II.
ON FRIGHTENING TIMOTHY
IT is an evil thing and a bitter to frighten Timothy. And it is wofully easy to do it. Timothy is very young. He always was! He always will be! Timothy has solved the problem of perpetual youth. He will never grow old. He was very young when he went up to Corinth that first time. Paul felt sorry for him. He was such a boy. ‘If Timothy come,’ the wise old man wrote to those Corinthian Christians, anticipating their amazement as they beheld the boyish ambassador, ‘If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear. Let no man despise him.’ And ten years later poor Timothy is still in trouble about his perennial juvenility. ‘Let no man despise thy youth,’ Paul writes again in this later letter. It is very beautiful. The boyishness of Timothy is chronic, inveterate, incurable. He simply won’t grow old. He was very young when Paul sent him to Corinth. He was still blushing over his boyish bearing when the veteran addressed to him his last pathetic letter. And he was still young when I myself met him. And just because there are still so many Corinthians who despise poor Timothy’s youth, it is still necessary for Paul to beg and entreat those thoughtless believers not to frighten Timothy. ‘If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.’
‘If Timothy come,’ says Paul. And Timothy often comes. I met him once as a young convert, setting himself with great hesitation, and with much trembling, to the high and holy enterprise of local preaching. I met him again as a young home missionary, encountering insuperable obstacles in his large and lonely district in the Never-Never Country, yet not half as much afraid of the muddy roads and impassable fords as of the peril of unfaithfulness among his scattered people. I met him again as a student pastor, burdening himself, after the heavy scholastic toils of the week, with the spiritual oversight of a pastorless congregation on the Lord’s Day. And I met him once as a young minister, fresh from college, pulling himself together after the solemn and searching ordeal of his induction, and wondering who, among saints or angels, was sufficient for these dreadful things. Poor Timothy! Paul felt very sorry for him. So did I.
‘If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.’ Timothy is very shy, very sensitive, very timid. At least, so all the commentators say, and if they don’t know, who should? Yes, I feel sure that they are right. It is impossible to read of Paul’s tender solicitude for Timothy without being driven to that conclusion. Timothy is very shy, and very sensitive, and very timid. All the most winsome and most lovable things are. The birds on the bough, the rabbits in their burrow, the deer in the forest glades — all the feathered and furry creatures to which we feel irresistibly and instinctively drawn — are shy, and timid, and shrinking. And so is Timothy. ‘If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.’
Some day, when I have a Sunday to spare, I mean to run down to that bush congregation, to that country pastorate, to that suburban out-station, at which Timothy usually preaches. I should like to have a quiet talk with the people about this matter of frightening Timothy. I cannot persuade myself that they fully recognize the gracious opportunity which Timothy’s presence offers to them. It may be theirs to foster, and cherish, and nurture in him all that is most spiritual, and tender, and noble, and Christlike ; and to send him forth at last from their tearful farewell meeting, not only with a silver-mounted umbrella or a Gladstone bag, but with a spirit sweetened, and instructed, and enriched in preparation for a great and fruitful ministry. Nor do I feel quite sure that they recognize the weight of their responsibility. They may quite easily and innocently spoil Timothy. They may frighten him out of all that is best in him. And they may dispatch him at last from their farewell meeting with a very beautiful silver-mounted umbrella, or a very handsome Gladstone bag — and with nothing else. And neither a silver-mounted umbrella nor a Gladstone bag is a quite adequate preparation for the Christian ministry in strenuous days like these.
It is a dreadful thing to frighten Timothy out of his dreams, his ambitions, his ideals. He always has them. There is nothing else to attract him into the ministry. It is perfectly safe to assume that when Timothy boards the train that will bear him to his country pastorate, his head is full of the most beautiful ideas as to what a Christian minister should be. He has been reading Richard Baxter, or William Law, or Alexander Whyte, or the Yale Lectures. Or at least he has been reading his Bible, and he feels it a fearful thing to be called to follow in the footsteps of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament preachers. And he has prayed until his face has shone that he may show himself worthy of so solemn and sacred a charge. And all this thinking and dreaming and talking and reading and praying have but enlarged his heart, and inflamed his emotions, and heightened his ambitions. And with all this wealth of spiritual fervour surging, like a tumult of flood-water, through every fibre of his being, he sets his face towards his mission district or student pastorate. And when Paul sees him setting out in this temper, he trembles for him. Such a spirit is very fragile. It would be so easy for those thoughtless but well-meaning people at Corinth to frighten it all out of him. ‘If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.’
In his amazingly candid autobiography Benjamin Franklin tells an ugly story. He has been describing his passionate and methodical struggle after goodness. And then he likens himself to ‘my neighbour who, in buying an axe of a smith, desired to have the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him, if he would turn the wheel. He turned, while the smith pressed the broad face of the axe hard and heavily on the stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the wheel to see how the work went on. At length, he said he would take his axe as it was, without further grinding. “No,” said the smith, “turn on, turn on, we shall have it bright by and by; as yet it is only speckled.” “Yes,” said the exhausted man, “but I think, after all, I like a speckled axe best!”’ Now, I have heard that there have been such tragedies as failures in the Christian ministry — men who have lost the rapture, and the vision, and the glory. Such things might move an angel’s tears. But I wonder in how many of these cases Timothy was frightened. The conversation at Corinth was so exclusively about finance and trivialities and externals, and he met with so little real comrade-ship and spiritual response, that he unconsciously adjusted his standard to fit his environment, and determined to content himself with a speckled axe.
I fancy that the most intense peril lurks in the matter of pastoral visitation. Timothy has come to think of such a visit as a very beautiful affair. He imagines that he will be straightway taken into the inmost confidences of the home. His advice may be asked; at any rate, his sympathies will be invited. He pictures himself reading an appropriate scripture, pointing out, it may be, in a sentence or two, its wealthy encouragement to the dwellers in this particular homestead. And then, surrounded by parents and children, he sees himself bowing in prayer, and pouring out his soul in earnest intercession on behalf of the family clustered around him. This is Timothy’s dream. And it will be a tragedy of the worst kind if the people of Corinth frighten him out of it. If they are awake to recognize the day of their visitation, they will put themselves to some trouble to make Timothy’s dream come true as soon as he knocks at the door. It will be a fine thing for him, and a fine thing for them. But—. But let me venture on a parable. In the depths of a Brazilian forest stood a giant tree. Its branches were ablaze with the most glorious orchids. They grew out of every crack and crevice in the old tree’s bark. It was a riot of radiant colour. One morning the sun rose upon it, glorifying its dazzling charms. Birds of every note filled its branches, and flooded the valley with liquid song. Other birds of brilliant plumage passed to and fro among the sunlit branches, like flashes of golden flame. It was a picture of Paradise. Then arose a sound of swishing boughs and crackling twigs. The gaiety was hushed on the instant. A troop of apes invaded the sylvan solitude. The birds flew in terror. The gorgeous petals were soon scattered in all directions. The glade re-echoed with the meaningless jabbering of the monkeys. The song was dead, and the forest seemed very poor. I fancy I have seen something like that happen, although I have never been to Brazil. It is easy to frighten the poetry out of the soul of Timothy. It is easy to quench his fires. It is a pitiful thing when chatter takes the place of song.
Ian Maclaren has a lovely story of John Carmichael that I somehow think would have been very much to Paul’s taste as he thought of Timothy and his peril at Corinth. Now, Carmichael was like Timothy, very young, very shy, very sensitive, and very shrinking. He entered upon his first charge. But he felt — painfully, acutely, constantly — the awful chasm that yawned between his radiant dreams and his actual achievements. And he felt that the people must be regarding him either with pity or contempt. One Sabbath, as he was sitting in the vestry, all the elders filed solemnly in. He felt that they had come to tell him that they could tolerate it no longer. Then the sagest and kindliest of them all addressed him. They had noticed his tearfulness, and nervousness, and timidity, and wished him to be completely at his ease. Was he not among his own people? They would have Timothy among them without fear. ‘You are never to be troubled in the pulpit’ the old man went on, ‘or be thinking about anything but the word of the Lord and the souls of the people, of which you are the shepherd. We will ask you to remember, when you stand in your place to speak to us in the name of the Lord, that as the smoke goeth up from the homes of the people in the morning, so will their prayers be ascending for their minister, and as you look down upon us before you begin to speak, maybe you will say to yourself, next Sabbath, “They are all loving me.” Oh, yes, and it will be true from the oldest to the youngest, we will all be loving you very much.’ ‘And that,’ Ian Maclaren says, ‘that is why John Carmichael remained in the ministry of Jesus Christ, the most patient and mindful of ministers.’ And I, for one, can easily believe it.
-F.W. Boreham
Powerful impact the few lines just made on me. the piece came right on time. God bless poster/sender