Greatest
Thing in the
World
The
Alchemy of
Influence
By:
Henry Drummond
If
events
change men, much more persons. No
man can meet another on the
street without making some mark
upon him. We say we exchange
words when we meet; what we
exchange is souls.
And when
intercourse is very close and
very frequent, so complete is
this exchange that recognisable
bits of the one soul begin to
show in the other’s nature,
and the second is conscious of a
similar and growing debt to the
first.
This
mysterious approximating of two
souls who has not witnessed? Who
has not watched some old couple
come down life’s pilgrimage
hand in hand with such gentle
trust and joy in one another that
their very faces wore the
selfsame look?
These were
not two souls; it was a composite
soul. It did not matter to which
of the two you spoke, you would
have said the same words to
either. It was quite indifferent
which replied, each would have
said the same.
Half a
century’s reflecting had
told upon them: they were changed
into the same image. It is the
Law of Influence that we become
like those whom we habitually
admire: these had become like
because they habitually admired.
Through all
the range of literature, of
history, and biography this law
presides. Men are all mosaics of
other men. There was a savour of
David about Jonathan and a savour
of Jonathan about David. Jean
Valjean, in the masterpiece of
Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu
risen from the dead.
Metempsychosis
is a fact. George Eliot’s
message to the world was that men
and women make men and women. The
Family, the cradle of mankind,
has no meaning apart from this.
Society itself is nothing but a
rallying point for these
omnipotent forces to do their
work. On the doctrine of
Influence, in short, the whole
vast pyramid of humanity is
built.
But it was
reserved for Paul to make the
supreme application of the Law of
Influence. It was a tremendous
inference to make, but he never
hesitated.
He himself
was a changed man: he knew
exactly what had done it; it was
Christ On the Damascus road they
met, and from that hour his life
was absorbed in His. The effect
could not but follow—on
words, on deeds, on career, on
creed. The “impressed
forces” did their vital
work. He became like Him whom he
habitually loved. “So we
all,” he writes,
“reflecting as a mirror the
glory of Christ are changed into
the same image.”
Nothing
could be more simple, more
intelligible, more natural, more
supernatural. It is an analogy
from an everyday fact.
Since we
are what we are by the impacts of
those who surround us, those who
surround themselves with the
highest will be those who change
into the highest.
There are
some men and some women in whose
company we are always at our
best. While with them we cannot
think mean thoughts or speak
ungenerous words. Their mere
presence is elevation,
purification, sanctity.
All the
best stops in our nature are
drawn out by their intercourse,
and we find a music in our souls
that was never there before.
Suppose even that influence
prolonged through a month, a
year, a lifetime, and what could
not life become?
Here, even
on the common plane of life,
talking our language, walking our
streets, working side by side,
are sanctifiers of souls; here,
breathing through common play, is
Heaven; here, energies charged
even through a temporal medium
with a virtue of regeneration.
If to live
with men, diluted to the
millionth degree with the virtue
of the Highest, can exalt and
purify the nature, what bounds
can be set to the influence of
Christ? To live with
Socrates—with unveiled
face—must have made one
wise; with Aristides, just.
Francis of Assisi must have made
one gentle; Savonarola, strong.
But to have lived with Christ? To
have lived with Christ must have
made one like Christ; that is to
say, A Christian.
As a matter
of fact, to live with Christ did
produce this effect. It produced
it in the case of Paul. And
during Christ’s lifetime the
experiment was tried in an even
more startling form. A few raw,
unspiritual, uninspiring men,
were admitted to the inner circle
of His friendship.
The change
began at once. Day by day we can
almost see the first disciples
grow. First there steals over
them the faintest possible
adumbration of His character, and
occasionally, very occasionally,
they do a thing, or say a thing
that they could not have done or
said had they not been living
there. Slowly the spell of His
Life deepens. Reach after reach
of their nature is overtaken,
thawed, subjugated, sanctified.
Their manners soften, their words
become more gentle, their conduct
more unselfish
As swallows
who have found a summer, as
frozen buds the spring, their
starved humanity bursts into a
fuller life. They do not know how
it is, but they are different
men. One day they find themselves
like their Master, going about
and doing good. To themselves it
is unaccountable, but they cannot
do otherwise. They were not told
to do it, it came to them to do
it. But the people who watch them
know well how to account for
it—”They have
been,” they whisper,
“with Jesus.”
Already
even, the mark and seal of His
character is upon them—
“They have been with
Jesus.” Unparalleled
phenomenon, that these poor
fishermen should remind other men
of Christ! Stupendous victory and
mystery of regeneration that
mortal men should suggest to the
world, God!
There is
something almost melting in the
way His contemporaries, and John
especially, speak of the
Influence of Christ.
John lived
himself in daily wonder at Him;
he was overpowered, overawed,
entranced, transfigured. To his
mind it was impossible for any
one to come under this influence
and ever be the same again.
“Whosoever
abideth in Him sinneth not,”
he said. It was inconceivable
that he should sin, as
inconceivable as that ice should
live in a burning sun, or
darkness coexist with noon. If
any one did sin, it was to John
the simple proof that he could
never have met Christ.
“Whosoever
sinneth,” he exclaims,
“hath not seen Him, neither
known Him.” Sin was abashed
in this Presence. Its roots
withered. Its sway and victory
were for ever at an
end.
But these
were His contemporaries. It was
easy for them to be influenced by
Him, for they were every day and
all the day together.
But how can
we mirror that which we have
never seen?
How can all
this stupendous result be
produced by a Memory, by the
scantiest of all Biographies, by
One who lived and left this earth
eighteen hundred years ago?
How can
modern men today make Christ, the
absent Christ, their most
constant companion still?
The answer
is that Friendship is a spiritual
thing. It is independent of
Matter, or Space, or Time. That
which I love in my friend is not
that which I see. What influences
me in my friend is not his body
but his spirit. It would have
been an ineffable experience
truly to have lived at that
time—
“I
think when I read the sweet story
of old,
How when
Jesus was here among
men,
He took
little children like lambs to His
fold,
I should
like to have been with him
then.
“I
wish that His hand had been laid
on my head,
That His
arms had been thrown around
me,
And that
I had seen His kind look when He
said,
Let the
little ones come unto
Me.”
And yet, if
Christ were to come into the
world again few of us probably
would ever have a chance of
seeing Him. Millions of her
subjects, in this little country,
have never seen their own Queen.
And there would be millions of
the subjects of Christ who could
never get within speaking
distance of Him if He were here.
Our
companionship with Him, like all
true companionship, is a
spiritual communion. All
friendship, all love, human and
Divine, is purely spiritual. It
was after He was risen that He
influenced even the disciples
most.
Hence in
reflecting the character of
Christ it is no real obstacle
that we may never have been in
visible contact with
Himself.
There lived
once a young girl whose perfect
grace of character was the wonder
of those who knew her. She wore
on her neck a gold locket which
no one was ever allowed to open.
One day, in
a moment of unusual confidence,
one of her companions was allowed
to touch its spring and learn its
secret. She saw written these
words— “Whom having not
seen, I love.” That was the
secret of her beautiful life. She
had been changed into the Same
Image.
Now this is
not imitation, but a much deeper
thing. Mark this distinction. For
the difference in the process, as
well as in the result, may be as
great as that between a
photograph secured by the
infallible pencil of the sun, and
the rude outline from a
schoolboy’s chalk.
Imitation
is mechanical, reflection
organic. The one is occasional,
the other habitual. In the one
case, man comes to God and
imitates Him; in the other, God
comes to man and imprints Himself
upon him. It is quite true that
there is an imitation of Christ
which amounts to reflection. But
Paul’s term includes all
that the other holds, and is open
to no mistake.
“Make
Christ your most constant
companion”—this is what
it practically means for us. Be
more under His influence than
under any other influence. Ten
minutes spent in His society
every day, ay, two minutes if it
be face to face, and heart to
heart, will make the whole day
different.
Every
character has an inward spring,
let Christ be it. Every action
has a keynote, let Christ set it.
Yesterday you got a certain
letter. You sat down and wrote a
reply which almost scorched the
paper. You picked the cruellest
adjectives you knew and sent it
forth, without a pang, to do its
ruthless work. You did that
because your life was set in the
wrong key. You began the day with
the mirror placed at the wrong
angle.
Tomorrow,
at daybreak, turn it towards Him,
and even to your enemy the
fashion of your countenance will
be changed. Whatever you then do,
one thing you will find you could
not do—you could not write
that letter. Your first impulse
may be the same, your judgment
may be unchanged, but if you try
it the ink will dry on your pen,
and you will rise from your desk
an unavenged but a greater and
more Christian man.
Throughout
the whole day your actions, down
to the last detail, will do
homage to that early vision.
Yesterday you thought mostly
about yourself. Today the poor
will meet you, and you will feed
them.
The
helpless, the tempted, the sad,
will throng about you, and each
you will befriend. Where were all
these people yesterday? Where
they are today, but you did not
see them. It is in reflected
light that the poor are seen.
But your
soul today is not at the ordinary
angle. “Things which are not
seen” are visible. For a few
short hours you live the Eternal
Life. The eternal life, the life
of faith, is simply the life of
the higher vision. Faith is an
attitude— a mirror set at
the right angle.
When
tomorrow is over, and in the
evening you review it, you will
wonder how you did it. You will
not be conscious that you strove
for anything, or imitated
anything, or crucified anything.
You will be conscious of Christ;
that He was with you, that
without compulsion you were yet
compelled, that without force, or
noise, or proclamation, the
revolution was accomplished.
You do not
congratulate yourself as one who
has done a mighty deed, or
achieved a personal success, or
stored up a fund of
“Christian experience”
to ensure the same result again.
What you are conscious of is
“the glory of the
Lord.”
And what
the world is conscious of, if the
result be a true one, is also
“the glory of the
Lord.” In looking at a
mirror one does not see the
mirror, or think of it, but only
of what it reflects. For a mirror
never calls attention to itself
except when there are flaws in
it.
That this
is a real experience and not a
vision, that this life is
possible to men, is being lived
by men today, is simple
biographical fact. From a
thousand witnesses I cannot
forbear to summon one.
The
following are the words of one of
the highest intellects this age
has known, a man who shared the
burdens of his country as few
have done, and who, not in the
shadows of old age, but in the
high noon of his success, gave
this confession—I quote it
with only a few
abridgments—to the
world:—
‘I
want to speak tonight only a
little, but that little I desire
to speak of the sacred name of
Christ, who is my life, my
inspiration, my hope, and my
surety. I cannot help stopping
and looking back upon the past.
And I wish,
as if I had never done it before,
to bear witness, not only that it
is by the grace of God, but that
it is by the grace of God as
manifested in Christ Jesus, that
I am what I am. I recognize the
sublimity and grandeur of the
revelation of God in His eternal
fatherhood as one that made the
heavens, that founded the earth,
and that regards all the tribes
of the earth, comprehending them
in one universal mercy; but it is
the God that is manifested in
Jesus Christ, revealed by His
life, made known by the
inflections of His feelings, by
His discourse, and by His
deeds—it is that God that I
desire to confess tonight, and of
whom I desire to say, “By
the love of God in Christ Jesus I
am what I am.”
‘If
you ask me precisely what I mean
by that, I say, frankly, that
more than any recognized
influence of my father or my
mother upon me; more than the
social influence of all the
members of my father’s
household; more, so far as I can
trace it, or so far as I am made
aware of it, than all the social
influences of every kind, Christ
has had the formation of my mind
and my disposition.
My hidden
ideals of what is beautiful I
have drawn from Christ. My
thoughts of what is manly, and
noble, and pure, have almost all
of them arisen from the Lord
Jesus Christ. Many men have
educated themselves by reading
Plutarch’s Lives of the
Ancient Worthies, and setting
before themselves one and another
of these that in different ages
have achieved celebrity; and they
have recognized the great power
of these men on themselves.
Now I do
not perceive that poet, or
philosopher, or reformer, or
general, or any other great man,
ever has dwelt in my imagination
and in my thought as the simple
Jesus has.
For more
than twenty-five years I
instinctively have gone to Christ
to draw a measure and a rule for
everything. Whenever there has
been a necessity for it, I have
sought—and at last almost
spontaneously—to throw
myself into the companionship of
Christ; and early, by my
imagination, I could see Him
standing and looking quietly and
lovingly upon me.
There
seemed almost to drop from His
face an influence upon me that
suggested what was the right
thing in the controlling of
passion, in the subduing of
pride, in the overcoming of
selfishness; and it is from
Christ, manifested to my inward
eye, that I have consciously
derived more ideals, more models,
more influences, than from any
human character
whatever.
‘That
is not all. I feel conscious that
I have derived from the Lord
Jesus Christ every thought that
makes heaven a reality to me, and
every thought that paves the road
that lies between me and heaven.
All my
conceptions of the progress of
grace in the soul; all the steps
by which divine life is evolved;
all the ideals that overhang the
blessed sphere which awaits us
beyond this world —these are
derived from the Saviour. The
life that I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of
God.
‘That
is not all. Much as my future
includes all these elements which
go to make the blessed fabric of
earthly life, yet, after all,
what the summer is compared with
all its earthly products
—flowers, and leaves, and
grass—that is Christ
compared with all the products of
Christ in my mind and in my soul.
All the
flowers and leaves of sympathy;
all the twining joys that come
from my heart as a
Christian—these I take and
hold in the future, but they are
to me what the flowers and leaves
of summer are compared with the
sun that makes the summer. Christ
is the Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the end of my
better life.
‘When
I read the Bible, I gather a
great deal from the Old
Testament, and from the Pauline
portions of the New Testament;
but after all, I am conscious
that the fruit of the Bible is
Christ.
That is
what I read it for, and that is
what I find that is worth
reading. I have had a hunger to
be loved of Christ. You all know,
in some relations, what it is to
be hungry for love. Your heart
seems unsatisfied till you can
draw something more toward you
from those that are dearest to
you.
There have
been times when I have had an
unspeakable heart-hunger for
Christ’s love. My sense of
sin is never strong when I think
of the law; my sense of sin is
strong when I think of
love—if there is any
difference between law and love.
It is when
drawing near the Lord Jesus
Christ, and longing to be loved,
that I have the most vivid sense
of unsymmetry, of imperfection,
of absolute unworthiness, and of
my sinfulness.
Character
and conduct are never so vividly
set before me as when in silence
I bend in the presence of Christ,
revealed not in wrath, but in
love to me. I never so much long
to be lovely, that I may be
loved, as when I have this
revelation of Christ before my
mind.
‘In
looking back upon my experience,
that part of my life which stands
out, and which I remember most
vividly, is just that part that
has had some conscious
association with Christ.
All the
rest is pale, and thin, and lies
like clouds on the horizon.
Doctrines, systems, measures,
methods— what may be called
the necessary mechanical and
external part of worship; the
part which the senses would
recognize—this seems to have
withered and fallen off like
leaves of last summer; but that
part which has taken hold of
Christ abides’
Can anyone
hear this life-music, with its
throbbing refrain of Christ, and
remain unmoved by envy or desire?
Yet till we
have lived like this we have
never lived at all.
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