Psalms 116:11

I said in my haste, All men are liars.

The dangers of pessimism

Pessimism is a sin, and those who yield to it cripple themselves for the war, on one side of which are all the forces of darkness, led on by Apollyon, and on the other side of which are all the forces of light led on by the Omnipotent. I risk the statement that the vast majority of the people are doing the best they can. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the officials of the municipal and the United States Governments are honest. Out of a thousand bank presidents and cashiers, nine hundred, and ninety-nine are worthy the position they occupy. Out of a thousand merchants, mechanics and professional men, nine hundred and ninety-nine are doing their duty as they understand it. Out of one thousand engineers, and conductors, and switchmen, nine hundred and ninety-nine are true to their responsible positions. It is seldom that people arrive at positions of responsibility until they have been tested over and over again. It is a mean thing in human nature that men and women are not praised for doing well, but only excoriated when they do wrong. By Divine arrangement the most of the families of the earth are at peace, and the most of those united in marriage have for each other affinity and affection. You hear nothing of the quietude and happiness of such homes, though nothing but death will them part. But one sound of marital discord makes the ears of a continent, and perhaps of a hemisphere, alert. The one letter that ought never to have been written, printed in a newspaper, makes more talk than the millions of letters that crowd the post-offices, and weigh down the mail-carriers, with expressions of honest love. We need a more cheerful front in all our religious work. People have enough trouble already, and do not want to ship another cargo of trouble in the shape of religiosity. If religion has been to you a peace, a defence, an inspiration and a joy, say so. Say it by word of mouth; by pen in your right hand; by face illumined with a divine satisfaction. If this world is ever to be taken for God, it will not be by groans, but by hallelujahs. If we could present the Christian religion as it really is, in its true attractiveness, all the people would accept it, and accept it right away. Exemplify it in the life of a good man or a good woman, and no one can help but like it. A city missionary visited a house in London and found a sick and dying boy. There was an orange lying on his bed, and the missionary said, “Where did you get that orange?” He said, “A man brought it to me. He comes here often, and reads the Bible to me, and prays with me, and brings me nice things to eat.” “What is his name?” said the city missionary. “I forget his name,” said the sick boy, “but he makes great speeches over in that great building,” pointing to the Parliament House of London. The missionary asked, “Was his name Mr. Gladstone?” “Oh yes,” said the boy, “that is his name; Mr. Gladstone.” Do you tell me a man can see religion like that and not like it? Why do you not get this bright, and beautiful, and radiant, and blissful, and triumphant thing for yourselves; then go home telling all your neighbours that they may have it, too; have it for the asking; have it now? Mind you, I do not start from the pessimistic standpoint that David did, when he got mad and said in his haste, “All men are liars!” or from the creed of others that every man is as bad as he can be. I rather think from your looks that you are doing about as well as you can in the circumstances in which you are placed, but I want to invite you up into the heights of safety, and satisfaction, and holiness, as much higher than those which the world affords as Everest, the highest mountain in all the earth, is higher than your front doorstep. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

The spirit of cynicism

The Cynics were a sect of philosophers among the Greeks, founded by Antisthenes, who, on account of his snappish, snarling propensities, was frequently called “The Dog”; and probably enough it may have been on account of this that his school of philosophy was called the “Cynic” or “Dog” school. He was stern, proud, and unsympathetic. He taught that all human pleasure was to be despised. He was ostentatiously careless as to the opinions, the feelings, and the esteem of others. He used to appear in a threadbare dress, so that Socrates once exclaimed, “I see your pride, Antisthenes, peeping through the holes in your cloak!” His temper was morose, and his language was coarse and indecent. His disciple, Diogenes, even “bettered the instruction,” living, it is said, in a tub, and peering about the streets with a lantern in the daytime, in search, as he alleged, of a man! It was part of his system to outrage common decency, and he snarled and growled even more bitterly and insolently than his predecessor. It is from this old school of philosophy that we derive the term cynicism; and we commonly apply it, now-a-days, to that mood or habit of mind which looks out upon mankind with cold and bitter feeling, which finds little or nothing to admire in human character and action, which systematically depreciates human motives, which rejoices to catch men tripping, which sneers where others reverence, and dissects where others admire, and is hard where others pity, and suspects where others praise. It would appear, then, to have been some such mood as this through which the psalmist had been passing. With him, however, the mood seems to have been but transient. For a time his soul was darkened by its baleful shadow--all human goodness eclipsed for him, and his own human sympathies and affections frozen. But only for a time. He does not seem to have cherished this cynical mood. On the contrary, he seems to have been conscious of its wretchedness, and to have retained the power to pray against it. When you are tempted to “say in your haste, All men are liars,” then cry with the psalmist, “O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul!” And now let me mention further one or two practical safeguards against the attitude or habit of cynicism.

I. Let us cherish a modest estimate of our own abilities and our own importance. A vain man is naturally exacting. He expects from others recognition, admiration, and deference; and if he does not secure the appreciation which he fancies is due to his abilities or merits, he may begin to rail at the blindness and stupidity of the world. An exacting nature, also, is apt to suspect the genuineness of an affection or friendship which is not always showing the amount of attention demanded and expected. The “milk of human kindness”--curdled somewhat at the outset by a selfish vanity--is still further soured when that vanity is wounded. A selfish ambition, too, when disappointed, is apt to leave the spirit embittered. Some of the most snarling and carping critics are men who have failed to reach the fame they coveted. And then, again, even the ordinary calamities of life, coming upon an intense egotism, will sometimes plunge a man into the cynical mood. That mankind in general should be subject to disease or to misfortune is not so strange to him; but that he himself should be thus visited surprises and chafes him. Nay, but let us cherish a modest estimate of ourselves--this is a grand safeguard against cynicism, and helps to preserve the sweetness of the spirit in times of disappointment and affliction. A humble recognition, too, of our own defects and faults will tend to keep us from harsh and censorious judgments of our brethren, and from all scornful and bitter railing at the weaknesses of humanity.

II. Let us cultivate the habit of looking out for human excellences, and of putting the most generous construction on human actions, The man who finds nothing to admire in others thereby reveals the shallowness of his own nature. A soul--and especially a young soul--that has no “hero-worship” in it, of some sort or other, thereby writes itself down as ignoble. The cynic who is constantly depreciating the actions and suspecting the motives of others is certainly paying no compliment to himself. A man does some deed that has a noble and worthy look about it. You know nothing whatever of the man; but you must, forsooth, begin with bitterness to insinuate that his action may not be so disinterested as it looks--that it springs, probably, from some selfish or sinister motive! What does all this mean but that you find it hard to believe in nobleness? And what does this, again, mean but that you yourself are incapable of such disinterested conduct? Nobleness believes in the possibility of nobleness, and delights to recognize it. Get into the habit, then, of looking out for excellences of character instead of picking out flaws and magnifying faults. “Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.” Cultivate also the habit of putting the most generous construction on human actions. If an action can be ascribed to two possible motives, why should you ascribe it to the lower? “Charity believeth all things, and hopeth all things.”

III. Let us seek to look at all men as through the eyes of Christ. This is the grand antidote to the cynical spirit. Christ is our Lord; Christ is our Saviour; it is our safety and blessedness to cling to Him, and to receive His Spirit into our hearts. And the grand secret of loving and caring for and bearing with others lies in looking at them through the eyes of Him who is their Redeemer and ours. Christ “tasted death for every man.” He so loved even the unworthy that He was willing to shed His blood for them. They tell us that “Love is blind”; but be sure that hatred, or even indifference, is far blinder. Love may sometimes be blind to faults, but it has a quick eye for excellences. (T. C. Finlayson.)

Faith in God and man

It has been left to a pitiful cynicism and to a threadbare wit to remind us, especially of late, that if David had lived in our days the words which he once uttered in haste he might now have spoken with utmost deliberation. Is it true? Is falsehood the invariable characteristic of the dealings and the speech of men? I will not trifle with your intelligence by seriously discussing the question. We may not blink or belittle the crimes that are done in high places or in low ones--least; of all may we deny the essential evils from which those crimes have sprung; but to own the power of evil in the world, to be afraid of it, to hate it, to frown upon its exhibitions when they flower into personal transgression--that is one thing. It is quite another to be precipitated by these things into that blunder of hasty generalization which David no sooner detected in himself than he so simply and manfully disowned and repented of it. Have we ever realized that, if we seriously believed as some of us are willing to affirm, that all men are liars, life would be simply unendurable? After all, the foundations of human society are laid in the cement of mutual trust, not of mutual suspicion. It paralyzes effort, it deadens aspiration, it destroys hope when we find that our own confidence in others evokes no answering trust in them. We do not realize, I think, how readily distrust begets its echo in those who are distrusted. To be doubted and suspected,--this with the young is often a short road to ultimate recklessness. “What is the good of it,” cries the young and sensitive nature, which has not yet learned to appeal from the judgment of its fellows, to the verdict of its unseen Master--“what is the good of any effort after right, if one is met at the threshold with a sneer and a suspicion? Is there no such thing as truth, after all? is all life hollow and false and unreal? Well, then, why should I try to be true and to hate what is false? Why should I revere what is good, and despise what is base and mean? No one believes in goodness any more. It must all be a game--this life that I am living, and cleverness, not righteousness, the aim of it.” And thus is born the cynic and the sceptic--the unbeliever in truth and the scoffer at faith. And if there is any life more wretched and any character more unlovable, the world has yet to reveal it. In the phraseology of science, there is what is known as a good working hypothesis. It is a probability assumed for the time to be true, as a means of reaching conclusions which lie beyond. Now, in our dealings with our fellow-men, which is the better working hypothesis: to assume with David in his haste, that all men are liars, or to prefer to believe that on the whole all men are not liars? Which will best serve to redeem the fallen, and steady the tempted, and inspire the timid? Give your brother man your confidence. Provoke him to love and to good works by the good which you look to see in him. And you that are fathers and mothers, ennoble the child whom you are training by appealing to that which is noble in him. Amid all his faults and waywardness, strive to love him with an unextinguishable hope and trust. Believe me, what your suspicions, your scorn, your lurking distrust of him can never do, your loving confidence will far oftener and far more surely accomplish. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)