THE UNKNOWN SAINTS

By A. W. Tozer
 

William Wordsworth, in a fine passage states his belief that there are many more
poets in the world than we suppose,

". . .men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine,"

but who are unknown because they lacked or failed to cultivate the gift of versification.

Then he sums up his belief in a sentence that suggests truth far beyond any that he
had in mind at the time:

"Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least."

Most of us in our soberer moments would admit the soundness of this observation,
but  the hard fact is that for the average person it is the sober moment that determine our
total working philosophy; rather it is the shallow and deceptive notions pressed upon us
by the "noisy world." Human society generally (and especially in the United States) has
fallen into the error of assuming that greatness and fame are synonymous. Americans
appear to take for granted that each generation provides a certain number of superior
men and the democratic processes unerringly find those men and set them in a place of
prominence. How wrong can people get!

We have but to become acquainted with, or even listen to, the big names of our times
or discover how wretchedly inferior most of them are. Many appear to have arrived at their
present eminence by pull, brass, nerve, gall and lucky accident. We turn away from them
sick to our stomach and wonder for a discouraged moment if this is the best the human
race can produce. But we gain our self possession again by the simple expedient of
recalling same of the plain men we know, who live unheralded and unsung, and who are
made of stuff infinitely finer than the hoarse voiced braggarts who occupy too many of
the highest offices in the land.

If we would see life steadily and see it whole we must make a stern effort to break
away from the power of that false philosophy that equates greatness with fame. The two
may be and often are oceans and continents apart.

If the church were a body wholly unaffected by the world, we could toss the above
problem over to the secular philosophers and go about our business; but the truth is that
the church also suffers from this evil notion. Christians have fallen into the habit of
accepting the noisiest and most notorious among them as the best and the greatest.

They too have learned to equate popularity with excellence, and in open defiance of
the SERMON ON THE MOUNT they have given their approval not to the meek but to the
self assertive; not to the mourner, but to the self-assured; not to the pure in heart who
see God but to the publicity hunter who seeks headlines.

If we might paraphrase Wordsworth we could make his lines run,

"Purest saints
Are often those of whom the noisy church
Hears least,"

and the words would be true, deeply, wonderfully true.
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.