home  > books by F.W. Boreham  > 1918, The Silver Shadow > The Extra Cubit

VIII

THE EXTRA CUBIT 

I HAVE often wondered why it was necessary for the greatest of all preachers, in the greatest of all sermons, to affirm that no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature. Any dwarf, by the mere magic of his manhood, can turn himself into a giant without tinkering with the length of his bones. That being so, a resort to so very mechanical a contrivance would constitute itself an obvious degradation of his innate humanity. A man does not work. out his calculations with pencil and paper after he has once become expert in mental arithmetic. Nor does he worry about the dimensions of his stature after he has discovered that he is made of elastic. He can stretch himself to any length that pleases him. 

That is the best of being a man. Without adding a single cubit to your stature you can be as big as you like. Man stands eternally distinguished from the brute creation by his infinite powers of self-extension. He sees a bird in the air fifty yards above him. He cannot add fifty yards to the length of his arm in order that he may grasp it. But he achieves his end far more effectively. The arm fifty yards long might be a most awkward appendage five minutes afterwards; so he gets his bird another way. If he happen to be living in savagery, he picks up a stone and hurls it skywards; if he chance to be living in semi-barbarism, he whips his bow to his shoulder, and the bird falls pierced by the arrow. If he happen to be living amidst civilized conditions, he raises his rifle, and a well-aimed bullet brings down his prey. But in either case, without resorting to the clumsy expedient of adding cubits to his stature, he extends himself by a matter of fifty yards. He does the same thing whenever he casts a line into the depths of the sea. Indeed, he does it whenever he grasps a tool of any kind. 

There is an old fairy-story that tells how a stone-breaker, toiling with his hammer by the side of the road, saw a lord riding grandly by. Straightway, the stone-breaker wished he were himself a lord, and a fairy instantly gave him his desire. But he had not been long a lord when he saw a king riding in great state, and he wished he were a king. Again his request was granted. But one day, as his majesty was contemplating the immense force controlled by the sun, he caught himself wishing that he were himself the sun, with great planets at his mercy. Again the fairy transformed him. But one day, as he was shining in his strength, a cloud intervened between himself and the spot on which he wished to focus his burning rays. ‘I wish,’ he cried, ‘I wish I were a cloud, able to defy the sun!’ A cloud he at once became. But as, in his new role, he was one day flooding the earth, and laughing over its swollen torrents and devastated fields, he saw one huge rock which proudly defied the swirling waters. ‘I wish,’ he exclaimed, ‘I had a hammer and could smash that rock.’ And, in a trice, he found himself again sitting beside the heap of granite with a hammer in his hand!

That is always the trouble. Man never knows how great he really is. ‘Men hold themselves cheap and vile,’ says Emerson, ‘and yet a man is a faggot of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his system; he is the flood of the flood, and the fire of the fire; he feels the antipodes and the pole as drops of his blood; they are the extension of his personality.’ Precisely; they are the extension of his personality. And, if he is so elastic that he can make the equator and the poles the extensions of his personality, why, in the name of all that is reasonable, should he want to add a cubit to his stature? 

We are always a little slow to see the real immensity of things. We stupidly hanker after the extra cubit. I met with a striking instance of this quite recently. There stands at Kettering, in England, the house in which that famous meeting was held from which William Carey fared forth to India. That meeting altered the face of the world. The modern missionary movement was born ; and all our continents and islands have been changed in consequence. The map of the world has been revised as a result of that memorable gathering. The other day a traveller passed the historic meeting-place, and noticed, without surprise, that it bore an inscription. ‘I crossed the road, he says, to read what I expected would prove to be a record of one of the most epoch-making events in modern history. Imagine my amazement when I discovered that the inscription set forth the fact that near that spot a fox was killed by the hounds of the Pytchley Hunt! Local sportsmen evidently regard that as the event of supreme interest!’ Precisely! It is a very ancient blunder. A fool may easily mistake a mosquito in the telescope for a monster on the moon. His perspective is all at sea, that is all. 

It takes a very wise man to distinguish a big thing from a small thing. A Teacher once stood near a Temple. The Temple looked tremendous. The Teacher seemed so tiny. But listen: ‘I say unto you that in this place is One greater than the temple!’ And straightway His hearers fell into two parties. A few wise souls there were who saw that the teacher must always be greater than the temple, and they embraced His hard saying. But the crowd believed implicitly in the doctrine of the extra cubit. The Temple seemed to their superficial gaze to be enormously greater than the Teacher; so ‘they took counsel together how they might destroy Him.’ It was an odd way of proving their point. 

Now, having visited in this somewhat abrupt way the Temple at Jerusalem, we may as well peep in at a few other structures — three at any rate. Let us go on tour and visit York Minster in England, St. Peter’s at Rome, and St. Sophia’s at Constantinople — an English Minster, a Roman Cathedral, and a Mohammedan Mosque.

To York Minster first; and here in this most imposing and satisfying of English Cathedrals we find Charlotte and Anne Bronte. Poor Anne, the younger of the two famous sisters, is terribly ill. In a day or two she must die. It is her last wish to be taken to the grand old Cathedral, that she may feast her soul upon its beauties once again. And as her bright and restless eyes roam around it, drinking in every detail, the impression is over- powering; and she has to be carried in a state of collapse to a less exciting scene. How strong and stately the glorious old Minster! How frail and pitiful the dying girl! Yet I say unto you that there stood one in the Cathedral that day who was greater than the Minster! For what, after all, was the enormous fabric, with all its towers and pinnacles, its aisles and its altars, its dreamy architecture and its storied windows, compared with the beautiful soul of the poor consumptive girl who passed out of its portals to die?

To St. Peter’s at Rome — one of the triumphs of the builder’s art. The mind is bewildered by its vastness and its splendour. It has been said that an army could be lost within its precincts. And here, not far away from the Eternal City, is old Dr. Thomas Guthrie, of Glasgow. He has left for awhile the imposing monuments and masterpieces of Imperial Rome to delight himself in the sequestered valleys that lie beyond the Seven Hills. He is revelling among the wild flowers — the narcissus, the columbine, the lavender, the primula, the asphodel, the gentian, and a hundred other lovely blossoms that lift their radiant faces to the soft Italian skies. And as he peeps among the dainty petals, and breathes their delicious perfume, he finds himself exclaiming, ‘What, compared with these, is St. Peter’s? How paltry its dome! How poor its marbles!’ The startling statement in the Temple is getting wonderfully believable now. The petals of the wild flowers are greater than the portals of the wondrous fabric ! But let us finish our tour. 

To St. Sophia’s at Constantinople then, under the conduct of no less distinguished a guide than Edmund Gibbon. We catch our breath as we pass, under his leadership, amidst the stateliness and splendour of the ancient church. The enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia,’ he says, ‘might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the workmanship, of Deity.’ But he hastens to add: ‘Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant the labour, if it be compared with the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple!’ It is to this tiny insect, so fearfully and wonderfully made, that our great historian points as he says, ‘There standeth one among you who is greater than the mosque!’ It is easy now to return, and to return with contrite and believing hearts, to the Teacher in the Temple. 

Yes, with believing hearts. For, at the end of our tour, the Temple looks so tiny, and the Teacher so tremendous. Since His hard saying was first uttered, the Temple has gone to dust and ashes; the Teacher has brought the world to His feet. Take Him from it, and you have nothing left. Take it from Him, and you have subtracted nothing. 

Beyond the shadow of a doubt the test of the extra cubit is the most crucial test in life. For see! We have just visited the four stateliest edifices that the eyes of man have ever seen; and we have discovered that compared with the Teacher in the Temple, or even with the soul of a dying girl, or even with the wildest flowers of the forest, or even with the vilest insect that crawls upon the rugged wall, their splendours pale into absolute insignificance. We must worship bulk and bigness no more. So many stare at the big; so few discern the really beautiful. So many hanker after the extra cubit; so few perceive the infinite extensibility of man. So many people explore mosques and cathedrals and minsters and temples; so few see the wonders of an insect’s wing; the loveliness of a lily’s petal, the charm of a gracious soul; and — ah, yes! — so very few fall in love with the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely! But the wise understand! Bulk never deceives them. They scorn the extra cubit. They know the secret of the microscope. 

What, therefore, do we want with extra cubits? You cannot state a man’s greatness in the terms of a foot-rule. He has within himself an infinite capacity for self-extension. And the higher the plane on which you inspect him, the less the cubit has to do with it. What, for example, have cubits to do with the Kingdom of God? A little child is the supreme standard of attainment there — a little child! And, just because cubits are out of court, Paul argues that the entire citizenship of the new kingdom may attain to the maximum stature. No dwarfs; no midgets; no pigmies anywhere! None are short and stunted; all are stately and stalwart! Without any addition of extra cubits, we may all come up to the standard. ‘For unto every one of us,’ he says, ‘unto every one of us is given grace to grow!’

How much grace? Listen! ‘To each of us is given grace according to the measure of the munificence of Christ.’

How much growth? Listen! ‘Till we all come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’

Grace to grow! Grace unstinted and growth unstunted! Who would worry about the extra cubit after that?