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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

II

II.

The economic value of the gospel now looks us full in the face. It is the salvation of manhood for the wholesome life of to-day. "We are sadly familiar with the pernicious action of base aims and vicious habits upon the nature and faculties of man. Experience is a painful, but honest teacher. It is the fool that does not give heed. We all know men of physical vigour, high mental development and practical capacity, in whom low conceptions of honour, selfish passions, and mean ways impoverish their powers, and prejudice the service which they do render, as well as make impossible the work which, with such excellent endowment, they might have done for mankind. Not the strength of a giant, nor the intellect of the loftiest genius, can hold out against moral instability, against the desolating sweep of physical lust or the debasing tyranny of greed, malice, envy, and hatred.

On the other hand, it stands beyond the risk of challenge that spiritual qualities increase the practical value of man's physical and intellectual gifts. In spiritual manhood we have not only the conservation of power; we have also the enrichment and application of power. Take a man of normal health and average mental equipment; fill out his life with the commonplace motives and manners of selfishness: it needs not a prophet to tell the further story of his life. Take another man of like natural gifts, and complete his manhood with the aspirations of the spiritual ideal: his life will prove him to be a man who does honest work and wins respect. He is a man of worth and honour. His manhood is not dominated by lusts and desires, that poison and pillage the resources of nature and opportunity. It is inspired and strengthened by the fostering authority of a holy obligation to the God of His being.

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The end of the gospel is more than salvation from the corruption that is in the world by lust. It is the edification of the whole man in the truth and life which Jesus Christ has unfolded. "Yea, and for this very cause, adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue, and in virtue knowledge, and in knowledge self-control, and in self-control patience, and in patience godliness, and in godliness love of the brethren, and in love of the brethren love." Here, in homely words, we have the workaday garb and features of spiritual manhood. Is there unwholesome limitation here? Is there impoverishment? Is there aught but the buoyant assurance of comfort and power for the good of the individual and the community? The economic value of the gospel is in Christian manhood; and by the economic worth of Christian manhood must the Church justify her existence.