pressing itself in and through nor mal human beings. Now these three characteristics, which impress me very much and which appear all over the place wherever Christianity is seriously accepted, are to my mind a very definite pointer to something be yond merely human experience. We all know peace of mind, when there is nothing to worry us; we all know joy, when our surroundings are happy; and we all know love, among our friends who love us. But the impressive thing about these qualities which I have noticed through the years is that the tran quility exists in spite of harassing circumstances; and the gaiety and good humor in spite of worrying and depressing conditions; and the love is exhibited not only in a small circle where it is likely to be re turned, but extends to places and people where it is certainly not asked for and where it may not even be appreciated! To me, there fore, there is something Godlike about these characteristics of real Christians, and I find myself be lieving that they have somehow be gun to share the quality of the Life of God Himself. O f course I can easily im agine the kind of thoughts that may have been going through your minds while I have been talking. You are quite probably thinking of the nice, kind, decent, honest people you know who make no religious pretensions of any kind. Of course I know quite a lot of such people too. But I do really think that there are three things which ought to be said about good men without faith. The first is this, that I think you will find, as I have found, that in the life history of these nice good people there has usually been genu ine Christian influence. A man, for example, may grow up with no Christian faith of his own, but nev ertheless with the whole of his life guided by internal principles im planted there by either one or both of his parents who were themselves Christians. Or sometimes you will
find parents, who in their own ch ildhood had an overdose of church-going, bringing up their children without any form of re ligious faith. But they will bring up those children according to the Christian principles which they themselves learned years ago. This sort of phenomenon can only hap pen of course in a country where Christianity has been the tradition for several generations. I don’t think you will find much evidence of people being naturally and spon taneously Christian where there is no Christian tradition or environ ment. The second difference that I must point out between “ nice people” and Christians is that the nice peo ple have not really in practice enough “ niceness.” What I mean is that they are charming and toler ant and kind within certain limits, but it is very, very rare to find them coping effectively with the messes and muddles made by the sins and failures of other men. Their goodness and their love are excellent up to a point, but they do not, as with the genuine Chris tian, enable them to cope effective ly, and indeed redemptively, with a situation that has gone badly wrong. Of course I am not claim ing that all Christians invariably do deal with dark and difficult situ ations effectually, but I do claim that the quality of their lives is such that something makes them want to move out from their own circle of love and happiness and bear some part of the pain and About the Author Bom in London in 1906, J. B. Phillips took the B.A. degree in Classics and Eng lish at Cambridge University, where he later studied for the ministry. Ordained in 1930, he worked as a journalist between his first two curacies because of ill health. In 1940, he became Vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd, London and at present is Vicar of St. John’s, Redhill, Surrey. He has become widely known in America through his writings. This article is included in one of his most recent books, Plain Christianity , The Macmillan Com pany, New York.
cost of putting a wrong situation right. They are not always very good at it, and they by no means always succeed, but for myself I am very much impressed by the fact that they do try to do some thing about it. They have, as I said before, an outgoing love. The third weakness of nice peo ple without faith is that they have literally nothing to offer to those who are not nice people. They prob ably behave kindly and tolerantly towards selfish people, but they have no means of communicating their secret of “ niceness.” To the man who has an unpleasant back ground, or an inherent moral weak ness, they have no gospel to offer. They cannot, as the Christian can, point to Someone stronger than themselves who is quite capable of transforming a disposition and a character. The Christian knows God, or should I say a little bit of God, through Christ, and he has learned through his own experience to tap the resources of God. He can, therefore, at least point the way to a better quality of life to someone who is not by nature a nice type or a good type or an honest type. This the good man without faith is quite unable to do, since he has no exper ience of the active, operative power of God. Y ou may think that I have been a bit hard about the nice, good, decent, kindly people who have no re ligious faith. I certainly don’t mean to be hard on them; indeed, I am extremely grateful that there are so many such people about. But for the reasons I have given, they don’t really provide much hope for a wrongheaded and sinful world. Plain Christianity on the other hand does hold out hope for every man who is prepared to believe in Christ. The man who is 100% healthy and has never been ill in his life is not as a general rule ipuch use in visiting the sick. It is almost im possible for him to enter into the feelings of a man who is ill. In the same way the man who is unfail- CONTINUED
THE K IN G 'S BU SINESS
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