MAN UNKNOWN TO MAN – Charles Spurgeon
Man Unknown to Man
“The heart knows his own bitterness. And a stranger does not understand with his joy.”
Proverbs 14:10
The Isolation of the Individual
You lift up your eyes and behold the stars. Surely, it is no idle imagination that these heavenly lights are distant worlds. But they are entirely separated from the inhabitants of this globe. You may peer at them through the telescope as long as you will, but you cannot enter into the feelings and pursuits of the dwellers in those worlds. You know nothing of the nearest planet, nor even of the world’s own satellite. Some look up and declare that they see a man in the moon. It is the fancy of the ignorant. Others gaze at it till they discover huge volcanoes. It is the belief of the astronomer. But do what you will, you cannot enter into conversation with the moon-dwellers. You cannot sympathize with their politics, nor share their domestic experiences. There is a great gulf fixed, and we who would pass to them cannot—neither can they pass to us who would come from there.
In a great measure, such is our relation to our fellow men. Men are microcosms, or little worlds—each man has his distinct sphere, wherein he dwells. We are so many worlds, and no one world of man exactly overlaps another. You cannot completely know your fellow man. All that you know concerning your fellows—and there is much that we can know—leaves a great deal as unknown to us as the fixed stars. There is a bitterness which each man feels alone and a sweetness with which none can understand. Every man is, in a measure, self-contained. His being is detached from other beings in certain matters. There are bonds which unite us to our fellow men, and there is a solidarity about the race. But for all that, each man is a distinct atom, and there are portions of his nature in which he does not touch his fellow man at all but displays his own individuality and personality. Alone are we born, one by one. Alone do we die, one by one. Though we shall stand with the great multitude before the Throne of God, yet that judgment will be of individuals, and the sentence will be passed upon us one by one. Heaven will be an enjoyment which the Believer himself possesses—or Hell a misery which the impenitent himself endures. No one can merge himself in another man, nor so blend himself with the mass as to cease to be an individual existence. For weal or woe, we are each one launched on the ocean of life in his own vessel. “Every man shall bear his own burden.”
The Mystery of Self-Knowledge
It is not surprising that we must be, in a measure, unknown to others since we do not even fully know ourselves. Mysteries exist within our own bosoms and abysses which we have never yet explored. Their own personal humanity is to many an utterly unknown land. And none know themselves so fully as they think. “Man, know yourself,” is a precept much more profound than it appears. If we do not know ourselves, how shall we know our fellows? Besides, there are points of individuality in each man which render him distinct from every other. No two women—although they are born of the same parents, have been trained in the same home, and have lived together in close companionship—will be found to be precisely alike. No man could find his exact counterpart among all the millions of the race. In some point or points, each man is inscrutable by his companions. Either from one peculiar element which is in him or from the peculiar proportions in which qualities are blended in his constitution, each man is a being after his own kind. How can we know beings so strangely different from each other?
The Secretive Nature of Man
Remember also, that men in their highest and deepest conditions, are remarkably secretive. The extreme heights and depths lie in darkness. A man may openly show himself in his ordinary life and “wear his heart upon his sleeve.” But when he reaches an especial grief, the waters are still deep. The keenest griefs cut a narrow but deep channel and, as they wear into the inmost soul, they flow without noise. The grief that babbles is a shallow brook. Silent sorrow is profound. Great misery is dumb with silence—it opens not its mouth. It is precisely the same in the higher ranges of joy. When once we soar into the heavenlies, we are alone.
The Solitude of the Believer
As I rode along in the South of France, the driver, turning to me, exclaimed, “See, there are eagles!” “No,” I said, “not eagles, for eagles fly alone.” Seven or eight large birds together might be hawks, or falcons, or kites but not true eagles. A royal eagle soars alone into the blue—his mate may bear him company, but he has no crew of comrades around him. The child of God—the true eagle of the skies—when he rises into the more Divine ranges of his spiritual life is, and must be, alone. Like their Lord, all saints will have a winepress which they must tread alone. And even so, they will have a Pisgah to which they will climb unattended. I marvel not that men hide those lives which God has hidden in Christ and that their fellows see not the part of them which lives upon the invisible.
The Importance of Sympathetic Judgment
What is the practical use of these facts? We learn, I think first, that we may not judge our Brethren as though we understood them and were competent to give a verdict upon them. Do not sit down, like Job’s friends, and condemn the innocent. They, seeing Job covered with sores, and hearing him speak in bitterness—and knowing that God had taken away from him his property and his children—rushed to the conclusion that he was a hypocrite, abhorred of God, and that his heart was proudly rebellious against Jehovah. Never a more cruel judgment than that of men who are but half-informed upon the matter and see before them a great man in adversity, a good man in dire distress. Had it not been for Job’s prayers, they would not have escaped the anger of God. And yet they had dared to condemn the patient saint.
Avoiding Premature Judgments
Why do you sit down and write bitter things against your fellow man? Be not sure that you can accurately judge any of his actions. Seen upon its surface and by itself, his act may appear blameworthy. But the motive behind it, if known to you, might soften your censure or even win your praise. Before the great Searcher of all hearts, things are not what they seem. As our law condemns no man before it hears him, so let us not hasten to give sentence since we have not yet heard and in all probability never shall hear, all the ins and outs of his behavior. Well said our Lord, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Especially judge not the sons and daughters of sorrow. Allow no ungenerous suspicions of the afflicted, the poor, and the despondent. Do not hastily say they ought to be more brave and exhibit a greater faith. Ask not why are they so nervous and so absurdly fearful? No, in this you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. I beseech you, remember that you understand not your fellow man.
The Art of Sympathy
The next practical lesson is if we desire to show sympathy to our Brethren let us not dream that this is an easy task. It is not a simple matter to square two unknown quantities—yourself and your friend. It would take me long to learn to correspond with the inhabitants of the planet Mars—in all probability I should never achieve the task. I doubt not that there are many people so peculiar, both in their sorrows and in their joys, that I shall no more be able to commune with them in real sympathy than with the people of the aforesaid planet. Study the art of sympathy. It is easy enough for a captain of a steam vessel to lay his ship alongside the wharf. But if I had to do it I would probably break down the wall of the dock and wreck the vessel, too. It is not easy to lay your soul side by side with another man’s soul.
The Necessity of Christ’s Sympathy
One other lesson and that is the great one we want all of us to learn. We all need sympathy. And as it is impossible that we should ever perfectly obtain it from our fellow men, there remains but One who can give it to us. There is One who can enter the closet where the skeleton is locked up. One who is in touch with our unmentionable grief. He weighs and measures that which is too heavy for us to bear. That blessed One! Oh, that we may each one have Him for our Friend! Without Him we shall lack the great necessity of a happy life! A personal Savior is absolutely needful to each of us to meet our individual personality.
The Personal Savior
Jesus, alone, can understand with our joy and make it still more gladsome. He, alone, can understand our grief and remove its wormwood. We must each one have Christ for himself. What is another man’s Christ to me? What is the Christ who dies for all the world to anyone in that world until he takes a personal hold on Him? “He loved me and gave Himself for me”—that is the point of rest. What joy to touch the nail print with your finger and to cry, “My Lord and my God”! This is the heart of the matter. The general doctrine of the Gospel has great power in it but the sweetness lies in the particular application of it. What though the city be full of bread? If there is none upon your table you will starve! What though the coffers of the bank should overflow with gold? If you have nothing to purchase the necessaries of life, you will perish in your poverty! We must have not a national religion but a personal religion. Not a share in the ecclesiastical privileges of a Church but the privilege—each one for himself—of becoming a child of God.
Conclusion: The Personal Experience of Joy and Sorrow
We must personally open the door to our Lord and He must enter into us and fill our entire nature with His Divine indwelling. He must be formed in each one of us the hope of glory, or Glory will never be ours. Be not deceived into joint-stock godliness—each man must come into individual relation with the living God in Christ Jesus.
Having already handled its general principle, we will now come close to our text in its two parts—the heart knows a bitterness peculiar to itself. And secondly, the heart also knows a sweetness peculiar to itself.
I. The Heart Knows Its Own Bitterness
This is true in a natural, common and moral sense. I shall, as a rule, confine myself to the more spiritual application. “The heart knows its own bitterness.” Concerning any man this is true. The shoe pinches on every foot, and that foot only knows where the pinch is felt by itself. Every shoulder bears its load, and that load is its own. Envy no man. He who seems most happy may be more fit for pity than for envy. His heart knows its own bitterness. Do not intrude into the hidden sorrows of any—it is enough for one heart to know its bitterness. Maybe you will increase misery if you meddle with it. Leave that alone which you cannot relieve. If you can, help, lend your attentive ear. But if you cannot help, keep your finger from the wound. Yet in your very quietness feel inwardly a sense of brotherhood.