I count it one of the real blessings in my life that I have not had to wear a watch in years. But I worked hard all my life to reach such exalted status and have earned the right to go without wearing a watch. My time is my own. And it being the most valuable thing I possess, I try to use it to the best effect. For me, that best effect is the writing I am compelled to do, my own “curious labor.”
So I shun appointments like the plague. I revel in spontaneity. And having punched a clock for so many years, I never take the liberty I enjoy for granted and I thank God daily for it. But I also realize the great responsibility I have for using this blessed time wisely; at least as wisely as I have the light to do so.
I write a good deal about the necessity of civilized manners and speech; but these are learned behavior. James Boswell bears quoting on this subject: “There is no doubt that there may be an excess of luxury by which the more solid properties of man will be weakened, if not annihilated. In observing individuals, we find that a keen gratification of appetites and tastes, as produces exquisite pleasure of an inferior and slight kind, which can be repeated with frequency, indisposes them for steady, noble enjoyment; and to borrow an admirable metaphor from Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, their minds shrink to the diminutive size of the objects with which they are occupied. A mind so shrunk and shriveled, as to take in only petty delights, is averse from those extensive satisfactions that are suited to the dignity of human nature, in that state to which, amidst all our imperfections, it can at times be raised.”
Well, if Boswell had been aware of Hollywood and TV, he would most certainly have expanded his excellent and sage comments on the ability of petty entertainments and luxuries to shrivel the intellect as well as good manners and speech. Are such things being annihilated in America? I think they are.
The corrosive and cancerous disease of the petty pleasures of entertainments and good times to the exclusion of thinking of our future, our children and their welfare, of what is really best for our children, as opposed to what is noble, will most assuredly and ultimately destroy us if not cured in time. Bread and circuses are as much a part of human nature now as they have ever been; just another proof of our having never attained wisdom.
But what Boswell wrote is knowledge, not wisdom. And it is knowledge which humanity has possessed from the very beginning though Boswell states it in quite memorable words with his own peculiar and quite distinctive genius for doing so.
Obviously any person or society that gives themselves over to petty entertainments and petty luxuries is never going to advance in truly civilized speech and behavior. These require the restraints of self-discipline. But only wisdom can possibly lead to the effective application of such knowledge, to the effective restraints and disciplines needed. And America sorely lacks wisdom.
If anything, Boswell perfectly illustrates that the facts of even correct knowledge do not automatically lead to wisdom and the two should never be confused. This is very much like my continued warning to people that they should never confuse what they believe with what they know. The result is chaos and bigotry in too many cases.
I have always gotten a chuckle out of the story about the meeting between Dwight Moody the great American evangelist, and Charles Spurgeon the great English pulpiteer. At one point during their conversation Moody points to Spurgeon's cigar and says: “Brother Spurgeon, don't you know that is sin?” Spurgeon riposted, poking Moody's more than ample girth: “Brother Moody; that is sin?”
And while it was obvious Spurgeon never missed a meal, there is no doubt that Moody dug his grave with a fork. And his remark to Spurgeon always reminds me of the story told by J. Vernon MaGee of the dinner where American Christians were hosting a group of German Christians at a large restaurant in Los Angeles. The Americans were thoroughly condemnatory of the Germans drinking beer. The Germans were outraged at the American women dressing like sluts. Well, a little self-righteousness always goes a long way.
In my library, I had the complete set of The Metropolitan Pulpit, the encyclopedic set of Spurgeon's sermons. I also had and read his multi-volume commentary on the Psalms. Not having been formally educated, Spurgeon spoke better than he wrote. His sermons, while printed in full by The London Times, weren't models of erudition. But his preaching held parishioners spellbound. He was an orator, not a writer.
The Times also printed the sermons of Joseph Parker, one of Spurgeon's contemporaries and held in great esteem. Unlike Spurgeon, Parker was well educated, very erudite, and a very good writer. I had the complete set of Parker's commentaries (as encyclopedic as that of Spurgeon's sermons) and they were very good and quite enjoyable to read.
A reporter for the Times was interviewing Spurgeon and asked somewhat jocularly: “Sir, do you expect to see Joseph Parker in heaven?” To which Spurgeon replied: “No, I do not.”
The reporter, aghast at Spurgeon's reply, asked: “Sir, why ever not?”
Spurgeon, lowering his head, replied: “I expect he will be so close to God Himself that I will be too far removed in order to be able see him.”
Now I got to know both men very well from their writings. I also read extensively the secondary material from varied sources about both men. I would like to believe the story about the reporter from the Times; I would very much like to believe Spurgeon was quite sincere in his self-deprecating and extraordinarily humble observation concerning himself and Parker. Such humility, as opposed to so much self-righteousness that abounds among the religious, would be a real tonic and can't fail to bring a tear to the eye. Because of this, I would occasionally use this anecdote in one of my sermons. And how I liked to believe Spurgeon's humility was matched by my own in those days. How wrong can you be!
My problem with the story, once I came to realize and accept the fact that I was only a common, garden variety sinner, was this: Successful men get caught up in their own press (often self-manufactured) and begin to believe it. This is deadly.
Because of my familiarity with Spurgeon while wanting to believe better of him the skeptic in me knows he was quite capable of playing the expected role of the humble servant of God. And he knew his reply would be of great credit to him in such a capacity. It also put Parker in his debt.
My experience in the churches, my great familiarity with the Bible, the book remaining my primary textbook, my formal education and the education I have received at the hands of the real world cause me to question motives. I not only question my own wisdom, I am constantly questioning my motives in nearly everything I say and do.
One thing of particular interest to me, and one which I bring to my readers because I know they will be interested as well, is the subject of death. Philosophically, it is argued that we don't have much time or get much of a chance to develop living to a high art, life being a very personal and singular thing and of comparatively short duration.
But we get far less of a chance to practice dying or develop the art since it is a one-time only and terminal event. Besides, who in their right mind would want to practice the art of dying? I am so very familiar with religion that I can say without fear of being contradicted that the basis of religion is the attempt to formulate a philosophy of death ever as much or more than a philosophy of living.
Oh, I credit religion with attempts to formulate a philosophy of life as well. But whether death comes as a gentle friend to relieve suffering, or a mad and ravenous beast to rip, tear and devour, a philosophy of death is at least of equal importance to people as a philosophy of life since the one serves to interpret the other for us. As a result, the very real and inescapable issues of life and death are the focus of religion and philosophy. Because of this, I draw a great deal of my writing from these two sources of inquiry.
Good and evil, life and death, these are the fountainhead of religion and philosophy, of art, of the grandest or the most corrupt, of human endeavors. In humankind's search for wisdom, however, often grievously erroneous religious and philosophical concepts have led us a wrong path. They are great and grave errors to confuse belief with knowledge and to confuse knowledge with wisdom.
A formal and disciplined education in religion and philosophy most often leads people to believe that in the study of the great thinkers throughout history, one is studying and learning wisdom. Not so. What is being studied and learned in most cases is knowledge. And while so very beneficial, and essential, it should not be confused with wisdom.
James Boswell and Charles Lamb are excellent cases in point. I very much wish all people would read the great English and American essays (I don't include the great German, French, and Italian writers because that would be lifting hope to a dizzying, ethereal height which would be, to say the least, unrealistic). There is so very much to be learned from doing so. I have certainly not become so anile as to fail in continuing to derive much knowledge from this salubrious exercise of my mind.
Having quoted Boswell, I give you Charles Lamb. In his essay “Witches, And Other Night-Fears”, Lamb points out that just as there is no law to judge of the lawless, there is no canon by which a dream may be criticized. “Credulity is the man's weakness” he says, “while being the child's strength.”
Just so, a careful reading of the works of Boswell and Lamb will quickly apprise the reader that, indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. What was before still is. Yet it remains for one generation to pass on the knowledge of the one to the next. And there will always be, hopefully, those of genius who will use the right words and phraseology to do so. And it remains the responsibility of the new generation to learn what is beneficial from the old. But having said this, the cautionary word remains that belief never be confused with knowledge, that knowledge never be confused with wisdom.
It is well to weep over those things, at times, that we cannot remedy. Such deeply rooted feelings in those sensitive to such things can help in our race for wisdom. And it is a race, of that I have no doubt. Number 92 looms too ominously on the immediate horizon. And not to dispute Lamb, it is my waking dreams that trouble, that make me a poet, the maker and the teller of the stories that are needed to make the ordinary, and ordinary people, extraordinary. It is, after all, the ordinary and ordinary people who are the stuff of the real tale of life. Marvelous men and women come and go. But the ordinary, the real heroes and heroines, remain to carry on at their lasts and anvils, the raising and caring for children, the next generation in the story and from whom the marvelous men and women of the future are to come.
