after us. Your disposition—whatever that may be, you know; your highest tendencies—whatever they are, you know also; your character—all these influences are being repeated by the very fact of your life.
Human life is forevermore going out and touching other human life, taking hold of it, molding it, and repeating itself upon it. Two men cannot live together in close companionship for many years without each becoming somewhat what the other is. True that the stronger will impress it more deeply on the weaker; but the stronger will partake something of the weaker likewise.
It is a common everyday truth which has, perhaps, its utmost illustration in the consideration of our kids. How often we are driven, if we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to get among the children for the learning of our lessons.
It becomes necessary that we do as the Master did by the seashore—call the child, who plays amid the pebbles, and put it into the midst of the disciples, that they may learn the lessons of the Kingdom. It is impossible for any man, whatever his position in the realm of thought may be, to deny that men bequeath to their children their dispositions, their tendencies, and their character. We agree that we have received these things from those that have gone before us. In common honesty, and by a logical sequence, from which there can be no possible escape, we must also agree that we are transmitting them to those who are following us.
Not only is it true of heredity, but also of environment. You communicate your ideal to your friend; and the man who works with you, and hears your conversation, and watches your habits of life, will take from you your estimate of human life, and of the hereafter. All the history of social life witnesses to this.
But all this is so commonplace and ordinary. We have heard it so many times before; we were warned by our fathers and mothers, and told in the Sunday school class, and have heard it from preachers incessantly, that we have an influence. But may we not thrust this closer home, and say there is one inexorable law that men have not believed, although they have heard it perpetually—of the effect of influence—and that inexorable law may be written off in this form: I am only able to exert the influence of my true self. How many a man imagines he can influence his neighbor by what he says to him! He cannot. How many a man dreams he can influence children by the precepts that fall from his lips! Our kids are never so influenced. One step further. How many a man imagines he can influence his children, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, by what he desires they should think him to be! No man does so influence any of his friends. How many a man, for many long years, has kept up an outward appearance of morality and respectability yea, even of religion, while his heart has not been cleansed; and in the deep recesses of his nature there have lurked, dominating all the impulses of that life, things low, and base, and impure! Tell me, how has that man influenced other men? Has he influenced them by what he has appeared to be, or by what he has really been? Without a moment's hesitation, I assert he has influenced men by what he has been within himself. Not by the appearance which was a lie, but by the baseness which was the truth of his life has he influenced children, and friends, and acquaintances?
You may take that truth and turn it in another form, if you will; and I know this other side is a more startling thing to orthodox believers than the first. Here is a man who tells me he is not a Christian; but who, when the King begins to analyze these little words of human speech—that have never given utterance to the deep things of human life—will be found to have meant, "I am not what Christianity has too often seemed to be, a contradiction of Jesus Christ." But that man by sweetness of life, pureness of thought, and uprightness of living, has been exerting an influence upon others; and in the name of the influence he has exerted, in spite of the denial of his lips, I claim him as one of Christ's men.
When we reach the Judgment-seat of Jesus Christ, we shall have a great many startling surprises; and what one of the "old fathers" said will be true again and again. "I think I shall see three wonders developed—and the first wonder will be that I have ever reached its shining shore; the second, that I shall miss large numbers that I thought were going there; and the third will be that I shall meet large numbers that I never thought to see there." Do not let us forget that. Christ came to create—not a creed, not a formula of doctrine, not a profession in orthodoxy which may become the most veritable sacrilege, but — character. Oh that we could write that in letters of living flame across the sky, that all men might see it! What a man is, is the one question with God; and if through the bungling mistakes of so-called Christendom pure souls have been driven from our misguided sayings; if they have found righteousness all unknowingly through Jesus Christ, and have exerted an influence that has drawn men to God—I claim them as Christ's own men by the influence they have exerted.
Does not the Master give His positive sanction to influence as an absolute test, when He says, "He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad." Did He not mean to say, "If a man gathers with Me, he is with Me"; even though, perhaps, the disciples said, "We had better destroy him with our fire, because he followeth not with us"; and the Master rebuked them, and said, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of."
If a man is base, and impure, and sordid, and evil in himself, then all his church membership and all his profession are as nothing. Men will be moved, not by what a man says, nor by what a man says he is, but by what he actually is. I claim that this is an inexorable law of influence—that a man exerts upon other people the influence of what he is, and not the influence of what he says, or even of what he says he is.
We must all exert influence, whether we will or not. You cannot shut yourself up from other men unless you actually take yourself away from them. It is impossible, in this age, with humanity so inter-related as it is. Take the simplest illustration, and think of how many men you have to do with on any given day: think of the men who work with you; or the men who come to your office to see you on business; and the men of whom you ask your way in the street; and remember you never touch a man without influencing him.
F. B. Meyer has said that the extra dollar to the cabbie has done more for Christianity than his preaching on many occasions. Think it through. You influence every man you touch by the way you look at him, and speak to him; and all the time the influence you are exerting is surging up out of your actual self, and you cannot prevent it. If you know that you are impure, know this also, that your impurity is contagious. You cannot conceal in your breast impurity and say, "I will be impure here, and not influence others." It spreads like the contagion of a fever, unknown as to the moments of its going, but deadly in the effects it produces.
What, then, is the duty that this great truth of influence entails upon every one of us? Does it not contain a rousing call to self-examination? Perfect capitalism can only grow out of the perfecting of individualism. You never can have a society organized to perfection. It must grow to perfection through the growth of the individuals that form it.
If that is true—and who will deny it?—then capitalism, society at large, has a right to make distinct and forceful demands upon every single individual. Society has a right to say to every soul, "Soul, for our sake, for the sake of the larger whole, be pure and strong." No man has a right to say he is master of himself, that he may please himself. The larger law, the more binding law, is that law that demands purity from the individual, for the sake of society. To exert a destructive influence is the most terrible sin that is possible to any man. No man has any right to perpetuate evil. If the influence of your life is an tainted one, by the necessity of your own character, one of two things you should certainly do. You should either go to the great source of purification, or take yourself away from home, and friends, and society, and live out all the remainder of your tainted days in the desert place, in order that the foul influence of your soul may not contaminate other men. "No man liveth unto himself"—let me repeat the solemn words—and society has a right with myriad-tongued voice to call on thee, "O soul of man, be pure and strong and true, not merely for thy own sake, but for the sake of the world."
My influence is tested by my relationship to this text. I shall exert a pure, strong influence upon my fellow men, if I am an obedient soul. I shall exert an impure influence upon them, in spite of all other influences, if I am a disobedient soul. What I want to press upon your attention, and your thought, is—your responsibility in this matter. Men do not come to Jesus Christ—as witness the whole history of the preaching of His Cross,—until they feel deep in their own spirit the need of His wondrous work. It was not idly spoken in the early days that repentance toward God should come before faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, Nor was it idly spoken hundreds of years before the Master came, when the prophet, addressing the people of his time, said, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord."
Until men have seen their own individual helplessness, there will be no coming to the rivers of cleansing and the life of Christ for the power that is necessary for pure, strong living. Therefore, I charge upon you again, in conclusion, this solemn warning—not only that you are exerting an influence, but that you are responsible for that influence. Oh, my brother, if you have an impure past behind you, if you are weakened by the uncleanness of past days, with not only your reputation, which matters little, but your character, which matters much, stained, and dwarfed, and deformed, and belittled by evil—I pray you to be heroic enough to say, "I will not transmit my own madness and my own sin to succeeding generations." I ask you, Is your life an impure life? Then, if you have no longer any care for your own soul's highest welfare; if the desire within your heart for the "whatsoever things" that are pure, and high, and noble, and of good report, has been extinguished; if the flame that trembled Godward has died upon the altar of your own heart so that you love not purity, but revel in impurity—I call upon you again from another standpoint. In committing thine own suicide you are also committing murder. If you have no love for yourself, will you not, O man, for the sake of the little ones glancing around in your path, in need of a friend and guide; for the sake of those children whose lives are being touched by your life every day—will you not seek purity for the sake of others; and, if not, then the most devout prayer that I can pray for you is that God will move you from the scene of life before the contagion has spread too "far.”
There can be no more solemn and heart-searching question than upon this subject of influence. Will you face this great fact, that your life is making or marring others, and you are responsible? Says someone, "I know my own impurity, but I have received it; I know my own wrong, but it is the result of the position I have occupied in life. The bloom was brushed away before I knew its value, and I have become impure almost unconsciously." Will you hear again the old message, full of tenderness and God's own music? "To the house of Israel"—that is, to the children of faith—"there is opened a fountain for sin and for uncleanness.”
I do not mean to say that you can be so transformed that you will stand erect immediately in all the vigor and glory of ideal manhood: that is impossible. There are Christians who have been following Christ for months, for years, who are still suffering limitations as the result of their sin in the days gone by. Some of us, unfortunately, will carry to the grave the scars of the wounds of our own mad idiocy in years that have now almost faded from our memory; but into the secret chambers of the being there will come, to those who open wide the door, the purifying power of the Spirit of God. He comes to put away transgression; to cleanse the heart; to transmute the base and the debased into the purified and the clean. And how? Tell me, how can this be? It is not for me to attempt to explain the alchemy of the Divine work. I cannot do it. I know the laws of the Kingdom, and them I can announce to you.
I know that within the sphere where these laws operate there is abundance of cleansing, and power; but how God works I cannot tell. I cannot tell you all the mystery of the healing and the purifying work of the incoming Spirit. Can you tell me why the violet, hiding its head beneath the hedgerow, is of tender and beauteous hue; and why the lily growing in your garden is fleecy white? Can you tell me how life perfumes yon flower, so tiny that you hardly see it, and refuses to perfume the gorgeous flower that blossoms on your lawn? Have you no explanation for God's working? You may count the petals on the rose and tell the story of floriculture and cultivation but behind all your schemes is the touch of the Divine, the presence of God; and as you cannot explain the painting or scenting of the flowers, and the working behind the thousand mysteries of beauty and nature, neither can I tell you how God will come into your soul and purify it., What, then, is the law of His coming? It is the one simple law of absolute abandonment of self to His Kingship, His government, and His will—that you may be what the Man of Nazareth, and Capernaum, and the Wilderness, of the Market Place, and Gethsemane, and Calvary, intended, so that you shall be an obedient child. Cease your proud rebellion against the will of God; and, committing yourself to Him, without question as to the form and fashion of His remaking of you, trust His will and wondrous love, and lean on His almighty power.
In so doing you shall fulfill His law, and out of that obedience shall come the cleansing of your nature; the putting away of your sin; the commencement of that new life which shall exercise an influence —pure, and strong, and high, and lovely —which shall stretch out far beyond the little years of your life, into God's great eternity.
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